APC Australia - September 2019

$499|WWW.ASROCK.COM

Asrock

Asrock strivestofind its i

A

srock’s Taichi
brand standsoutas
a competitive
option that doesn’t
scream gaming. Taichi
boards usually offer an
excellent combination of
useful features and
affordable price. Can the
X570 Taichi keep its value
reputation intact with X570
pricing moving upwards?
The X570 Taichi has taken
a step up in looks from the
X470 Taichi. It really is lovely
looking with the chipset
heatsink’s gears and cogs
being a nice retro analogue
artistic touch. Of course
there are healthy splashes of
RGB around the heatsink as
well as above the I/O cover
and the right hand side of the
board. Like the other X570
boards in the test, the VRM
and cooling assembly have
taken a step forward to cope
withthedemandsof

cludea HDMIport.This

makesitsuitableforuse

witha RyzenAPU.Obviously

nottoomanyusersare going

to buy a $500 motherboard to

pair with a $200 APU, but it’s

nice to have the option for

IGP. What if AMD release

something like a 6-core Navi

equipped APU in the future?

That’s something that could

be seriously attractive.

The rest of the I/O is

average. There’s only two

USB 3.2 Gen 2 ports (one

type-A and one Type-C)

which is a little lacking

compared to some of the

other boards in the test.

These are joined by six Gen 1

ports. The Taichi is also the

only board in the test that

doesn’t include 2.5G LAN. It

does come with Wi-Fi 6 as

we’d expect at this price, but

still, 2.5G would have been

nice.

TheTaichiperformed well

poweringthelik

Ryzen9 3950X 16

monster.

Asrockhasincluded n

and 4 pin CPU power

connectors mated toa high

spec 14 phase power delivery

system. There won’t be any

worries powering a 16 core

Ryzen CPUs on this board.

You get eight SATA

connectors and three M.2

slots. The three M.2 heat

sinks are incorporated into

the chipset heat sink which

extends to almost the entire

bottom half of the board. It’s

necessary to remove the

entire covering section to

install the M.2 drives. It’s

fiddly and inconvenient.

We’d rather see the drive

manufacturers consistently

incorporate heat sinks

instead of the kind of

solution the Taichi offers.

The Taichi is is the only

boardintheroundupto

in CPU and memory based

tests. We used the latest BIOS

which appears to have boosted

CPU performance a little over

the beta BIOS we first tested

with. It also fixes what was

very annoying chipset fan

speed and noise.

Asrock’s Taichi boards

usually impress us, but the

X570 example doesn’t quite

excite us like previous Taichi

boards. It’s not bad at all but it

lacks a couple of key features

that we’d expect from Asrock

at this price, and we aren’t fans

of the fiddly M.2 installation. If

it were a bit cheaper then we’d

be more receptive. Still, if

you’re going to stick to Wi-Fi

and don’t care about having

heaps of ultra-fast USB, then

the savings over the higher end

gaming boards makes the X570

Taichi worthy of consideration.

Verdic t

Perhaps previous Taichi’s spoiled us.

At this price we’d like to see just a little

bit more.

; Socket

r tforAMD

nd&3rdGen

sors;3xM.2;8x

SB3.2Gen2,10x

3.1Gen1,4xUSB2.0;

02.11ax2.4Gbpsp Wi-Fi;1x

HDMI;IntelI211ATGigabitg

LAN;RealtekALC12207.1

ChannelHigghDefinition

Audio;AT XFormFactor.

“It’s not bad at all but it lacks a couple of

key features that we’d expect from Asrock

at this price. ”

inner zen.

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i

AsrockX570Tai

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