Product Photos and Closer Look
A lot of what I’m describing has been covered by our ASRock X299 Taichi review couple of weeks ago but if you are missing something in this article then please check our other review.
Let’s begin with the package and its contents.
Large box is well described and has interesting design. It looks similar to previous Taichi products but has the gold touch which is suggesting it’s somehow special.
Inside the box we will find everything we need to install and use our new motherboard. There are all required manuals, cables, WiFi antennas, IO shield, drivers DVD and ASRock sticker. Simply all you may expect to find in the motherboard box.
The X299 Taichi XE motherboard is in ATX form factor and is based on 8 layer PCB. Improved PCB design helps with signal stability and let us not only to run processor and other devices at high frequency but helps in overclocking. Especially RAM is showing the difference and our results you can see on the next page of this review.
The Taichi XE is really well equipped. There are many premium components and various controllers which are above the standard. Motherboards are usually designed for gamers, overclockers or workstations. Here we have everything at once.
The motherboard has two 1Gbit Intel LAN which can work in teaming. I’m glad that Microsoft decided to add network teaming support in the latest Windows 10 updates. There is also Intel WiFi which is works in 2.4 and 5GHz mode and Bluetooth 3.0/4.2. On the motherboard there are also additional ASMedia controllers for SATA ( 2 SATA6G ports ) and ASM1074 chip which is adding more USB 3.1 ports.
Interesting is the fact that ASRock found enough space to install three M.2 sockets with NVMe SSD support and one of them can be part of VROC RAID array. Competition is usually offering two M.2 sockets or like ASUS in most their X299 motherboards ( non-ROG ), one standard and one vertical M.2.
It’s maybe not as amazing as ITX version of X299 motherboard ( which you will see soon on the FunkyKit ) but it clearly shows that ASRock has some great engineers.
Comparing to the X299 Taichi, the biggest changes in the XE version are in power section cooling. Improved Taichi has two large heatsinks connected with a heatpipe. There is also additional 8-pin connector what helps in power delivery for the most demanding processors.
The Taichi XE still has 13 power phase design which is one of the best on the market so we don’t have to worry about stability even during overclocking.
