ASRock X470 Taichi Ultimate Motherboard Review

A Closer Look

You only need to glance at this motherboard to know it’s one of the best-looking motherboards on the market today. With the black PCB and grey printed graphics, it really stands out. However, that freaking huge VRM cooling solution, as well as the unique clockwork design, certainly take it to the next level.

AM4

The VRM heatsink is massive, and it needs to be with the comprehensive power delivery system lurking under it. With the new Ryzen CPUs pushing up to 4.35 GHz and beyond, we have no doubt that the Taichi will be able to meet the demands of the new chips.

Of course, it’s also aesthetically pleasing, and it integrates well into the rear I/O shroud design.

Lurking just at the back, you’ll find an 8+4 pin configuration, giving you all the extra power and voltage stability required for stable overclocking.

On the side of the motherboard, you’ll find four DIMM slots, which obviously support high-speed DDR4 memory. There’s a USB 3.0 and a 3.1 front panel header too.

If that’s not enough, there’s another USB 3.0 header, as well as a few USB 2.0 headers. However, unlike most other X470 motherboards which only have 6 SATA ports, you’ll find a bank of 8 here!

Onboard Power Controls

As I said before, another perk of the Ultimate is the onboard power controls. For those running on a test bench or doing a lot of overclocking (like me), these are really handy. Of course, the BIOS debug isn’t going to go to waste either.

I rarely get excited by a chipset heatsink, but damn, just look at that thing. If anything, it’s a huge boost to the aesthetics, and I bet that design alone helps sell a fair few of these motherboards.

Armoured PCIe

There are three full-size PCIe slots, albeit the bottom two are 8x not 16x. However, two come with armour to ensure they can handle the weight of modern GPUs with ease. There’s a couple of 1x slots too, so additional storage devices and more should fit with ease. Here, you can also see a separate trace for the audio hardware, with five gold capacitors powering the built-in amplifier and audio hardware.

If 8x SATA ports don’t do it for you, you’ll find an M.2 with heatsink above the first PCIe slot, and a second without a heatsink below the second full-size PCIe slot. With NVMe support, you’ll easily be able to mount the fastest storage drives on the market.

Rear I/O

Finally, the rear I/O is well equipped too. 802.11 AC WiFi comes built in, and there’s both a 1 Gbps LAN and the 10 Gbps LAN for class-leading networking performance. In addition to that, you’ll find 6 USB 3.0 ports, 1 3.1 port, and a Type-C. No slow USB 2.0 ports to be found here!