When it comes to famous gaming motherboards, ASRock is a pioneer in any list. Along with Gigabyte, Asus and MSI. The ASRock Taichi series is extremely popular among both premium and budget PC builders. Therefore in this post, we will take a closer look at the two of the best motherboards of the ASRock Taichi series and pick out the one that suits your requirements and budget. We will review the X570 and B550. Make sure to check our review on the X470 Taichi as well. if you are interested. Alright, let’s hop on the the virtual motherboard tour.
ASRock X570 Taichi Specs
| Socket/ Chipset | AM4/AMD X570 |
| Form Factor | ATX |
| Voltage Regulator | 14 Phases |
| Connectivity | 2 x USB 2.0 Headers, 1 x USB 3.2 Gen1 Header, 1 x Front Panel Type C USB 3.2 Gen2 Header, 1 x Thunderbolt™ AIC Connector |
| Storage | 8 x SATA3 6.0 Gb/s Connectors, 1 x Hyper M.2 Socket (M2_1), 1 x Hyper M.2 Socket (M2_2), 1 x Hyper M.2 Socket (M2_3) |
| DIMM slots | 4 x DDR4 DIMM Slots |
| BIOS | 256Mb AMI UEFI Legal BIOS with GUI support |
| Graphics | Integrated AMD Radeon™ Vega Series Graphics in Ryzen Series APU, DirectX 12, Pixel Shader 5.0, Supports HDMI 2.0 with max. resolution up to 4K x 2K (4096×2160) @ 60Hz |
| Audio | Realtek ALC1220 Audio Codec, Supports DTS Connect, NE5532 Premium Headset Amplifier for Front Panel Audio Connector |
| LAN | Gigabit LAN 10/100/1000 Mb/s, GigaLAN Intel® I211AT |
| Wi-Fi / Bluetooth | Intel® 802.11ax WiFi Module, Supports IEEE 802.11a/b/g/n/ax, 2 antennas to support 2 (Transmit) x 2 (Receive) , Bluetooth 5.0 + High speed class II |
| Slots | PCIe x16-(3) v4.0 (x16/x0/x4*, x8/x8/x4*) (*Excluded by 3rd M.2) , PCIe x1- (2) v4.0 |
| Rear Panel I/O | 2 x Antenna Ports, 1 x PS/2 Mouse/Keyboard Port, HDMI Port, Optical SPDIF Out Port, USB 3.2 Gen2 Type-A Port (10 Gb/s), USB 3.2 Gen2 Type-C Port, 6 x USB 3.2 Gen1 Ports, RJ-45 LAN Port, CMOS Button, BIOS Flashback Button, HD Audio Jacks |
| Warranty | 3 Years |
Obviously all the specs aren’t listed above as the list is pretty extensive. Rather, we’ve sorted out the ones required for an unbiased review and we might throw in a few other specs to validate our points. To begin with, it certainly is an upgrade from its predecessor the X470. Also the upgrade to Wi-Fi 6 speeds and firmware update for the I/O panel, CLR_CMOS buttons, the third PCIe slot gets added metal reinforcement, and all slots support PCIe 4.0 mode. Let’s take a closer look at what’s new;
More tolerance space and allow IO shield is adjustable when installing, thereby fitting chassis perfectly corresponding to the form factor without any space issue. The next generation PCI Express 4.0 is capable of performing twice the speed compared to the previous 3rd generation. ASRock’s all new steel slots with extra anchor points are innovative, added to ensure signal stability and also making sure heavy graphics cards to be well-installed in the PCI-E slot safely.
The 14 power phase design leads to fourteen 50A MOSFETs which are paired up using phase doublers rather than the teamed design of its predecessor’s sixteen 30A phases. More power and smooth power delivery to the CPU. According to ASRock, it offers enhanced overclocking capabilities and better performance with the lowest temperature for hardcore gamers as well. We can see that for ourselves in the benchmark tests.
And of course the upgrade to Wi-Fi six speeds, making it great to use with a Wi-Fi 6 router such as TP Link archer or the Netgear AC1750. The speed will be working up to 2.4Gbps and it will also natively operate with both 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz simultaneously. Also the three M.2 drives support compared to the earlier version.
Finally, you get the quick installation guide, support CD, 4 SATA Data Cables, ASRock SLI_HB_Bridge_2S Card, ASRock Wi-Fi 2.4/5 GHz antenna, ASRock Screwdriver3 plus Screws for M.2 Sockets and 2 Standoffs for M.2 Sockets.
Performance
Okay, now to the fun part. The UEFI BIOS is very similar to that of most of ASRock’s motherboards. There are some memory overclocking profiles for certain memory kits, and these profiles look quite capable and offer owners the ease of tweaking their RAM well beyond XMP levels. There is no trouble overclocking the CPU or the memory, and it seems that the fan curve is set accurately for the chipset fan. The controls are available for the CPU overclocking until 4175 MHz at 1.375V. The X570 Taichi pushes a DDR4-2933 to a stable DDR4-3733 with four DIMMs installed.
Fan speeds are adjustable in two ways. You can use the motherboard-defined profiles or custom curves that we mentioned earlier, and the board’s FanTuning algorithm adds automatic customization to modify the default factory profiles to optimize individual hardware. Five of the fans can be automatically or manually switched between voltage and PWM-based RPM control, leaving just the primary CPU fan header as PWM-only.
The competitor for the ASRock Taichi X570 is the Gigabyte X570 Aorus Master which is an equally powerful motherboard with premium features. Tomshardware used the AMD Ryzen 7 3700X and tweaktown used the AMD Ryzen 9 3900X along with the wraith prism cooler and RAM of 16GB (2x8GB) @ 3200MHz. The single and multi core performance was the same with both motherboards in both CPUs. The 3700X at 1.4V and the 9 3900X at 1.425V. However, the X570 Aorus Master outranked the X570 Taichi with the highest stable data rate for the DDR4-2933.
Benchmark Tests
Both the boards showed identical performance in both Cinebench R15 and wPrime. In synthetic benchmark tests such as 3DMark Time Spy, 3DMark Firestrike Extreme and PCMark 10, the Taichi X570 showed slightly better performance than the Aorus. Although in the AIDA64 CPU stress tests for memory, the Aorus was ahead of the Taichi by a very few figures for copy/read/write speeds.
The gaming performance remains pretty much the same at 1080P in games like Resident Evil 6, Ashes of the Singularity and F1. However at 1440P medium settings, the Aorus output slightly higher frame rates with these games. Nevertheless, even in the Handbrake software which is used for video transcoding 4K to 1080P, both the motherboards output almost identical frame rates and the difference is insignificant. The same can be said for system benchmarks such as CrystalDiskMark (used for testing the performance of SSD). The read/write speeds remained almost the same with both the motherboards.
Heat and Power
Although in the tests run by tweaktown, the power consumption showed similar numbers with both the boards, Tomshardware tests showed the X570 Taichi consumes far more power at full load. Reason being that the board was running the 3700X at 1.31V and 4.1GHz under Prime95 small-FFTs. It creates a FFT size range which will fit into the L2 cache of your CPU. Naturally, as a result of the power consumption, the temperature rise is also simultaneous.
Conclusion
So that is pretty much it for the mighty ASRock Taichi X570 motherboard. The key points are the upgraded voltage regulator, upgraded Wi-Fi 6, three PCI-E 4.0 M.2 slots. And these pretty much justify a considerable portion of the increase in price. Additionally, there is a slight fan noise which might irritate some after long hours of usage. Plus the aluminum plate mounted to the back of the board serves no practical purpose because we have a motherboard mount tray. Nonetheless, the Taichi X570 is a great board that offers the premium features for high end PC builds.
ASRock B550 Taichi
| Socket/Chipset | AM4/ AMD B550 |
| Form Factor | ATX |
| Voltage Regulator | 16 Power Phase design |
| DIMM Slots | 4 x DDR4 DIMM Slots |
| Connectivity | 24 pin ATX Power Connector (Hi-Density Power Connector), 2 x 8 pin 12V Power Connectors (Hi-Density Power Connector), Front Panel Audio Connector 2 x USB 2.0 Headers , 2 x USB 3.2 Gen1 Headers, Dr. Debug with LED, Power Button with LED, Reset Button with LED, Clear CMOS Button |
| Storage | 4 x SATA3 6.0 Gb/s Connectors, 4 x SATA3 6.0 Gb/s Connectors by ASMedia ASM1061, Hyper M.2 Socket (M2_1), supports M Key type 2242/2260/2280 M.2 PCI Express module up to Gen4x4 (64 Gb/s) (with Matisse) or Gen3x4 (32 Gb/s) (with Renoir and Picasso), Ultra M.2 Socket (M2_2) |
| BIOS | 256Mb AMI UEFI Legal BIOS with GUI support |
| Graphics | Integrated AMD Radeon™ Vega Series Graphics in Ryzen Series APU, DirectX 12, Pixel Shader 5.0, Shared memory default 2GB. Max Shared memory supports up to 16GB, Supports HDMI 2.1 with max. resolution up to 4K x 2K (4096×2160) @ 60Hz, Supports DisplayPort 1.4 Input with max. resolution up to 5K (5120×2880)@120Hz |
| Audio | 7.1 CH HD Audio with Content Protection (Realtek ALC1220 Audio Codec) |
| LAN | 2.5 Gigabit LAN 10/100/1000/2500 Mb/s, GigaLAN Intel® I225V |
| Wi-Fi/Bluetooth | Intel® 802.11ax Wi-Fi Module, Supports IEEE 802.11a/b/g/n/ax, Supports Dual-Band (2.4/5 GHz), Supports WiFi6 802.11ax (2.4Gbps), 2 antennas to support 2 (Transmit) x 2 (Receive) |
| Slots | 3 x PCI Express x16 Slots, 2 x PCI Express 3.0 x1 Slots, 1 x Vertical M.2 Socket |
| Rear Panel I/O | 2 x Antenna Ports, HDMI Port, DisplayPort 1.4, Optical SPDIF Out Port, USB 3.2 Gen2 Type-A Port (10 Gb/s) , USB 3.2 Gen2 Type-C Port (10 Gb/s) , 4 x USB 3.2 Gen1 Ports , 2 x USB 2.0 Ports (Supports ESD Protection), RJ-45 LAN Port with LED 1 x Clear CMOS Button, BIOS Flashback Button, HD Audio Jacks: Rear Speaker / Central / Bass / Line in / Front Speaker / Microphone |
The next big motherboard after the X570. It certainly counts as one of the best B550 motherboards. It also has the Wi-Fi 6 support along with the other premium features, although thunderbolt is excluded. Let’s break down the motherboard analysis step by step.
Build Quality
The board certainly looks aesthetically appealing even without the RGB on. There is a mixture of black, steel-gray, and gold color throughout the board. The color ratios aren’t balanced of course, but that is what makes the board look appealing. It integrates the Razer Chroma ecosystem support which resulted in it being a marketing drive point. The LEDs are positioned in the rear I/O shroud, the chipset heatsink plus the right edge of the board. We will introduce the build quality features first and see what the pros and cons of those are.
The 16 60A power makes the saturation current up to three times better, thereby providing enhanced and improved power delivery to the motherboard. Dr.MOS is the integrated power stage solution which is optimized for synchronous buck-set down voltage applications. Usually these types of high class power delivery systems aren’t seen in midrange-chipset boards. So we are in for a little extra optimization with the ASRock Taichi B550.
Extra large aluminum alloy heat sinks for taking away heat from the MOSFET and chipset. Specially designed memory alloy choke for better memory power delivery, they do that using a highly magnetic and heat resistant design. The supreme 12K black capacitors offer 20% longer lifespans even better than some high end motherboards. I/O armor for better hardware security. 2oz Copper PCB for lower temperature and better efficiency. The reinforced steel slot with the next gen PCI Express 4.0. The first M.2 Key-M slot is directly above the primary PCI Express x16 slot and Asrock uses Torx 8 screws on the heat spreaders. They hold well and ASRock also supplies a Torx 8 screwdriver. The top M.2 Key-M slot is a bit difficult to access while the 2nd isn’t. It is difficult because of the placement between the CPU and GPU.
Performance
It is in the BIOS page where you are reminded that this is a step down from the X570 board. Because the overclocking controls are limited which is certainly odd for a motherboard hosting premium features. The only option for adjusting the CPU’s clock speed in the BIOS is by adjusting the base clock. Also according to PCMag, the BIOS firmware has an issue with custom RAM settings even with the updated firmware. There were also others who weren’t able to run DDR4-3600 memory modules at XMP mode initially. But once they updated the BIOS to the latest version, it was possible.
Now lets get down to the numbers. Funkykit ran their benchmark test for the motherboard using Ryzen 7 – 3700X @ 3.6GHz, aftermarket cooler, 16GB DDR4-3600 with XMP profiles, RTX 2080 and 1TB SSD. The output was a Cinebench score of 2032, PCMark 10 score of 6940, 3DMark Time Spy score of 10957, 3DMark Fire Strike score of 23231 and 3DMark Port Royal score of 6684. The performance with CrystalDiskMark, HyperPi 32M and AIDA64 Memory Test were equally impressive. However, according to Tomshardware benchmark tests with the same software and more, the Asus B550 and the Gigabyte B550 Aorus performed better than the Taichi. It was different with timed application tests such as Handbrake. The Taichi kept well ahead of its rivals. In gaming tests such as Division 2 and Forza Horizon 4, the Taichi was in parallel with the others at 1080P and ultra graphic settings.
Heat and Power
Power use on Taichi B550 is quite high by several watts at both idle and load compared to the other B550 boards. Temperatures aren’t bad, in fact they are within the usual operational temps. However, according to PC Gamer, When they tested the AMD Ryzen 9 5950X at 4.5GHz with a 1.26v,it got very hot running 32 threads at 100%.
Conclusion
The ASRock B550 Taichi offers numerous features including PCIE 4.0 support and overclocking, which are normally found on the high-end X570 motherboards. Also you get all the extras that the Taichi series has to offer, such as 2.5GB LAN, Wi-Fi 6 compatibility, 8 x SATA ports, 3-way CrossfireX, 3 x PCIE 4.0 x16 steel slots, M.2 slots, onboard diagnostic LEDs, buttons for CMOS and much more. But many X570 boards are available at same price with more M.2 slots and has more PCIe 4.0 general purpose lanes. So if you don’t want extra slots or LAN with more bandwidth, then you can consider the B550 Taichi board. You can also check the X470 Taichi motherboard review here.
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