The ASRock Z490 Taichi Motherboard Review: Punching LGA1200 Into Life

Board Features

The ASRock Z490 Taichi is a premium ATX sized offering which is targetted at gamers looking for unique stylings but also has elements which should suit content creators too. It includes a strong feature set with three PCIe 3.0 x4 M.2 slots, with the top M.2 slot including future capabilities for Intel's Rocket Lake PCIe 4.0 processors. It has three full-length PCIe 3.0 slots which operate at x16, x8/x8, and x8/x8/+x4, with two PCIe 3.0 x1 slots. Other storage options include eight SATA ports, six driven from the Z490 chipset, and two from an ASMedia ASM1061 SATA controller. It includes support for DDR4-4600 memory, including capabilities to install up to 128 GB across its four memory slots. Located around the edge of the board are eight 4-pin headers for fans, including one dedicated to a CPU fan, one for water pumps, and six for chassis fans.

The ASRock Z490 Taichi boasts a pretty stacked rear panel with a single USB 3.2 G2 20 Gbps Type-C, two USB 3.2 G2 Type-A, and five USB 3.2 G1 Type-A ports. A further four USB 3.2 G1 Type-A, four USB 2.0, and a single USB 3.2 G2 Type-C port can be made available via internal USB headers. The board also includes two video outputs including a DisplayPort 1.4 and HDMI, while networking is strong with a Realtek RTL8125BG 2.5 G and Intel I219-V Gigabit Ethernet controller pairing. For users looking for wireless connectivity, an Intel AX201 wireless interface offers both Wi-Fi 6 and BT 5.1 connectivity.

Test Bed

As per our testing policy, we take a high-end CPU suitable for the motherboard that was released during the socket’s initial launch and equip the system with a suitable amount of memory running at the processor maximum supported frequency. This is also typically run at JEDEC subtimings where possible. It is noted that some users are not keen on this policy, stating that sometimes the maximum supported frequency is quite low, or faster memory is available at a similar price, or that the JEDEC speeds can be prohibitive for performance. While these comments make sense, ultimately very few users apply memory profiles (either XMP or other) as they require interaction with the BIOS, and most users will fall back on JEDEC supported speeds - this includes home users as well as industry who might want to shave off a cent or two from the cost or stay within the margins set by the manufacturer. Where possible, we will extend out testing to include faster memory modules either at the same time as the review or a later date.

Readers of our motherboard review section will have noted the trend in modern motherboards to implement a form of MultiCore Enhancement / Acceleration / Turbo (read our report here) on their motherboards. This does several things, including better benchmark results at stock settings (not entirely needed if overclocking is an end-user goal) at the expense of heat and temperature. It also gives, in essence, an automatic overclock which may be against what the user wants. Our testing methodology is ‘out-of-the-box’, with the latest public BIOS installed and XMP enabled, and thus subject to the whims of this feature. It is ultimately up to the motherboard manufacturer to take this risk – and manufacturers taking risks in the setup is something they do on every product (think C-state settings, USB priority, DPC Latency / monitoring priority, overriding memory sub-timings at JEDEC). Processor speed change is part of that risk, and ultimately if no overclocking is planned, some motherboards will affect how fast that shiny new processor goes and can be an important factor in the system build.

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