ASRock X470 Taichi and X470 Fatal1ty Motherboards Pictured

Upcoming AMD Motherboards from ASRock

Now that Intel has released their latest batch of motherboards, it is AMD‘s turn. These are of course, the latest batch of AMD AM4 motherboards featuring the latest X470 chipset. Although AMD confirms that the AM4 socket is backwards and forwards compatible with current and future Ryzen CPUs up until 2020, the new chipset provides some exclusive functionality. That includes XFR2 and Precision Boost 2 support.

X470 Fatal1ty Motherboard in Mini-ITX?

VideoCardz.com is the first once again to give everyone a glimpse of what upcoming boards look like. The first two include a Taichi and a Fatal1ty board from ASRock.  The Fatal1ty brand is ASRock’s gaming platform and the first board photos to surface is actually a mini-ITX: The ASRock X470 Fatal1ty Gaming ITX/AC. As the name suggests, the AC is for the built-in Wireless 802.11ac feature. Unlike other Fatal1ty boards however, this one does not come with a black and red color scheme. Only the box carries that tradition. Instead, it uses neutral gray coloured heatsinks on a black PCB. That is most likely so that the RGB LED does not clash with the board’s color scheme.

It has all the features one would expect from an X470 Mini-ITX board including an M.2 slot at the back. This is for PCIe NVMe M.2 SSDs up to 2280 form factors. There are also four SATA ports  on-board for additional storage.

The RGB LED header is at the top, supporting 4-pin analog as well as 3-pin addressable digital RGB. It also has a DisplayPort and HDMI out for use with a Raven Ridge APU.

What About Standard ATX Motherboards?

It appears that ASRock is also preparing an X470 Taichi motherboard which come in standard ATX size. In fact, ASRock is preparing two variants of this board, one of which is called the Taichi Ultimate, while the other is just called X470 Taichi. What is the difference? The Ultimate version comes with AQUANTIA 10Gb ports and has on-board buttons. The color-scheme also appears to be darker on the non-ultimate board, just so users can visually set them apart.

Otherwise, they seem to have identical layouts, with three PCIe x16 slots, and two PCIe x1 slots. They also have two M.2 slots available, with the top-most slot having a heatsink available. Both also have 802.11ac Wi-Fi and RGB LED headers.