The Box and Packaging
Like all of ASRock’s other Taichi motherboard series, the box is huge. You get the usual user’s manual, a Taichi postcard, 2 pairs of SATA cables, 2 sets of M.2 screws, a pair of velcro straps for cable management, a USB bracket, WiFi 6e antennas.
The ASRock Z690 Taichi RAZER EDITION Motherboard
On the I/O hood, you’ll find the distinctive clockwork/cog design which is unique to Taichi series of motherboards, and on closer inspection, there’s actually an active fan underneath.
The Z790 Taichi, just like other Taichi motherboards is pretty HEAVY, weighing in at well over 2kg! This is all thanks to the massive heatsinks which cover the VRMs/Mofets along the top and left side of the motherboard. While the rest of the motherboard is covered with a large heat shield for cooling the M.2 SSDs.
The motherboard again, comes with the usual matte finish and features a nice metal backplate at the rear. This gives the motherboard extra rigidness and helps with the cooling.
For expansion, you get 2 x PCIE 5.0 x16 slots, and 1 x PCIE 4.0 x16 slot on the Z790 Taichi, all of which comes with surface mount technology, which gives it better physical strength, as well as a more stable memory signal.
The motherboard comes with reinforced DDR5 DIMMS slots which is nice. This unique design allows you to dramatically overclock your DDR5 ram up to 6600MHz. Please take note: The DDR5 memory slot is NOT compatible with DDR4 ram.
If you already own a Z690 motherboard, and you’re planning to upgrade to the newer Z790, then we’ve got some good news for you as far as cooling is concerned. Z790 motheboards uses the same LGA1700 socket as the previous gen Z690, so the mounting brackets for the CPU cooler are the same.
A Closer Look
There’s quite a lot of pin headers for RGB 😀 You’ll find 2 x 3-pin ARGB (5V) headers located near the top right side of the motherboard, and 1 x 3-pin ARGB (5V) header, as well as1 x 4-pin RGB (12V) near the bottom right side of the board.
To power the board, and to give you that extra stability, you need to connect the 2 x 8-pin PCIE power connectors on the top left-hand corner of the board.
For connectivity, you get Intel’s Gigabit ethernet, the Killer E3100 2.5G LAN, as well as the Killer AX1675 <802.11ax (WiFi 6E) + Bluetooth 5.0. You get plenty of storage option, including a total of 8 x SATA3 ports, and 5 x M.2 slots for SSDs. These include 1 x Blazing M.2 (PCIe Gen5 x4), 4 x Hyper M.2 (PCIe Gen4x4) slots.
There’s plenty of USB connectivity. You get 1 x USB 3.2 Gen2x2 Type-C (Front), 2 x USB 3.2 Gen2 Type-A (Rear), 10 x USB 3.2 Gen1 (6 Rear, 4 Front), 6 x USB 2.0 (2 Rear, 4 Front). I also like the usual onboard power on/off and reset buttons, as well as the diagnostic LEDs found on ASRock’s Taichi motherboards.
The onboard audio is handled by the ESS SABRE9218 DAC and Realtek 5.1 CH HD audio codec. There are 4 little red squares located on the bottom left-hand corned of the board, and these are the high end audio WIMA Caps.
The rear I/O panel include the 2 x USB, HDMI, connectors for your WiFi 6e antenna, 2 x USB 3.2, lightning gamning ports, mic-in, line-out, SPDIF out, Intel Gigabit LAN port, Killer E3100 2.5G LAN port, 4 more USB 3.2 Gen2 ports, and 2 x Thunderbolt 4 Type-C ports.
