Today we’ll be taking a look at another one of ASRock’s flagship motherboard – the ASRock Taichi Z690 RAZER EDITION. It utilises the Intel’s Z690 chipset and supports all the latest Intel 12th Gen Intel® Core™ Processors (LGA1700).
For all those who owns RAZER gaming accessories, this is the motherboard you want. You can now use RAZER’s Chroma RGB software to seemlessly integrate and sync all your products … including your motherboard.
It features ASRock’s newest 20 Phase SPS Dr.MOS Power Design and supports PCIE 5.0 slots for graphics cards, as well as memory speeds of up to DDR5 6400MHz (OC). For storage, it comes with 6 x SATA3 ports, 2 x Hyper M.2 (PCIe Gen4 x4) slots and 1 x M.2 (PCIe Gen3 x2 & SATA3) slot, which is more than enough for more most users. As far as expansion is concerned, it has 2 x PCIe 5.0 x16 slots, 1 x PCIe 4.0 x16 slot, and 1 x PCIe 3.0 x1 slot.
For connectivity, it features 2 x Thunderbolt™ Type-C ports, Intel® Gigabit LAN, as well as the Killer E3100 2.5G LAN, the Killer AX1690 802.11ax (WiFi 6E) + Bluetooth 5.0. For audio it’s powered by Realtek 7.1 HD Audio with WIMA Audio Caps.
And for the star attraction … of course, this motherboard natively supports RAZER’s Chroma RGB.
The motherboard is absolutely feature-packed and comes in a matte black finish and serveal large full length heatshield/heatspreaders that helps cool your SSDs. An extra 3cm width active fan is bundled to provide extra cooling for the VRMs/Mosfets surrounding the processor socket, you’ll also find a large heatsink with heatpipe near the top of the board. The I/O panel includes another cooling fan, and the whole area is completely covered by the shround displaying the “RAZER EDITION” logo with RGB of course.
We already reviewed ASRock’s X570 and B550 Taichi RAZER EDITION motherboards in the past, and I have to say … they’re excellent motherboards … perfect for the enthusiast gamer` who loves RGB. So I’m expecting the same for the Z690 Taichi RAZER EDITION.
Intel Z690 Chipset
The Z690 chipset has full CPU overclocking capabilities, including P & E Core and BCLK overclocking. It also comes with 8 x DMI 4.0 lanes, up to 12 x PCIe 4.0 lanes and 16 x PCIe 3.0 lanes.
It can support DDR5 ram up to 4,800 MT/s (or DDR4 ram up to 3,200 MT/s), as well as 1 x 16 PCIE 5.0 or 2 x 8 PCIE 5.0. You also get the Intel gigabit ethernet and WiFi 6e, which comes as standard, and support for Octane memory.
“The COOLEST flagship motherboard, ASRock Taichi, stands out for its incredible OC performance and premium specification. Here comes the new version, Taichi – Razer Edition, which is the world’s first motherboard natively integrated with Razer Chroma RGB lighting. It is the ultimate control center for all things Chroma RGB, and enables universal compatibility with thousands of ARGB components directly into the ecosystem.”
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.
We’ll be testing the ASRock Z690 Taichi RAZER EDITION with an Intel Core i9-12900KF (12th Gen Alder Lake) processor, along with 32GB Patriot Viper Gaming Venom RGB DDR5-6200, Adata Legend 840 PCIE Gen4 SSD, and a Radeon RX 6750 XT graphics card. I’m expecting excellent performance from the above test rig, and it should be one of the fastest setups we’ve tested in our labs!
OK, let’s dive straight in and begin by taking a look at the specifications and features in our next page.
You can buy something similar – ASRock Z690 Taichi motherboard for around USD $470 from Amazon – https://amzn.to/3rSRd65
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