INTRODUCTION

   One complaint i used to have about AMD was the fact that motherboards released by their partners usually couldn't compete with those released by Intel partners, not just in terms of features and performance (for example RAM bandwidth was always an issue) but also build quality. This was somewhat resolved when the first motherboards based on the X570 chipset made their debut back in late 2019 but it wasn't until less than two months ago with the debut of the latest X670E based motherboards that we finally got something that could take on the top-end Z690/Z790 Intel boards. The X670E Taichi Motherboard by ASRock is one such model and after testing it for almost two months with every BIOS released to date (and with the entire Ryzen Series 7000 line) the time has come for my review.

   ASRock Inc. is established in 2002, specialized in the field of motherboards. ASRock strives to build up its own brand. With the 3C design concept, “Creativity, Consideration, Cost-effectiveness”, the company explores the limit of motherboards manufacturing while paying attention on the eco issue at the same time, developing products with the consideration of eco-friendly concept. ASRock has been growing fast and become world third largest motherboard brand with headquarter in Taipei, Taiwan and branches in Europe and the USA. The young and vibrant company targets from mainstream to enthusiast MB segments for different kinds of users, owning reputation around the world market with its reliability and proficiency.

   The X670E Taichi motherboard by ASRock is available in black color (the Taichi Carrara is in white but not 100% identical) and is clearly aimed towards enthusiasts and overclockers so aside the 26-phase digital VRM (24xVcore, 1xVCCGT, 1xVCC Aux Phase) cooled by a large heatsink paired with a single fan (probably 40mm one) and two PCIe Gen 5.0 slots (two x16 EMI shielded and reinforced ones) it also sports a single PCIe Gen 5.0 (x4) M.2 slot (also features 3 PCIe Gen 4x4 ones) with its own active cooler. The X670E Taichi is also equipped with a 8 layer ultra-low-loss PCB for superior reliability, four reinforced DIMM slots (dual channel configuration - EXPO/XMP compatible – 128GB total supported with speeds up to 6600MHz), KILLER E3100G 2.5GbE LAN port, AX1675 Dual-Band (2x2) WiFi 6E/BT 5.2, ES9218 SABRE DAC with WIMA audio caps, Realtek ALC4082 High Definition Audio onboard audio card, ARGB compatibility (onboard ARGB LED with 14 effects and 4 headers (1xRGB/3xARGB), eight SATA 6Gb/s ports (support RAID 0/1/10), partial rear backplate and a debug LED complete with power on/off and reset buttons. As for the rear I/O here we find a clear CMOS (BIOS) button, BIOS flashback button, two WiFi antenna ports, HDMI v2.1 port (up to 4k 120Hz), KILLER 2.5G LAN port, 5 USB 3.2 Gen 2 ports, 3 USB 3.2 Gen 1 ports, 2 USB 4 type-C ports and the optical out and analog audio ports. So, let's see what ASRock brings to the table with their latest X670E Taichi.