The ASRock Z490 Taichi Motherboard Review: Punching LGA1200 Into Life
by Gavin Bonshor on May 27, 2020 9:00 AM ESTASRock Z490 Taichi Conclusion
The Z490 Taichi is the next interation in the Taichi series. It takes a premium position, currently just below the Z490 Aqua in which includes a large custom monoblock design for water-cooling. The ASRock Z490 Taichi therefore becomes a potential halo option for non-watercooled builts. The Taichi has a price tag of $370, which represents the mid to upper end of the Z490 chipset and includes some premium controllers with a unique Taichi inspired design.
Aimed at a mixed bag of users including gamers, content creators, and enthusiasts, the ASRock Z490 Taichi also includes future support for PCIe 4.0 and Intel's Rocket Lake processors through the top full-length PCIe x16 slot, and the top PCIe x4 M.2 slot. In total, the Z490 Taichi has three PCIe 3.0 x4 M.2 slots, with two that include support for SATA devices, as well as a total of eight SATA ports. Six of these are driven from the Z490 chipset with support for RAID 0, 1, 5, and 10 arrays, while the other two are present via an ASMedia ASM1061 SATA controller.
On the rear panel is a pretty stacked rear panel for a mid-range model with one USB 3.2 20 Gbps Type-C port which is one step down from Thunderbolt 3, while it also includes two USB 3.2 G2 Type-A, and five USB 3.2 G1 Type-A ports. BIOS Flashback is a handy feature to have, and ASRock includes boa DisplayPort 1.4 and HDMI video output pairing for users looking to use the integrated graphics on Intel's Comet Lake desktop processors. The Z490 chipset has also sparked an improvement in vendors networking capabilities, with the Z490 Taichi featuring a Realtek RTL8125BG 2.5 G and Intel I219-V Gigabit Ethernet controller pairing, as well as an Intel AX201 Wi-Fi 6 wireless interface which includes support for BT 5.1 devices.
When it came to performance and compared to other Z490 models, the ASRock Z490 Taichi is one of the most power-efficient models tested so far. Having revamped our motherboard test suite for Z490 in terms of benchmarks, the Z490 Taichi performed well; trading blows with other models on test with ease. It delivers the best DPC latency score from all of the Z490 models tested so far but does lack a little in terms of system POST times. The onus on manufacturers is to optimize its firmware and utilize Intel's V/F curve for improved turbo times, but not sacrifice too much in regards to heat and power. Overclocking performance is competitive too, and with a 12+2 phase power delivery running in 6+1 mode with doublers, it's more than capable enough of pushing Comet Lake as far as the silicon will allow, with adequate cooling methods, of course.
The ASRock Z490 Taichi has a lot of competition in the $350 to $400 price range, but it stands out as one of the unique Z490 models in terms of aesthetics. Rolling back the years a little, it is reminiscent of the ASUS Sabertooth series with its PCIe slot armor, and features as much plastic, which is a bit disappointing. The rear panel cover is plastic, and for $370, it wouldn't hurt ASRock to bolster the overall premium feel of the board with more metal, less plastic. Aside from this, it looks a solid and competitive Z490 option.
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Peskarik - Thursday, May 28, 2020 - link
Big thanks for the explanation, BGentry.Samus - Thursday, May 28, 2020 - link
Asus is a large OEM manufacturer and just doesn't make anything interesting anymore. That isn't a bad thing, except for innovation.Ian Cutress - Wednesday, May 27, 2020 - link
ASUS defaults to Intel recommended settings for turbo and voltage, and gives users the option to increase these in line with ASUS recommendations to get the best performance. The other manufacturers simply operate with their recommended settings out of the box, hence longer and higher turbos.Note that Intel actually encourages vendors to set their own turbo length and turbo power - what Intel provides is recommendations, but as long as the MB vendors aren't actually overclocking the frequency, they don't particularly care.
We typically test with out-of-the-box settings, to give a sense of what performance that users without any knowledge of what a turbo power limit is should expect. Given ASUS' implementation, it means they fall down on this metric, which makes it appear if the board is worse. What we should have done in this case is posted both sets of numbers and specified the difference, which is our fault. How ASUS does their options is going to be the focus of our Hero review.
rahvin - Wednesday, May 27, 2020 - link
Thanks for the comment Ian. I always do my own setting so I never noticed this, I'm glad you brought it to attention.Peskarik - Thursday, May 28, 2020 - link
Thank you, Ian! I look forward to it. For my next system I would like ASUS board + card, just to be sure all drivers etc are in line, that is why I am looking at the performance of ASUS boards in particular.Byte - Wednesday, May 27, 2020 - link
I used to only buy Asus, but i keep hearing crappy things about their ROG lines. To get similar features cost almost double in the current ROG lines vs Giga or MSI.Seems like the lower Asus lines are ok. What are you guys experiencing?
khanikun - Tuesday, June 2, 2020 - link
I got away from Asus. I stuck with them for like 10 years, but in the later years, my Asus boards kept breaking. I swapped to their WS line, which worked for a while, but then it seems they turned crappy too. They'd die in 1 to 1 1/2 years. Maybe I'm just super unlucky with Asus. I just gave up on them and moved to Gigabyte.Kind of makes me wish Abit was still around and was like their old heyday in the early 2000s. I had a good like 6-7 year run on my old IC7-Max 3 board, until the caps started leaking.
PeachNCream - Wednesday, May 27, 2020 - link
Gotta love how the word "Taichi" totally matches well with the whole brass cogs and gears theme plastered all over the plastic coverings they use to hide the PCB for - well who knows what reason. PCBs in computers must be considered ugly or something. Next stop, PCB-free, RGB-equipped windowed desktop computers!!!Deicidium369 - Wednesday, May 27, 2020 - link
When Jobs started NeXT - even the motherboard went through the aesthetic department.I support removing polychlorinated biphenyls from desktop computers - almost as insidious as RGB Disco lights. Windows are for cars, boats, airplanes, houses and not for PC cases.
I rather like the look of printed circuit boards in PCs - and the idea that you have several billion precision manufactured features in every CPU.
YB1064 - Wednesday, May 27, 2020 - link
ASRock have come a long way. I used be an ABit guy before latching on to ASUS up until Haswell. I had the opportunity to get a great deal on ASRock's Supercarrier Z270 paired with a 7700K. Superb board, tons of features, stable and overclocks quite well (5.1 GHz all cores with no effort).I must say, I miss the glory days of overclocking, i.e. tweaking the hell out of a DFI NF4 + TCCD + BH5 and employing crazy sh!% like the OCZ DDR booster.