Today, we’ll be taking a look at the ASRock X870E Taichi Lite Motherboard. It’s a more affordable version of ASRock’s flagship X870E Taichi motherboard, and features AMD’s newest X870E chipset supporting all the Ryzen 7000, 8000 and latest 9000 series of processors on the AM5 socket.
Both the original X870E Taichi and X870E Taichi Lite are virtually identical, all except for the amount of heatsinks onboard. The X870E Lite comes with standard XXL VRM heatsinks (with no cooling fan or heatpipe), as well as the usual enlarged M.2 and chipset heatsinks for maximum heat dissipation.
It features the same powerful 24+2+1 Power Phases as the original X870E Taichi, and includes 110 Amp SPS for VCore and 20K Black capacitors, for superb stability and reliability.
Epansion slots include 2 x PCIE 5.0 x16 steel slots and 4 x DDR5 DIMM slots supporting both XMP and AMD EXPO memory modules with speeds of up to DDR5-8200+ OC.
For storage, it comes with 6 x SATA ports, 1 x Blazing M.2 PCIE Gen5 slot, and 3 x Hyper M.2 PCIE Gen4 slots, which is more than plenty for most users. The motherboard includes only one unique M.2 Heatsink, which features a tool-less design and a quick-release notch for easy installation of SSDs.
For connectivity, the rear I/O panel comes with 2 x USB 2.0 Ports, 5 x USB 3.2 Gen2 Type-A Ports 10 Gb/s, (2 x Lightning Gaming Ports), 3 x USB 3.2 Gen1 Type-A Ports, and 2 x USB4 Type-C Ports (40 Gb/s)*
Other features include the Realtek 7.1 HD Nahimic audio with WIMA caps, a total of 19 USB ports (10 rear, 9 front), WiFi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4. And finally, you also get the latest USB4 ports and 1 x 5GbE LAN for super fast connectivity.
AMD X870E Chipset
When only the fastest will do, an AMD X870E motherboard delivers. With USB 4.0 onboard along with robust overclocking capabilities, featuring faster dual-channel DDR5 memory support, AMD EXPO™ technology and PCIe® 5.0 support for both graphics and NVMe, you can play the most demanding games and deliver your biggest projects with the revolutionary performance of an AMD X870E motherboard and AMD Ryzen™ 9000, 8000, and 7000 Series processors.
Here you can see the main difference between the X870 and the X870E chipsets. The X870 will have a total of 36 useable PCIE lanes, while the higher end X870E will have a total of 44 useable PCIE lanes, and support for more higher speed USB ports.
Why are PCIE lanes important? Well, the number of PCIE lanes in a slot or connection determines the available bandwidth for data transfer between the motherboard and the expansion card. More lanes generally mean higher data transfer rates and better performance. For the X870, there’s a total of 36 PCIE usuable lanes versus 44 PCIE lanes for the X870E.
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 X870E Taichi Lite Motherboard with an AMD Ryzen 9 9950X processor, along with 48GB of Patriot Xtreme 5 MPOWER DDR5-8000, Crucial T700 PCIE Gen5 SSD, and a GeForce RTX 4080 Super graphics card. Let’s see if there’s any real differences between the original X870E Taichi and the X870E Tachi Lite.
OK, we’ll start by taking a look at the specifications and features in our next page. You can buy the ASRock X870E Taichi Lite motherboard for around USD $399 from Amazon – https://amzn.to/3BD9sFb, while the original X870E Taichi will cost around USD $450 (Newegg)
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3 comments
Thank you for review, lack of PCI EZ release feature for GPU it’s such weak idea. They kept it for normal Taichi. And price difference is just 50$. Such waste.
I would recommend updating your testing methodology: the board boasts good audio, check the implementation and whether there’s some shielding etc. Check the chipset temperatures under load: my X670 was hitting 80-90C with 2 NVMEs copying files. Check if hybrid graphics works as intended – that’s when monitors are connected to the motherboard’s ports, not GPUs. Check wi-fi and Bluetooth range. Check the functionality USB4 ports are supposed to offer. Check coil whine and other parasitic sounds.
I mean, you didn’t even check the motherboard temperatures anywhere, just the CPU. And you well know that the pcmark and whatever other tests you did just apply to the CPU/memory. I thought this is X870 motherboard review, not the 9950x CPU review.
I encourage Winston to read the overview, all pages 1 through 9. You will find that there is very little useful information and nothing really that can’t be found on the item page on Asrock’s website. Unfortunately, this overview doesn’t offer any value.
Will do… thanks for the feedback 👍