The ASRock X399 Taichi Motherboard Review: Cost-Effective Threadripper

System Performance

Not all motherboards are created equal. On the face of it, they should all perform the same and differ only in the functionality they provide - however this is not the case. The obvious pointers are power consumption, but also the ability for the manufacturer to optimize USB speed, audio quality (based on audio codec), POST time and latency. This can come down to manufacturing process and prowess, so these are tested.

Power Consumption

Power consumption was tested on the system while in a single ASUS AMD RX 570 GPU configuration with a wall meter connected to the Corsair AX1200i power supply. This power supply is Platinum rated, and as I am on a 230 V supply, leads to ~75% efficiency > 50W, and 90%+ efficiency at 250W, suitable for both idle and multi-GPU loading. This method of power reading allows us to compare the power management of the UEFI and the board to supply components with power under load, and includes typical PSU losses due to efficiency. These are the real-world values that consumers may expect from a typical system (minus the monitor) using this motherboard.

While this method for power measurement may not be ideal, and you feel these numbers are not representative due to the high wattage power supply being used (we use the same PSU to remain consistent over a series of reviews, and the fact that some boards on our test bed get tested with three or four high powered GPUs), the important point to take away is the relationship between the numbers. These boards are all under the same conditions, and thus the differences between them should be easy to spot.

The ASRock X399 Taichi gave us interesting energy consumption figures. While the system's consumption at idle is virtually no different than that of any other AMD X399 motherboard, it displayed the lowest energy consumption under maximum load by a significant margin. This hints that the ASRock X399 Taichi handles the Ryzen Threadripper 1950X CPU like every other motherboard does at idle but does not boost the processor as aggressively as other motherboards do when under load.

Non UEFI POST Time

Different motherboards have different POST sequences before an operating system is initialized. A lot of this is dependent on the board itself, and POST boot time is determined by the controllers on board (and the sequence of how those extras are organized). As part of our testing, we look at the POST Boot Time using a stopwatch. This is the time from pressing the ON button on the computer to when Windows starts loading. (We discount Windows loading as it is highly variable given Windows specific features.) 

The default boot time of the ASRock X399 Taichi is the second slowest of every AMD X399 motherboard that we have tested to this date but, from a practical point of view, the difference between the four motherboards is unimportant. Enabling the Fast Boot BIOS option turns the ASRock X399 Taichi into the fastest AMD X399 motherboard as far as the boot time is concerned but, again, the difference between the motherboards are a couple of seconds at most.

USB Backup

For this benchmark, we transfer a set size of files from the SSD to the USB drive using DiskBench, which monitors the time taken to transfer. The files transferred are a 1.52 GB set of 2867 files across 320 folders – 95% of these files are small typical website files, and the rest (90% of the size) are small 30 second HD videos. In an update to pre-Z87 testing, we also run MaxCPU to load up one of the threads during the test which improves general performance up to 15% by causing all the internal pathways to run at full speed.

Due to the introduction of USB 3.1, as of June 2015 we are adjusting our test to use a dual mSATA USB 3.1 Type-C device which should be capable of saturating both USB 3.0 and USB 3.1 connections. We still use the same data set as before, but now use the new device. Results are shown as seconds taken to complete the data transfer.

At this point we should also note that manufacturers nowadays advertise their motherboards as having "USB 3.1 Gen 1" and "USB 3.1 Gen 2" ports. The USB 3.1 Gen 1 ports are limited to 5 Gbps, which means that they are USB 3.0 ports. USB 3.1 Gen 2 ports are rated for up to 10 Gbps.

As expected, the ASRock X399 Taichi displayed USB performance identical to that of every AMD X399 motherboard that we have tested to this date. All of these four motherboards are using the same USB controller chipsets so, naturally, there are no performance differences here.

DPC Latency

Deferred Procedure Call latency is a way in which Windows handles interrupt servicing. In order to wait for a processor to acknowledge the request, the system will queue all interrupt requests by priority. Critical interrupts will be handled as soon as possible, whereas lesser priority requests such as audio will be further down the line. If the audio device requires data, it will have to wait until the request is processed before the buffer is filled.

If the device drivers of higher priority components in a system are poorly implemented, this can cause delays in request scheduling and process time.  This can lead to an empty audio buffer and characteristic audible pauses, pops, and clicks. The DPC latency checker measures how much time is taken processing DPCs from driver invocation. The lower the value will result in better audio transfer at smaller buffer sizes. Results are measured in microseconds.

All of the AMD X399 motherboards display somewhat high DPC latency figures and the ASRock X399 Taichi is no exception. The highest recorded DPC latency was 323 μs, a figure that is not high enough to cause any performance concerns, yet higher than what we anticipated to be. It is peculiar for a motherboard with fewer subsystems than another motherboard of virtually the same core design (ASRock X399 Professional Gaming) to display higher DPC latency figures.