Finished Looks

The ASRock TRX40 Taichi, like other recent ASRock offerings, is an exceedingly sharp and modern-looking board. ASRock has put some serious work into this refreshed Taichi design. The ASRock TRX40 Taichi looks especially good against the black and silver of my new quad-channel test kit, the Trident Z Neo provided by G.SKILL.

The design retains the attention to detail I have come to love through previous ASRock boards, especially with the cogs and gears embossed over the chipset. The ASRock TRX40 Taichi looks and feels like a premium board, and I think ASRock's design department has a lot to be proud of.


The ASRock TRX40 Taichi really starts to shine once the RGB LEDs are factored in. Like pretty much all ASRock designs, the RGB LEDs are integrated well enough to where they are not prominent when turned off. If you don't like LEDs on your hardware, they can be disabled. You won't even need to download any software as ASRock has included basic controls in the BIOS.

If you are like me, though, a well-implemented lighting system can really bring a build together. There are two zones: the chipset and underside of the board along the right edge.

Test System

Thanks to ASRock for supplying the AMD 3960X for this review!




G.SKILL generously provided an excellent quad-channel version of the Trident Z Neo kit I reviewed recently. Along with the new hardware, I will be implementing a new testing standard. Moving forward, all new platforms will be tested with XMP enabled. This will allow me to spread out back testing rather than trying to get it all done at once.

As sometimes may happen, my new memory kit is not on the ASRock TRX40 Taichi's QVL list, and I was not able to get it running stable at XMP on any current public BIOS. ASRock's QA team was kind enough to work with me and provided an experimental BIOS that worked (1.30 A).