ASRock Z490 Taichi review - Introduction

ASRock Z490 Taichi review
A cosmological concept for the flux of yin and yang (at 449 Euro/USD).

In this review, we look at the ASRock Z490 Taichi. The new series is aimed to become the more niche segment solution priced in a 439 USD / 449 Euro range, it comes with AX WIFI, and has that intel 2.5 Gbps ethernet jack. That and some pretty terrific design choices from an aesthetic point of view.

Ready for 10h Gen processors this board is about performance and aesthetics, the CPU socket has dual 8-pin ATX power ASRock. The pin connectors indicate a strong VRM, and this motherboard as such has 12+2 phases backed by 50A power stages. ASRock applies a dark-colored PCB and design elements with, as typical for this series, gears. It has hidden/cooled M2 slots, three of them. The motherboard has been fitted with the usual suspects and then some, including a 2.5 Gigabit ethernet and then WIFI6 in the form of AX. When it comes to the audio you will run into a Realtek ALC1220 Codec. 

With the new Comet Lake-S you can expect a handful of K model processors predominantly become popular in demand for the PC gamer, as each and every one of the processors will offer proper gaming performance if your graphics card is fast enough. Intel is able to boost the Turbo frequencies towards that 5.3 GHz domain for the flagship processor, the Core i9 10900K. Intel is releasing these series processors initially with a spread of CPU core choices:

• Core i5-10500K (4 Core / 8 Threads)
• Core i5-10600K (6 Core / 12 Threads)
• Core i7-10700K (8 Core / 16 Threads)
• Core i9-10900K (10 Core / 20 Threads)