ASRock X470 Taichi review

Mainboards 327 Page 20 of 20 Published by

teaser

Conclusion

Final Words 

When the new X470 chipset based motherboards were releases a few weeks ago, one of there first questions in the forums was, will you review ASRock Taichi? And yes, we've finally have been able to do so. The initial shipment s towards ASRock EU has been very limited, the same for stock availability in stores. That now is changing though and yeah this is the end result. A very nice looking motherboard that offers a few extras in the form of eight SATA3 ports, AC WIFI, Metal-reinforced PCIe shielding and dual M.2. ports and a superb VRM design, however as I have been stating for a long time now, whether you have 8 or sixteen power phases, it will not make much of a difference in terms of tweaking results, as all motherboards perform roughly the same when we're talking about that topic. You will have noticed that the baseline perf overall was a tiny notch slower than the competition, we tested with the latest BIOS available, but do expect that correct that small offset all by itself with a future firmware update. 

The motherboard

The ASRock X470 Taichi is sitting in the 225 EURO/USD range, that makes it a bit more expensive compared to the sub 150 USD X470 boards. The extras are to be found in AC WIFI, extra SATA ports and more features overall in design and looks. The perf is roughly the same on all boards, so do not worry about that too much. We did not run into anything that worried us, the board performed really stable. Memory worked straight out of the box, we tried both the 3200 and 3400 MHz kits we have from G.Skill. Tweaking wise, the motherboards will not be any limitation, albeit getting that high end-result, is a bit more complicated to achieve with this board. 

Gaming performance

Previous Ryzen reviews have taught me that it is extremely hard to convince a big part of the guru3d community and reader base that Ryzen is plenty fast for gaming. The new Zen+ processors and the respective platform overall bring a bit more oomph compared to last years Ryzen. The fact remains, that if you take a Core i7 8700K it will still beat Ryzen in CPU bound gaming situations (low resolutions or extremely high refresh rate where a game is not GPU bound). The difference and gap towards Intel are getting smaller though. Get yourself a nice G.Skill FlareX memory kit at 3200 MHz and you've covered your gaming bases. Keep in mind that a CPU bottleneck always has been far less important compared to a GPU bottleneck, which why I'll keep saying it, that differential is trivial at best. Honestly, with the money you save on this processor compared directly to the cheapest eight-core Intel processor you can find, you probably should invest in a faster graphics cards. 


Img_0747

Ryzen

Cores

Threads

Base/Boost

 Cache

TDP

COOLER

SEP (USD)

Ryzen 7 2700X

8

16

4.3/3.7

20MB

105W

Wraith Prism (LED)

$329

Ryzen 7 2700

8

16

4.1/3.2

20MB

65W

Wraith Spire (LED)

$299

Ryzen 5 2600X

6

12

4.2/3.6

19MB

95W

Wraith Spire

$229

Ryzen 5 2600

6

12

3.9/3.4

19MB

65W

Wraith Stealth

$199


DDR4 Memory

The latest firmware for both the older 300 chipsets series and the new 400 Chipset series including the X470 have matured and is an accumulation of DDR4 memory support that evolved when the original Ryzen series was released. Memory compatibility should not and likely will not be an issue as long as you stick to recently released DIMMs. I'll keep repeating this, but there are some really good Ryzen optimized kits out there. The G.Skill Flare X series at 3200 MHz CL14 is hitting a nice sweet-spot and is 100% stable + optimized for your Ryzen infrastructure. We also tested the new Ryzen Sniper X optimized kit from G.Skill, it runs 3400 MHz straight out of the box and will bring your memory bandwidth in the 50K ranges. However, take my advice:  Flare X at 3200 MHz CL14. Install it, activate the profile in the BIOS, restart ...  and don't ever look back. 

Energy efficiency

With this processor now fabbed at 12nm TDP now has risen towards 105 Watts, that is a bit steep. Realistically, does anyone really care? I doubt it. A full PC at idle will sit in the 55 Watt range with a dedicated graphics card installed (GeForce GTX 1080 / 16 GB memory / SSD and the motherboard). When we stressed the processors with a Prime 1024M run we reached roughly 180 Watts. A threaded CB15 run, however, reveals just over 200 Watts of power consumption (for the entire PC). That certainly is on the high side. When we game we hover at 270~280 Watts, but obviously that factor is dependant on the type of game and graphics card you use of course. So yeah, it's all a notch higher with the 2700X for sure, it's up to you whether or not this is a relevant thing for your purchasing choices. Remember, this is a fully locked & loaded eight-core and 16-threads processor. 

Guru3d-value




Conclusion

The Taichi series have become the norm for ASRock classy motherboards. It's a terrific design, looks great and offers plenty of features, we love the inclusion of AC Wifi as well of course. The more I test and write about X470 though, the more the cheaper sub 150 USD/EURO board appeal to me. Really, it's pretty much all the same in baseline and tweaking performance as the defining component for your tweaking, is the processor and memory, and you can spot X470 boards at 139 USD/EURO already. So value wise this might not be the best call to make, and that is the brutal truth.  It's a nice looking motherboard that comes with all the features X470 can offer + a little extra on USB 3.1, a heatsink cooled M2 slot and even a 2nd M.2. slot (albeit half speed). It supports all standard Ryzen compatible memory. The VRM design is just lovely, many phases that do not run hot. RGB wise it's subtle as well and if you go down the multi-GPU route, then the cards will configure itself in x8 PCIe Gen 3.0 modus for two x16 slots. That's still plenty of bandwidth, but we would have liked to have seen more PCIe Gen 3.0 lanes on that Ryzen processor series, sure. Tweaking wise the proc can a bit hotter than on other mobos we have tested at the same 1.425 Volts. We do expect a new BIOS update for this board soon enough though, and we have no doubt it'll get at the very same levels. Hey, this was with the stock air cooler, liquid cooling is highly recommended (if you are gonna tweak). Summing it up, this is a lovely designed motherboard both from a hardware and aesthetic point of view. It's fitted with all the whistles and bells you need, and definitely comes recommended. 

- Hilbert out

“A mind needs books as a sword needs a whetstone if it is to keep its edge.”

Share this content
Twitter Facebook Reddit WhatsApp Email Print