Closer Look
Like all ASRock motherboards, the ASRock Z890 Taichi Lite arrived in a well-described retail package. The box is medium-sized compared to the average motherboard box size. It has two levels: a motherboard on the top and a small box with accessories. The lower level hides all the cables and manuals.
Inside the box is a motherboard, quick installation guide, SATA data cables, thermal sensors, WiFi antenna, RGB splitter cable, M.2 screws, and Phantom Gaming keycap. It’s everything we may need for the installation and more.
The motherboard’s design has been refreshed with the dominant black. Even though it’s not the highest model, it shares most features with the highest motherboards from the new series, like the toolless PCIe 5.0 M.2 SSD installation. It would be great if the easy PCIe graphics card removal were standard, but we can see it’s only available on top ASRock motherboards.
The motherboard has a main PCIe slot and one of the M.2 sockets in the 5.0 standard called Blazing. Although we wish for more M.2 PCIe 5.0 sockets, this is enough for most users, especially since we have five more PCIe 4.0 x4 sockets and possible RAID configurations.
The Z890 Taichi Lite has a 20+1+2+1+1 power phase design with 110A phases for the CPU. It also uses high-end 20k capacitors, one of the main features of all higher ASRock motherboards. The power design is more than enough for all current processors. During the tests, we couldn’t hear any coil whine, which suggests the high quality of the design, but the same was with all new ASRock motherboards reviewed by us.
The Z890 Taichi Lite has many good features, like Thunderbolt 4 with USB4 support and WiFi 7. However, these controllers are already a standard in the new motherboards, while one of the most significant differences is the modern audio codec. Most of the competition uses already old Realtek ALC1200 series codecs. At the same time, ASRock gives us ALC4082 with improved audio quality and additional features listed on this review’s previous page.
Since I mentioned connectivity, we can count on the fastest storage and fast networking on desktop motherboards. While most competitive motherboards use a single 2.5GbE LAN, ASRock, except the Dragon RTL8215BG 2.5GbE NIC, adds Realtek RTL8126 controller, with 5GbE support.
The Z890 Taichi Lite supports all the popular DDR5 memory kits, including those with XMP and EXPO profiles. It also supports a new CUDIMM type of RAM with a built-in clock driver for higher frequencies and better stability. The specifications suggest we can use 9600MT/s memory kits, which are not in stores yet but should appear in the upcoming weeks. We tested our motherboard with a Kingston Renegade 8800MT/s memory kit, which overclocked without issues up to 9200MT/s.
Above are some example photos of the test rig. As you can see, the Taichi Lite has only an RGB backlight under the long M.2 heatsink on the bottom of the motherboard. All heatsink covers are still eye-catching, and the whole motherboard reminds more of the higher series.
Another great feature is ASRock’s BIOS/UEFI, which I will describe on the next page of this review.
