ASRock Z790 Taichi Lite Motherboard Review

Inside the box, you’ll find the usual user manual, an ASRock postcard, a USB bracket 2 USB ports, WiFi 6E antennas, 4 x M.2 screws, a pair of SATA cables, and 2 velcro straps for cable management.

The ASRock Z790 Taichi Lite Motherboard

The first thing you’ll notice is weight of the motherboard. It’s much lighter in weight over the original Z790 Taichi. And the reason for that is of couse, the fewer heatsinks found on the Z790 Taichi Lite. You don’t get the “full-cover” heatshield of the original Z790 Taichi anymore.

The RGB lighting is now removed or rather re-positioned from the I/O hood and the chipset heatsink, to the bottom heatsink covering the M.2 SSD slots.

A Closer Look

The motherboard comes with 4 x DDR5 DIMM slots supporting ram speeds of up to DDR5-7600+ OC. Please take note: The DDR5 memory slot is NOT compatible with DDR4 ram. 

On the top left-hand corner of the board, you’ll find 2 x 8-pin PCIE power connectors, which is needed to power the board, and to give you that extra stability.

For RGB lovers, you’ll find 2 x 3-pin ARGB (5V) headers located on the top right side of the motherboard, and another 1 x 3-pin ARGB (5V) header, as well as 1 x 4-pin RGB (12V) towards the bottom middle of the board.

For storage, you get 1 x Blazing M.2 (PCIe Gen5x4), and 4 x Hyper M.2 (PCIe Gen4x4) slots, as well as 8 additional SATA ports.

For connectivity, you get the Killer E3100G 2.5G LAN, an Intel Gigabit LAN and the Wi-Fi 6E 802.11ax via the M.2 Key-E module which is already installed.

I love the on/off buttons and diagnostic LEDs which are mostly featured on enthusiast motherboards … and the ASRock Z790 Taichi Lite is one of them.

For expansion, you get 2 x PCIE 5.0 x16 slots (with Surface-Mount Tech) and 1 x PCIe 4.0 x16 slot

And finally, you also get all of ASRock’ unique features such as the auto driver installer, Dr. MOS, 8-layer PCB, and the Realtek 7.1 HD Nahimic audio and Polychrome RGB.

The rear I/O panel include 2 x USB 2.0 Ports, 1 x HDMI Port, 2 x Antenna Ports, 1 x Line Out Jack (Gold Audio Jack), 1 x Microphone Input Jack (Gold Audio Jack), 1 x Optical SPDIF Out Port, 2 x USB 3.2 Gen2 Type-A Port (10 Gb/s), 6 x USB 3.2 Gen1 Ports (2 x Lightning Gaming Ports and 4 x Ultra USB Power.)

There’s also the 2 x RJ-45 LAN Ports and 2 x USB4 Thunderbolt™ 4 Type-C Ports (40 Gb/s for USB4 protocol; 40Gb/s for Thunderbolt™ protocol).