ASRock Z370 Taichi

[cadaveca]

With yet another platform upon us, we have yet another ASRock Taichi motherboard to play with. The ASRock Z370 Taichi is just like all the other Taichi boards before it, ready to make the most of what Intel's Z370 platform has to offer, and with three 32 Gb/s M.2 slots, you can throw in all your HDDs and SSDs, too.

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[drade]

Nice motherboard. I almost bought this board, however, I bought the MSI gaming M5. Sadly the M5 only has five USB ports though. I would have expected this board to get a 10/10 rating like its AM4 brother. I am sure as time progresses the bio enhancements will make this a great contender to other z370 motherboards! Thanks for the review .

 

[Assimilator]

You're damn right that 6 rear USB ports are too few. Asrock should've moved the pair under the PS/2 port to under the second NIC port, and replaced them with a pair of USB 2.0 for keyboard and mouse. Don't know why they're being so stingy, especially at this price point... it's not like Z370 suddenly no longer supports the older standard.

Then they go and put three USB 2.0 headers on the board. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate the vast options regarding front panel connectivity this board brings, but how many people are going to have 1x USB 3.1 Gen2, 4x USB 3.1 Gen1, and 6x USB 2.0 ports on the front of their case?

I'll give Asrock the benefit of the doubt here and assume they're trying to move away from USB 2.0 entirely, which would be great, but they could've at least added a switch of some kind to e.g. bifurcate the front 3.1 Gen2 port into an additional pair of 3.1 Gen1 ports for the rear if the front header isn't in use.

Review errata: first page has "Storage: 8x SATA 6 Gb/s port (Intel X299)", I think you meant something like "8x SATA 6 Gb/s port (6 from Intel Z370, 2 from Asmedia ASM1061)". The "Storage Interfaces" page does have the correct info.

 

[xkm1948]

Quick question, does this board default with the multi core enhancement or something like that enabled? Which disable per core turbo and force all core to max turbo?

 

[Thhrash]

I was looking at getting this board and during my research found that the a-tuning support software does support fan control outside the bios according to the manual. We can check off one of the negatives for this board. It also has limited monitoring and OC abilities via this utility. With the slew of motherboards hitting the market this was an easy miss.

 

[droopyRO]

43ºC VRM temperature under full load and overclocked ? my Gigabyte Z370 HD3P goes to 78-80ºC under those circumstances, 8600k@1.21V with high LLC under Prime95 blend.

 

[drade]

I've been seeing many gigabyte boards doing that ... sadly

 

[Vayra86]

I am missing a few things on this board in the review.

One (important) one being the BCLK adjustment chip under the heatsink. Its quite unique to find that and it allows BCLK OCs on non-K CPUs, regardless of how Intel locks that down.

Would be nice to see if you can push the 8700k further with that feature too.

 

[Alexandrus]

Full of errors this article is
intel i291v, chipset put as X299, and so on.
Proof reading before publishing is a must.

 

[ShogoXT]

I have x370 taichi myself for Ryzen. It has a cheap 1x1 WiFi card. Does it still have that for this?

Also if I wanted to change it, is there a safe way to remove the io shroud?

 

[Thhrash]

It appears to have the cheaper 1x1 wifi, but from what i understand it is just plugged into and screwed down on an additional m.2 slot (yes, actually 4 m.2 slots on the board). That means you could replace it with something better if you can find a m.2 type.

 

[cadaveca]

Quick question, does this board default with the multi core enhancement or something like that enabled? Which disable per core turbo and force all core to max turbo?

Not that I saw; 4.3 GHz on all cores, 4.7 GHz on one.

I was looking at getting this board and during my research found that the a-tuning support software does support fan control outside the bios according to the manual. We can check off one of the negatives for this board. It also has limited monitoring and OC abilities via this utility. With the slew of motherboards hitting the market this was an easy miss.

But it did not install by default or was it offered, so you need to go to the drivers page for the board to get the software. Such a critical feature should be much easier to get.

43ºC VRM temperature under full load and overclocked ? my Gigabyte Z370 HD3P goes to 78-80ºC under those circumstances, 8600k@1.21V with high LLC under Prime95 blend.
View attachment 93302

ASRock has one of the best digital VRM designs currently when it comes to temperatures. Notice you do not see Gigabyte boards reviewed here often... ever wondered why? Perhaps my testing exposes faults?

I am missing a few things on this board in the review.

One (important) one being the BCLK adjustment chip under the heatsink. Its quite unique to find that and it allows BCLK OCs on non-K CPUs, regardless of how Intel locks that down.

Would be nice to see if you can push the 8700k further with that feature too.

I do not spend much time focus on OC feature testing for boards that aren't specified as OC-centric. the less than 100 MHz OC difference shouldn't matter to a user that purchases a board such as this, unless for a non-K SKU, and non-K SKUs shouldn't be OC'ed anyway, IMHO.

Full of errors this article is
intel i291v, chipset put as X299, and so on.
Proof reading before publishing is a must.

We do have an editor on staff for this. My apologies.

I have x370 taichi myself for Ryzen. It has a cheap 1x1 WiFi card. Does it still have that for this?

Also if I wanted to change it, is there a safe way to remove the io shroud?

IO shroud is very easy to remove; just a few screws. I had to take it off to get some of the pics in this review, even!

 

[Abula]

Thanks for the review, really enjoyed the write up, that said i do have a differ opinion with it,

• Better monitoring/fan-control software needed.

I'm tired of software based fan control, including bloatware and that does things that i don't need, like needing Asus AI Suite just to get FanXpert. And Asus bios fan control is buggy as hell and restrictive.

Personally i like a lot AsRock approach, pure bios fan control will work with any OS, while being more stable and minimalist, less chance of software creating an issue and consuming resources. AsRock gives full control to their users, no restrictions into how low you can go.... that cant be said about Asus that fears their customers abilities to admin their fans.

The only thing missing on AsRock fan setup is make all headers fully autodetect so no matter what fan you plug you can control it the way it was meant by the fan designer.

 

[Thhrash]

I agree that software controlled fans are inferior to bios controlled. This board has both. The advantage of software controlled is that you can tune it easier and find the right values and then set it properly in bios and leave the bloatware off. I also hate the AI suite and the drivers for my Corsair 100 AIO H110i and that is one of the reasons I am going air cooling this time around. Might not get the fantastic overclock other might have, but hoping the beast of the NH-D15 will be get me a ways.

Agreed, the drivers should be easier to find and the program that runs that part of things, their 'store' is a pain. I do like the update drivers section that will go out to the web and find the most recent drivers.

This board supposedly has the same LLC issue as some of the ASUS boards, but there is a beta bios to resolve the problem.

Does it ask to turn on MCE (or whatever term Asrock uses) when you enable XMP memory like the ASUS boards?

 

[droopyRO]

ASRock has one of the best digital VRM designs currently when it comes to temperatures. Notice you do not see Gigabyte boards reviewed here often... ever wondered why? Perhaps my testing exposes faults?

It depends on the model too i guess.
A bit of offtopic, do you think that switching to a cooler that is parallel to the motherboard could decrease VRM temperatures ?

 

[cadaveca]

I agree that software controlled fans are inferior to bios controlled. This board has both. The advantage of software controlled is that you can tune it easier and find the right values and then set it properly in bios and leave the bloatware off. I also hate the AI suite and the drivers for my Corsair 100 AIO H110i and that is one of the reasons I am going air cooling this time around. Might not get the fantastic overclock other might have, but hoping the beast of the NH-D15 will be get me a ways.

Agreed, the drivers should be easier to find and the program that runs that part of things, their 'store' is a pain. I do like the update drivers section that will go out to the web and find the most recent drivers.

This board supposedly has the same LLC issue as some of the ASUS boards, but there is a beta bios to resolve the problem.

Does it ask to turn on MCE (or whatever term Asrock uses) when you enable XMP memory like the ASUS boards?

LLC is fixed, yes.

asking about Multi-Enhancement when enabling XMP? nope.

BIOS issues are very likely to be addressed anyway.

It depends on the model too i guess.
A bit of offtopic, do you think that switching to a cooler that is parallel to the motherboard could decrease VRM temperatures ?

VRM coolers need airflow. The issue with ones that run 80c+ is that this can lead to heat transferring through PCB to CPU socket, so getting as much airflow in the area as possible would benefit you greatly, I think. Another option is to have a fan blowing on the rear of the motherboard.

 

[Vayra86]

A question @cadaveca what are 'good' RAM kits with this board?

 

[Thhrash]

Hope your reply on the memory is G.Skill Ripjaws V 3200 with a 14-14-14-34 latency 14 as that is what I ended up with. Probably overkill, but wanted to try my hand at overclocking memory past the 3200 default XMP profile up to 3600 cas 16

 

[cadaveca]

A question @cadaveca what are 'good' RAM kits with this board?

Ones on the QVL, for now. BIOS needs some tuning for memory is all, but that will be addressed shortly. ASRock's pretty good at that sort of stuff, at least.

Hope your reply on the memory is G.Skill Ripjaws V 3200 with a 14-14-14-34 latency 14 as that is what I ended up with. Probably overkill, but wanted to try my hand at overclocking memory past the 3200 default XMP profile up to 3600 cas 16

CoffeLake is another CPU that seems to be affected by ram speed when OC'ing, so you may just want to stick with that 3200 C14 rather than trying to push 3600 C16. You might need to increase DIMM voltage to 1.4V, but 3600 should be totally doable if you just want to play. You can also take a look at our memory analysis for this platform, and you'll find 3200 C14 is one of the overall better-performing options so far.

You can find that here:

https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews...e_Lake_Memory_Performance_Benchmark_Analysis/

 

[Vayra86]

Been looking at that QVL, pretty meagre list Almost hate to admit but I want christmas lights on em None supported Guess I found another good argument to sit this out for a few more weeks... 12 day wait time on the 8600k/8700k too.

 

[Flambta]

If I put an Intel Optane 900p PCIe x4 form on the last PCIe x16 (@ x4), will the first PCIe x16 work at just x8?

- 3 x PCI Express 3.0 x16 Slots (PCIE2/PCIE4/PCIE5: single at x16 (PCIE2); dual at x8 (PCIE2) / x8 (PCIE4); triple at x8 (PCIE2) / x4 (PCIE4) / x4 (PCIE5))*
- 2 x PCI Express 3.0 x1 Slots (Flexible PCIe)
- Supports AMD Quad CrossFireX™, 3-Way CrossFireX™ and CrossFireX™
- Supports NVIDIA® Quad SLI™ and SLI™
- 1 x Vertical M.2 Socket (Key E) with the bundled WiFi-802.11ac module (on the rear I/O)
- 15μ Gold Contact in VGA PCIe Slot (PCIE2)

*Supports NVMe SSD as boot disks

 

[cadaveca]

If I put an Intel Optane 900p PCIe x4 form on the last PCIe x16 (@ x4), will the first PCIe x16 work at just x8?

Yep, you got it right. There should be minimal effect on the VGA's performance @ x8 though, so there is little need to be concerned about that specifically unless using two VGAs for SLI plus the 900P, as SLI will not be available.

You may want to investigate the M.2 drives if that configuration is an issue.

 

[Flambta]

Yep, you got it right. There should be minimal effect on the VGA's performance @ x8 though, so there is little need to be concerned about that specifically unless using two VGAs for SLI plus the 900P, as SLI will not be available.

You may want to investigate the M.2 drives if that configuration is an issue.

I'm kind of sad to know that.

However, if the losses of performance is negligible at x8, at least would the Optane 900p have a bit of performance increase due to take direct link to the CPU instead of PCH?

You may want to investigate the M.2 drives if that configuration is an issue.

I think I did not get you well. If you are meaning to search whether Optane 900p have an M.2 connection, yes, it does, but just 280GB model. The 480GB model does not.

 

[cadaveca]

Ah, looks like you've done your research, and are set on a configuration, so it seems you are simply looking for the right motherboard? That's great!

Yes, at times being connected directly to the CPU can offer a bit more performance because the overall latency to the drive is less. It really depends on your usage model. You may want to check the board's manual online or drop a question directly to ASRock support to ensure that this board supports booting from a drive in the PCIe slot as well. (it should, but you know, sometimes weird stuff happens)

 

[Shu]

Hi,

In regard to my Asrock Z370 Tai Chi Motherboard, I have 2 identical m.2 drives, the only port that will recongnise them is m.2_3, neither of the other 2 will show them in the bios or windows drive manager

I have tried both drives in all ports and both only work in m.2_3

I have unplugged all SATA devices so there is no conflict issues.

I have 2 x WD SN770 2TB M.2 Drives

Bios is 4.20 and has been reset and restored to defaults, can unyone help please, its looking like I will have to send one of the drives back as the board maybe faukty, tho its seems strange 2 ports would fail.

Any ideas would be greatly appreciated

Cheers

Shu