ASRock Z890 Taichi LITE Motherboard Review – A Solid Option With Same PCB For $100 Less

Conclusion - Solid Taichi PCB For $100 Less

Last year, we tested the ASRock Z790 Taichi LITE, an impressive motherboard that retained the PCB of the standard model for a $130 US lower price point. This year, the Taichi LITE returns with the Z890 series.

In terms of performance, the ASRock Z890 Taichi LITE delivers great out-of-the-box performance and was also able to easily meet our baseline overclocking test using the flagship Core Ultra 9 285K and setting it to 5.7 GHz across all cores. The 24+2+1 power design with 110A power stages, the use of 20K caps, and a premium 8-layer PCB all make for a motherboard making it one of the best options to overclock the CPU.

For memory support, ASRock goes for a four DIMM DDR5 solution with up to 256 GB capacity support and up to 9600 MT/s speeds, a major increase over the 7200 MT/s of the Z790 Taichi. The motherboard supports both XMP modes and is ready for CUDIMM DDR5 modules, pushing for really high frequencies in Gear 2 mode. The motherboard had no problem running the stock DDR5 kit at 8000 MT/s out of the box and even the 9200 MT/s OC profile booted up easily. ASRock also uses a slightly newer BIOS design while retaining the BIOS flashback feature which allows users to flash to the latest BIOS with a USB stick without having CPU, Memory, or other components installed on the motherboard.

The motherboard lacks an active fan cooling solution but the temperatures ain't that hot for the VRMs at both stock and overclocked configurations which means the heatsinks are doing a great job. The board also has 8 fan headers, enough for your cooling needs and even the M.2 heatsinks are beefy and enough to handle the fastest Gen5 SSDs.

The things we loved about the ASRock Z890 Taichi LITE:

• Same PCB As Taichi For $100 US Less
• Strong VRM Solution
• Faster Memory Support (9600 MT/s+)
• Great OC Memory Support
• Lots of USB ports (Including Dual USB4)
• Six M.2 slots with heatsinks
• Latest WIFI7 & BT5.4 Support
• EZ Toolless Design For GPU & M.2 Slots
• Added M.2 Expansion Card
• Dual LAN Ports (5+2.5 GbE)
• Solid BIOS Firmware
• ATX Form Factor

Things that we would have liked to see:

• None as it ticks all the boxes

Regarding storage options, you are getting six M.2 slots, one of which is Gen5 while the rest are Gen4 but retain full bandwidth. That's the highest number of M.2 slots we have seen on the Z890 boards that we have received so far and there's even a bundled expansion card that you can equip for an additional four Gen4 M.2 slots. There's also a full bandwidth PCIe 5.0 x16 slot for discrete GPUs. The motherboard comes with an EZ M.2 release mechanism for the primary Gen5 slot and supports RAID 0/1/5/10 modes for SATA & M.2 devices.

On the USB side, the motherboard has a total of 21 USB connections including 2 USB4 Type-C ports. All ports support ESD protection and the rear IO ports are also packed with BIOS flashback, USB, and various other options. There are also dual LAN ports in the form of a single 2.5GbE and a single 5GbE connection. Audio through ALC4082 and wireless connectivity through the WIFI7 chip are also an upgrade over the previous model.

ASRock's Z890 Taichi LITE is a solid motherboard, offering the best features of Taichi and cost-effectively making use of them. The looks may not be for everyone but for those who are looking for actually good functionality, the Z890 Taichi LITE packs it all!

 

 

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