Introduction

ASRock is a motherboard manufacturer that formed in 2002. The Taiwan-based company with branches in Europe and the USA has quickly risen to become an industry leader, placing 3rd in motherboard sales worldwide. With AMD's launch of the 2nd generation of Ryzen processors and the subsequent launch of the X470 chipset to support them, ASRock is launching the latest in their "Taichi" line of motherboards. Today, I am looking at the flagship of that line: the ASRock X470 Taichi Ultimate. Before we take a look at what the ASRock X470 Taichi Ultimate has to offer, let's first look at what has changed with the X470 chipset from last year's X370.

The short answer is not much. Last year, AMD launched the Ryzen family of processors, propelling the company back into competition with Intel. Now that AMD is launching the 2nd generation to its industry galvanizing Ryzen line, they have also launched the new X470 chipset to pair with it. This 2nd generation is a refresh with minor improvements relative to last year's offerings, and the X470 chipset is similarly a refresh of the X370 chipset, so the differences in features are pretty few. Included on that list is a small increase for non-OC memory frequencies, better optimization for higher clock speeds of this 2nd generation of the Ryzen chips, and by far the most notable: built-in support for AMD's new StoreMI technology. StoreMI aims at the same market segment currently dominated by Intel's Optain technology. StoreMI combines a physical hard drive and either an NVME SSD or up to 2 Gb of RAM to create a kind of virtual hybrid drive. What sets AMD's storeMI apart from its competitors, such as the aforementioned Intel Optain, is that StoreMI drives can be created or destroyed without the need to reinstall Windows. This is a big step forward for this type of technology, and it will translate into a much simpler and less frustrating end user experience. While X470 does bring some exciting key features to the table, the second-generation AMD Ryzen processors are also backwards compatible with other AM4 platforms.

Focusing on the ASRock X470 Taichi Ultimate, In addition to the new features brought to the X470 chipset, the Taichi Ultimate offers additional SATA ports, 10 gigabit Ethernet, and superior control in overclocking using the Hyper BCLK Engine II, just to name a few. ASRock's Taichi line of motherboards have traditionally been top performers. Can the ASRock X470 Taichi Ultimate and X470 chipset match up?

Specifications