ASRock B550 Taichi

[Black Haru]

ASRock's award winning Taichi is back, this time hosting AMD's B550 chipset. With an identical price tag to last year's X570 Taichi, the ASRock B550 Taichi has a lot to live up to. Can a B550 compete against an X570 board? Maybe even surpass it?

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[R0H1T]

For $299.99 you're much better off buying an x570 tomahawk, great board let down by questionable pricing!

Speaking of which ~ any chance TPU will test that board

 

[Dave65]

For $299.99 you're much better off buying an x570 tomahawk, great board let down by questionable pricing!

Speaking of which ~ any chance TPU will test that board

For $299 might as well get x570. That price is crazy

 

[bug]

I really hate this two M.2 slots trend. Imagine you have your OS and data drive in there and you want to upgrade your data drive.

It's the one aspect that really sucks about M.2: it will never offer as many connections as SATA, because there isn't space on the motherboard

 

[EarthDog]

I really hate this two M.2 slots trend. Imagine you have your OS and data drive in there and you want to upgrade your data drive.

Said 1% of people here and 0.000001% of the rest of PC users.

 

[shilka]

I really hate this two M.2 slots trend. Imagine you have your OS and data drive in there and you want to upgrade your data drive.

It's the one aspect that really sucks about M.2: it will never offer as many connections as SATA, because there isn't space on the motherboard

Even SATA is being removed left right and center Asrock is pretty much the only brand left with board that has 8 SATA ports MSI, Gigabyte and even Asus dont have a single B550 board with 8 that i know of

I bought the X570 Taichi because it was one of the few X570 boards with 8 ports and thats one of the worst mistakes i have made since the X570 Taichi has been nothing but problems
I am looking to do a re-build of my system and i think i am going to just give up trying to find a motherboard with 8 ports and just buy a damm PCI-E based mini SAS HD HBA card instead

 

[Xzibit]

If only they were options. MSI Unify which is same price has 3x m.2 slots.

 

[EarthDog]

Even SATA is being removed left right and center Asrock is pretty much the only brand left with board that has 8 SATA ports

There's a few but mostly on high end boards or the enthusiast chipset. B550/x570 only support 6 natively so to add more means a controller and additional costs. Makes sense on the budget chipset anyway. I dont think there are many who can use 2 m.2 storage devices and six sata drives in the first place. Get a 10GbE NAS!

 

[biffzinker]

Would stacked M.2 slots alleviate the space constraints on motherboards allowing more than 2/3 slots? Instead of slots spread around the board there all in a stack?

 

[EarthDog]

Would stacked M.2 slots alleviate the space constraints on motherboards allowing more than 2/3 slots? Instead of slots spread around the board there all in a stack?

A MiniITX board does that... I'd only be worried about heat if you're pounding on a couple of PCIe 4.0 NVMe based drives.

 

[biffzinker]

A MiniITX board does that... I'd only be worried about heat if you're pounding on a couple of PCIe 4.0 NVMe based drives.

I was thinking slot for NVMe drive then enough spacing for the heatsink/ airflow then another slot on the connector for another drive on top.

It could mean four drives in the space of the current M.2 slot/connectors.

 

[EarthDog]

I was thinking slot for NVMe drive then enough spacing for the heatsink/ airflow then another slot on the connector for another drive on top.

It could mean four drives in the space of the current M.2 slot/connectors.

I know exactly what you meant... I'm saying that exists, more or less (I get there are some differences), on a MiniITX board already.

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[bug]

If only they were options. MSI Unify which is same price has 3x m.2 slots.

I didn't say there were no boards, I said it was a trend: you want a 3rd M.2, you pay through the nose. Whereas I'd rather see 3xM.2 become the norm.

Said 1% of people here and 0.000001% of the rest of PC users.

What do you mean? Nobody uses 2 M.2 drives?

 

[AnarchoPrimitiv]

In the "Storage Interfaces" section of the review, in the specs table it lists the m.2 slots as "2x PCIe 3.0x4", then there's actually 1x 4.0x4 and 1x 3.0x4, just a heads up if TPU wants to make the edit

 

[50eurouser]

Dream on Asrock ... 290€ for the clunky bios and the absurdly low MEM OC. All that budget for RGB/Looks and x14 50A Vcore powerstages, truly dreadful in comparison to the competition.

 

[Rob94hawk]

So the X570 is considered 'midrange' and the B550 is considered 'high end?'

So much for being linear and becoming numerically ridiculous.

But hey that's just me.

 

[EarthDog]

What do you mean? Nobody uses 2 M.2 drives?

Don't think I said that. Did I?

So the X570 is considered 'midrange' and the B550 is considered 'high end?'

So much for being linear and becoming numerically ridiculous.

But hey that's just me.

X570 is enthusiast(high end), b550 is mainstream (midrange)

 

[Rob94hawk]

Don't think I said that. Did I?


X570 is enthusiast(high end), b550 is mainstream (midrange)

The quote in the conclusion made me think otherwise but I get what it's saying now.

So the final question is whether you should buy a high-end B550 motherboard or a midrange X570 motherboard.

 

[bug]

Don't think I said that. Did I?

Not sure what you said then.

X570 is enthusiast(high end), b550 is mainstream (midrange)

Only on paper, sadly. The only difference between the two is the absence of PCIe4 on the B550. Pricing is also mostly the same.

 

[EarthDog]

Not sure what you said then.

It's all there.

Only on paper, sadly. The only difference between the two is the absence of PCIe4 on the B550. Pricing is also mostly the same.

b550 has pcie 4.0.

I wouldn't consider pricing 'mostly' the same either. B550 starts off cheaper and peaks a lot lower ($80-$300 - this Taichi is the most expensive) than x570 ($95-$700). The meat of the boards for B550 is around $150-$225 while X570 is mostly around $225-$300. X570 has (a few) more features (more PCIe lanes, higher end bits 5-10GbE on some), and generally more robust power bits at the same tier. I'm not saying it's worth it, but simply clarifying some information.

 

[bug]

It's all there.

If by "there" you mean in your head, the we agree

 

[EarthDog]

If by "there" you mean in your head, the we agree

Except for those (3) who thanked the post who got it.

The point is that very few people run TWO M.2 drives or even want/need 3. Even less are looking to upgrade them at this time. That said I see your point. You have to swap the drive out and can't easily transfer data if those were the only two drives in your system. I'd assume people have a backup drive on SATA or a NAS and can transfer the data... but, seriously.. I get you. Hopefully you understand what I was poking at now.

Got your B550/X570 things straight? (see edit above)

EDIT: I digress, this is a thread about the Taichi.

 

[bug]

Except for those who thanked the post who got it.

The point, since you keep missing it... is that very few people run TWO M.2 drives or even want/need 3. Even less are looking to upgrade them at this time. That said I see your point. You have to swap the drive out and can't easily transfer data if those were the only two drives in your system. I'd assume people have a backup drive on SATA or a NAS and can transfer the data... but, seriously.. I get you. Hopefully you understand what I was poking at now.

Got your B550/X570 things straight? (see edit above)

EDIT: I digress, this is a thread about the Taichi.

Thanks, wasn't that hard, was it?

That said, I'm sure there are many people using two M.2 drives already and with SATA SSDs on their way out, those numbers will only grow.

 

[duynguyenle]

I don't really understand the thing bug was going on about. If both your M.2 slots are populated, there's already a cheap and easy way to add a third, by getting a passive port translator (M.2 to PCIe adapter). It's unlikely that you have all the PCIe slots on your board fully populated, so usually there should always be at least 2-3 slots available.

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They're dirt cheap... This should allow you to relatively cheaply add more M.2 slots to your system without much hassle.

As for WHY board manufacturers don't stuff multiples M.2 and SATA ports to the grills on these boards, the simple answer is that B550 don't allow for that many I/O options compared to X570 (refer to the B550 block diagram here: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EXaq9HTXYAA1moJ.jpg

As you can see, if the board OEM wants to provide more than 2 SATA ports, then you'll only be able to provide 1x chipset-attached NVMe drive (in additon to the CPU-attached NVMe drive). Offering any more than this will require either having ports that are shared resource and therefore disabled under certain conditions (e.g. having SATA ports disabled when certain NVMe slots are used) which is undesirable since it could cause confusion for end-user. The second option is to include additional controllers/PCIe multiplexers which increase board cost and complexity and introduce more points of failure.

 

[Makaveli]

Said 1% of people here and 0.000001% of the rest of PC users.

Agreed.

I only have 2 M2 + 6 SATA ports on my x570 board but I don't do bulk storage on my desktop I have a NAS on the network for that.