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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lmcd - Wednesday, May 27, 2020 - link
Honestly this is the most inane post I've ever read. Times haven't changed for the better, Raven Ridge support took over a year after the SoC was released. I own two Raven Ridge devices. I would know.Even when AMD support hits mainline, it's in such a late kernel version that you better hope this "sane" distro you're referring to is willing to backport support in an update.
Dunno what you mean about the Nvidia driver being painless to use. Its Wayland support is still comparatively unstable in Gnome and pushes KDE Wayland support from mediocre to bad. It also requires extra build tools.
I can't edit posts but I explained a key usage of nested Hyper-V. "Anyone who wants to use the Windows 10X emulator needs it unfortunately." There's also plenty of other features that use Hyper-V these days from WSL2 to Windows Sandbox, so the antiquated views on Hyper-V are also quite dated. Times have changed for the better, and Hyper-V is very much part of the present.
Congrats on your condescension though! It almost masks how wrong you are.
Dug - Wednesday, May 27, 2020 - link
Why in the world do you insist on benchmarking Non-UEFI POST Time when no one will use that?TheinsanegamerN - Thursday, May 28, 2020 - link
Because not everyone is you and there are those of us that DO use it. Wow, what an amazing thought.Dorkaman - Thursday, May 28, 2020 - link
I would love to see UEFI post time AND Windpows clean knstall boot time. My old Asus Rampage V Extreme was very slow (40s post+boot no mem test hybrid) and the new Asus ROG Maximus XII Extreme is also very slow.My Gigabyte Z390 Aorus Master posts+boots in 10+5 seconds.
Dug - Wednesday, June 3, 2020 - link
Why would you be buying new equipment for outdated OS's that aren't supported?If that's the case, the boot time is irrelevant, and my post still stands. Why even bother benchmarking it?
Ranger1065 - Wednesday, May 27, 2020 - link
A good read, always a pleasure to peruse Anandtech. The aesthetics are not for everyone but personally I think it's a nice looking board. Out of my price range but Z490 is not for me anyway. As to Asus boards, I have an older Z97 Maximus Hero VII and a Z390 Prime. Both great boards that have given me no significant issues.Jorgp2 - Wednesday, May 27, 2020 - link
Do the new CPUs have an additional 4x lanes from the CPU?I keep seeing boards that advertise 8,8,4 slots, with all of them coming from the CPU. And this motherboard for example that has the 4x gen 4 M.2, when the chipset does not have Gen 4
MDD1963 - Wednesday, May 27, 2020 - link
The specs I read said the top GPU slot would be capable of PCI-e 4.0 x16, ...and one of the M.2 slots...( perhaps I missed where it said all 4 might be capable fo PCI-e 4.0 x4 operation?_)Even with the aforementioned limits, more than enough for 99% of most folks....
Spunjji - Thursday, May 28, 2020 - link
Waiting to see how many people show up to the comments to wail about the tiny fans. After all, it wasn't anti-AMD sentiment that caused so many folks to show to all of the articles related to X570 boards (and a few that weren't) and do that, it was totally neutral concerns about longevity and noise.(Full disclosure - I am fully on-board with not wanting tiny fans on a motherboard... just feeling a little amused by the asymmetry of this. The only comment here so far on this topic has been a sensible one, not hysterical ranting.)
TheinsanegamerN - Thursday, May 28, 2020 - link
So you smugly, disingenuously re-categorize the arguments of others and think you're...clever? Funny? Intelligent?Now, here's points for asrock that might blow your mind, these are STANDARD FANS. You can go buy brand new noctuas to replace these and silence them while maintaining cooling performance. Guess what you couldnt do with x570 chipset fans? These fans also dont spin 24/7, only when needed, and the VRMs here get a LOT hotter then the x570 chipset did.
If X570 got into the 90C range without the active cooling (it doesnt) and they used standard 40mm fans (they dont) then the complaints would be baseless. But we saw how necessary those x570 fans really were. And oh hey, there are plenty of Z490 mtoherboards that dont use VRM fans! Just like that whole 1 X570 motherboard that cost like $700!