ASRock X870E Taichi motherboard review: the queen of E-ATX overclocking (2024)

The incredible ASRock X870E Taichi surprises not only with its technical characteristics, but also with its physical dimensions. This ultra-wide beauty will not fit into every case, but it will become a favorite toy for demanding enthusiasts who are used to getting the most out of their PC. We checked the motherboard for heating, power consumption, evaluated RAM performance, overclocked the best modern AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D GPU, and looked for flaws, which turned out to be very few.

Technical specifications of ASRock X870E Taichi

Test bench

• Processor AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D;
• Cooling MSI MAG CORELIQUID I360;
• RAM G.Skill Trident Z5 Neo RGB DDR5-6000 CL28;
• Drive 1 Samsung 990 PRO MZ-V9P1T0BW;
• Drive 2 Kingston NV2 SNV2S/4000G;
• Video card AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX;
• Power supply MSI MPG A1000G;
• Body MSI MPG QUIETUDE 100S;

Package and appearance of ASRock X870E Taichi

The motherboard is packed in a premium box with a matte finish. The dark paint is sprinkled with glitter. Inside is the board itself in an antistatic package, as well as a whole carload of cables and accessories: two SATA cables, a remote Wi-Fi antenna, three external temperature sensors, a splitter for RGB backlighting, a key, a branded button for a mechanical keyboard, an ASRock sticker, a quick start guide, and other paper documentation.

The standard mount for AMD CPU coolers is already on the board, but we didn’t use it because we connected a liquid cooling system that is fastened with screws. The motherboard radiators are completely covered with a protective film, which should be removed after installing ASRock X870E Taichi, as the mirror surface of some radiators can easily be stained with your fingers.

The heroine of the review has huge dimensions (305×267 millimeters), so it will not fit into every case. MSI 100S seems to be a big case, but it was not easy to install this board. It’s so wide that it partially covers the hole through which the 24-pin cable from the power supply must pass. I managed to tame the «Brazilian E-ATX lady with wide hips» and it fit, but I can’t say it was easy.

The board looks luxurious, and when it’s turned on, it looks even better because it has RGB backlighting. The main heat sink above the rear interface panel is especially well-designed. The massive heatsinks on both sides serve a practical purpose, not just an aesthetic one because ASRock X870E Taichi is literally designed for overclockers. Let’s talk about temperatures and heating a little further down.

Interfaces, connectors, accessories

The set of interfaces is quite standard, as for the flagship model: top-of-the-line Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4 modules, classic 5 Gbps LAN, 21 USB of various colors and speeds, including USB4 with a bandwidth of up to 128 Gbps. There are four slots for RAM with support for 64 GB modules (256 GB in total). The maximum frequency of the RAM is 8200 MT/s.

There is one M.2 PCI-E 5.0 slot and three PCI-E 4.0 slots for drives. The first and second connectors have heatsinks that can be removed with bare hands without screwdrivers. The other two are covered by a common heatsink with screws. It’s also interesting that the place for the second SSD was placed along the RAM slots. This is convenient and allows you to change the drive without removing the video card. Both connectors are for PCI-E x16 video cards version 5.0.

In total, ASRock X870E Taichi has eight 4-pin fan connectors (all of them are labeled with what they are recommended for), as well as four backlight connectors. There will definitely be no shortage of options, as the package includes a splitter for three more RGB devices.

In addition, ASRock X870E Taichi has a digital screen for displaying POST codes (almost a mandatory attribute of top-end boards), and after a successful system boot, the current processor temperature is displayed here. There are also keys directly on the board to force shutdown and reboot the PC.

There are no additional 6/8 Pin connectors, although competitors are already starting to offer them. For example, MSI MPG X870E CARBON WIFI has another 8-pin connector on the bottom, and MSI MEG Z890 ACE 8 + 6 pin, and in different places.

The user can monitor the voltage across all lines, fan speed, temperature (including from external sensors), etc. An interesting feature is the automatic loading of profiles into OC Tweaker for individual programs. This is useful when you need to overclock the processor only for a specific task, such as a game. And after closing the application, everything returns to normal automatically.

It is convenient that ASRock X870E Taichi can change the voltage and overclock the processor directly from the operating system. If only the BIOS update were as convenient, it wouldn’t be so expensive. But, unfortunately, the BIOS had to be updated using an external drive, just like in the good old days

The only disadvantage is the slow computer bootup because it was almost impossible to meet the 25-second time limit with ASRock X870E Taichi. At the beginning, the system booted in 50-60 seconds, and after the settings it took 27-30 seconds. These are normal figures for the premium AM5 segment, but there are budget boards like ASRock A620M-HDV/M.2which takes 14-15 seconds from pressing the power button to the desktop.

Synthetics and heating

With 27-phase power supply, I would like to put some AMD Ryzen 9 9950X here and overclock it, but for the test I used AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D. Yes, this is the best gaming processor of our time, but it is far from being able to make such a productive board work to its fullest. That’s why we tried to overclock the CPU as far as the crystal allows without fanaticism with high voltage.

It’s no secret that X3D chips don’t lend themselves well to overclocking (and underclocking as well), so we got some 150-155 watts of peak CPU power consumption. We managed to get a stable system operation at 5500 MHz CPU frequency and 1.3V voltage.

It is also possible to reach 5600 MHz with a voltage of 1.35 V or 1.4 V, but the PC may be blessed with freezing images, although it does not have blue screens. And let’s not forget that overclocking in 2024 is just a hobby (or rather entertainment) for enthusiasts because the additional power consumption is rarely worth the negligible performance gain in real-world conditions.

This way, it was possible to get up to 5-10% additional performance, depending on the selected benchmark. Thanks to the easy overclocking, the 9800X3D broke performance records in browser tests, while keeping the processor temperature low. It’s just nice to be the first in something. Similarly, Ryzen 7 9800X3D managed to outperform all its predecessors in the ITC tests. At the same time, this 8-core is not far behind the older (12-16+ cores) models in multicore tests.

This is all very well, but in this review we are more interested in the temperature of the motherboard. Everything is stable here: an average of 40-43 °C according to the sensors in Aida 64, which is confirmed by the pyrometer. On the radiators, the device shows 30-40 °C, and the hottest spots in the power supply area reach 45 °C, which is very low.

The total power consumption in idle mode (desktop with no load) is 90-100 watts. When watching videos, doing light work, or running benchmarks in Single Core mode, the entire PC consumes 120-130 watts. With 100% CPU utilization, the wattmeter shows 230-240 W, and at 5500 MHz on all cores 260 W. Note that the system has six fans, a pump, three drives, a Radeon RX 7900 XTX graphics card. A Ryzen 7 9800X3D processor, two RAM strips, and a lot of lighting on almost every element. When idle, the power consumption is still too high.

We can confidently say that ASRock X870E Taichi will easily handle the following AMD processors: 9950X, 9700X, 7950X, 7950X3D, 7900X, 7900X3D, and any that will be released in the next few years. The margin of performance of the motherboard is huge because the power supply will easily withstand 300-400+ watts of CPU power consumption. It is on motherboards of this class that records are set for overclocking under liquid nitrogen.

There are no problems with the RAM either. The system was tested with the factory XMP profile, and then the frequency was slightly raised without changing the latency. The memory strips work stably with 6000CL28 and 6200CL28. After the standard 4800CL40, the performance gain is huge.

Up to 85 GB/s in Aida 64 is a good result for AM5, there is no point in chasing higher values. This frequency-to-latency ratio is optimal for AMD (and recommended by the company itself for 9800X3D tests), especially for gaming systems. The Samsung 990 Pro SSD drive operates at its limit (PCI-E 4.0) in any connector.

Experience using ASRock X870E Taichi

The motherboard brought mostly positive emotions, although it made me a little nervous from the very beginning at the stage of its installation because of its giant dimensions. Overall, the system is very stable, the software is lightweight, user-friendly, divided into separate utilities, and the intuitive BIOS has good functionality.

Personally, I liked the ergonomic mounts for the drive radiators, which can be removed with your bare hands without a screwdriver. The video card fixation is also well implemented (no more pulling the clip out with the GPU). If I were a fan of overclocking, I would definitely love this motherboard.

Price and competitors

In Ukraine ASRock X870E Taichi costs about 24,000 hryvnias. It’s a lot, but similar competitors are not cheaper. We picked up several similar models from other manufacturers with the X870E chipset.

Slightly pricier and compact (not E-ATX) Asus ROG CROSSHAIR X870E HERO will cost 30,000 UAH. There are no strong advantages over the heroine of the review, except for five connectors for M.2 drives, three of which are PCI-E 5.0 versions.

MSI MPG X870E CARBON WIFI (reviewed recently) has a 21-phase power supply, ALC4080 audio, not ALC4082, and it is also narrower (305 x 244 mm). The price is 20,000 UAH.

Gigabyte X870E AORUS PRO ICE Although it has a few minor compromises, it looks like a bargain for 18,500 UAH. There are four M.2 connectors, but three of them have version 5.0, which is rare.