Introduction

On Monday, the 19th of June, at approximately 6:45 PM, there was a knock on my door. I was lying on the living room floor with my legs up on the seat of my office chair, sleeping. You see, I'm kind of between houses right now, with my worldly possessions strewn across two cities. My supple leather couch that I love to melt into is at the OTHER house, not this one, so I had to deal with it.

The knock woke me up, but only barely. When what was going on properly registered in my foggy thoughts, I tried to clear the sleep out of my eyes and pay attention. I had been waiting for this moment for a few weeks now, and I wasn't going to miss a second.

My wife dropped two envelopes and a very large box at my head. I had to rub my forehead. If only I could explain the backstory here, you would understand it all, but that's a conversation best told over a glass of scotch, and I'm afraid my bottle is all dry at the moment. I was expecting a motherboard? Also two chips and a piece of paper? WTF is this huge thing? I asked Rachel to open it. She's nice like that.

Now it's 4:46 AM on the 21st of June, there are beer cans, fast food wrappers and something in a green bag here, and my kids are going to wake up soon. It's been 34 hours, and these CPUs... Let's talk about a motherboard! ASRock sent me their X299 Taichi. You know what that means; its perfectly average, right in the middle, but uh, if you want to get a little serious, this is yet another board that isn't going to add any stress to the moment. And thankfully so because I've got a story to tell...

Specifications