VERDICT
Cheaper than the competition but with
similar or better features. A great board for
the money.ROCK
+ Excellent features
for the money
+ Huge storage potential
+ Good coolingSCISSORS- Exposed fans
- Average fan control
- Could do with
more fan headers
PERFORMANCE
33 / 35FEATURES
26 / 35
VALUE
28 / 30OVERALLSCORE
87 %
remove dust, while most of the fans on
competitors’ boards are equipped with covers.
While there’s no fancy angled 24-pin ATX
connector or dual BIOS switches, the TRX40
Taichi has plenty of other features, including
power, reset and clear-CMOS buttons, an LED
POST code display and a USB BIOS Flashback
feature. There are also eight SATA 6Gbps
ports, making the TRX40 Taichi one of the best
boards on test for creating massive storage
arrays. Comparatively, the MSI Creator TRX40
only has six of them.
There’s one area where the ASRock is a
little lacking, though, which is the number
of fan headers. Its count of five headers is
the bare minimum we’d consider for any
ATX motherboard, but we expect more in
this league, given the likelihood of potential
owners using large radiators with multiple fans.
ASRock’s fan control features, in both the EFI
and Windows software, is fairly basic too, with
Gigabyte’s boards offering far more control, as
well as more fan headers.
The rear I/O panel is reasonably well
equipped, however, with two type-A USB 3.1
ports, a Type-C port and four USB 3 ports.
You also get 801.11ax Wi-Fi and one of the
Ethernet ports supports 2.5 Gigabit speeds
as well. Flipping the board over reveals yet
another feature too, with a large backplate
using thermal pads to cool the underside of the
VRMs, and it has an RGB LED strip, with four
more RGB headers situated on the PCB.Performance
The benchmark results were all very close
this month, but the TRX40 Taichi matched the
4.35GHz overclock we achieved with the MSI
and Asus boards, using a vcore of 1.325V with
no other tweaking required. That’s more than
can be said for the two Gigabyte boards on
test this month.
The ASRock also offered slightly faster
M.2 speeds than the Gigabyte TRX40
Aorus Master, with 5,008MB/sec read and
4,269MB/sec write speeds. The Gigabyteboard offers marginally better audio
performance, but the two were closely
matched overall, with system scores of
366,338 and 358,471 respectively. They also
recorded near identical power consumption
figures, although the ASRock board was
slightly more power-frugal overall.Conclusion
There are no poor boards this month,
and each one has its own strengths and
weaknesses. However, the ASRock TRX40
Taichi proved itself to be a match for the
best on offer from the competition, but for
a significantly lower price. In fact, in many
areas, it was better than its competitors, while
saving you four tenners. We’d like to see more
fan headers and more advanced fan control,
and you’ll want to make sure your case has
good dust protection, but the TRX40 Taichi is
otherwise a fantastic board for the cash.