Introduction

So, the 9th Gen Core CPU line from Intel has finally dropped. The blue brand has seen some controversy recently over poorly implemented benchmarks that skewed results in favor of the 9000 series over the AMD Ryzen 2700X. Despite the backlash, Intel has stuck with their claim of the fastest CPU for gaming, and it is high time third parties put that claim to the test. So, welcome to the party. This review is an expansion on the preview that was released earlier this month, so if you read that already you can skip ahead to the BIOS overview as everything up to there is the same.

First, I'd like to detail what the Z390 chipset changes from last year's Z370. As you would guess from the nomenclature, Z390 is a refresh chipset rather than something brand new, but there are some interesting improvements. First, USB 3.1 Gen2 is now natively supported, where on the Z370 chipset, motherboard manufacturers would need to use third party storage controllers. The second major change is CNVi support, which is Intel's high speed wireless solution. The 2x2 802.11ac connection boasts up to 1.73 Gb/s throughput. The Z390 chipset is compatible with 8th Gen Core processors as well.

The ASRock Z390 Taichi is a mainstream board positioned just below the ASRock Z390 Taichi Ultimate in ASRock's lineup. The board boasts a full coverage M.2 heatsink, dual Gigabit LAN, and ASRock's Hyper BCLK Engine II. Not only are there three M.2 slots, but a full eight SATA 6 Gb/s ports, of which two ports are powered by an additional ASMedia controller. The ASRock Z390 Taichi follows the tried and true design path ASRock has had such success with over the last few generations: a theme of cogs and gears with a neutral color tone. The ASRock Z390 Taichi has seen some minor, but important tweaks. Can one of the best board families on the market get even better?

Specifications