Today, we’ll be taking a look at the ASRock X299 Taichi motherboard. This motherboard utilizes the latest Intel X299 chipset and supports all the latest Skylake-X and KabyLake-X (LGA 2066) processors from Intel. It comes with a ton of features including …13 Power Phase Design, Dr. MOS, 4 PCIe 3.0 x16, 1 PCIe 2.0 x1, 10 x SATA3 ports, 3 x Ultra M.2 (PCIe Gen3 x4 & SATA3), 8 x USB 3.1 Gen1 (4 Front, 4 Rear), Dual Intel Gigabit LAN, Intel 802.11ac WiFi, 7.1 channel HD Audio, ASRock RGB LED, BIOS Flashback, and the list goes on!
Furthermore, it also supports NVIDIA3-Way SLI, AMD 3-Way CrossFireX, as well as Purity Sound™ 4 and DDR4 memory, in dual or quad channel up to 4400+(OC).
Please note that this motherboard and all X299 chipset based motherboards, do not support and is not compatible with LGA 1151 processors.
In our recent live stream video podcast, I complained about the pace of product launches by Intel. The X299 chipset and its accompanying processors (SkyLake-X and KabyLake-X in LGA 2066) was only release a few months ago. But now they plan to launch their next platform known to as Coffee Lake within these next few months. How annoying is that?! They did this as a direct response to combat the threat from AMD’s Ryzen, which is currently very popular and gaining market share. The Coffee Lake will use a different chipset (possibly Z370) and a whole new range of processors.
OK rant over … let’s move on and take a look at the X299 Taichi motherboard from ASRock.
I would like to thank ASRock for providing the review sample. This is a snippet from what ASRock has to say about themselves on their website:
ASRock Inc. is established in 2002, specialized in the field of motherboards. ASRock strives to build up its own brand. With the 3C design concept, “Creativity, Consideration, Cost-effectiveness”, the company explores the limit of motherboards manufacturing while paying attention on the eco issue at the same time, developing products with the consideration of eco-friendly concept.
ASRock has been growing fast and become world third largest motherboard brand with headquarter in Taipei, Taiwan and branches in Europe and the USA. The young and vibrant company targets from mainstream to enthusiast MB segments for different kinds of users, owning reputation around the world market with its reliability and proficiency.
There are couple of things to look out for. Noticeably, for KabyLake-X processors (i5-7640X and i7-7740X), you’ll only get support dual channel memory with less PCIE 3.0 lanes. Take a look at the table below …
This is our first time testing a X299 motherboard along with a Core i5-7640X (KabyLake-X), so I’m pretty excited to see what scores we’ll get during our benchmarks. I’m expecting to some improvements (if any) over a Z170/7600K combo.
OK, now let’s first take a look at the features and specification of the Intel X299 chipset, then will move on to the ASRock X299 Taichi motherboard itself.
Buy the ASRock X299 Taichi Motherboard from Amazon – http://amzn.to/2wxcmqL
