ASRock B650E Taichi Lite Motherboard Review

Verdict and Conclusion

If you thought the ASRock B650E Taichi Lite was a “budget” or a “cut-down” version of the original Taichi, then you’re mistaken. It is in fact, an almost identical motherboard, offering the same amazing features and performance as the original version of the Taichi, but at a much more affordable price.

How is that possible? Well, for staters, in order to lower the cost, ASRock had remove some features such as the re-inforced DIMM slots, the large I/O hood, and reduced the amount of heatsinks on the motherboards.The full-cover chipset heatsink is now replaced with smaller, more compact heatsinks, and the metal backplate has also been removed. This makes the entire motherboard lighter in weight.

The B650E Taichi Lite motherboard uses the same, but powerful 24+2+1 Phase Power Design as found on the original Taichi. It also features ASRock’s new SPS for VCore+GT and provides extra stability especially when overclocking your processor. And like all Taichi motherboards, the B650E Taichi Lite comes with the usual onboard diagnostic LEDs, power on/off and reset buttons.

During our tests, we used an AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D processor and a Radeon RX 7900 XTX graphics card. We managed to pull some excellent scores in all of our benchmarks, including a Cinebench R23 scores of 17,873 (multi core) and 923 (single core). For PCMark 10, we got a score of 9,678, and a score of 9,495 for PassMark10.

For UL’s latest Procyon Photo Editing Benchmark, we got a decent score of 8,848 and 8,160 for the video editing suite. For 3DMark Speed Way and Port Royal, we got an amazing score of 6,222 and 16,097 respectively. And finally, for Timespy and Firestrike, we got phenomenal scores of 25,234 and 50,057 respectively.

For LAN connectivity, the motherboard comes with the Killer E3100 2.5G LAN and Killer AX1675 802.11ax (WiFi 6E) + Bluetooth, which is to be honest is more than enough for most streamer, gamer and even content creators.

The motherboard offers plenty of USB connectivity. You get 1 x USB4 Type-C (Rear), 1 x USB 3.2 Gen2x2 Type-C (Front), 3 x USB 3.2 Gen2 Type-A (Rear), 10 x USB 3.2 Gen1 (8 Rear, 2 Front), 4 x USB 2.0 (Front). ASRock have also included the onboard power on/off and reset buttons, as well as the diagnostic LEDs, which you’ll normally find on all of their Taichi motherboards.

And finally, you get all of ASRock’s unique features such as the 7.1 HD Nahimic Audio, 8-layer PCB, Lightning gaming ports, USB-4 Type-C, and of course ASRock’s Polychrome RGB.

We didn’t get a MSRP price on the ASRock B650E Taichi Lite at the time of review, but you can expect to pay around USD $350 from various online retailers. That’s around USD $100 savings over the original Taichi version. If the price is true, then the B650E Taichi Lite is probably one of the best AM5 motherboard you can buy right now in terms of price/performance.

Final Words:

Now we all know tthat the cost of building a decent gaming PC over the past few years have increased tremendously. So I have to applaud ASRock for making an effort in producing a motherboard, that not only saves money for the budget conscious user, but also allows users to enjoy enthusiast-grade features at an affordable price without compromising on performance. The ASRock B650E Taichi Lite is easily one of the best AM5 motherboards on the market that offers the best bang for your buck!

You can buy something similar, the ASRock B650E PG Riptide motherboard for around USD $275 from Amazon – https://amzn.to/3EctbJj

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