ASRock B550 Taichi Motherboard Overview
Taking a first look at the B550 Taichi it is absolutely beautiful. I know that I said the X570 Taichi was the best looking motherboard that ASRock has ever made, but the B550 Taichi now takes that crown. The slight color change of the heatsinks from a silver to a more bronze color is great. Also the gears on the chipset heatsink just look awesome!
Starting at the CPU socket we have AMD’s AM4 socket. B550 motherboards will only support AMD Ryzen 3000 series processors and future AMD processors. Surrounding the CPU socket we have our power delivery components. ASRock is making use of 16-phase digital power design that features 60A power chokes and Nichicon Supreme 12K black capacitors. The power delivery components are covered by ASRock’s two XXL Aluminum alloy heatsinks, which are connected by a heatpipe. As you can see ASRock has gone with a sort of bronze color on the heatsinks, which looks quite nice.
ASRock has blended the rear I/O cover into these heatsinks and everything goes together quite well. At the top corner of the board you’ll find your 8-pin EPS connector as well as an additional 8-pin.
Moving over to the memory slots we have four DDR4 DIMM slots which support dual-channel DDR4 memory up to 4733 MHz (OC). These memory slots are not metal reinforced, but they do not have the locks on the bottom which will make swapping out memory once you have your graphics card installed much easier.
At the top-corner of the board you have a few headers which include your CPU fan header, optional CPU fan header, standard 4-pin RGB header, and a 3-pin addressable RGB header. Moving down the edge of the board you’ll find your 24-pin ATX power connection, USB 3.2 gen 1 header, USB 3.2 gen 2 header, and another 4-pin fan header.
As you come down the board you’ll find another USB 3.2 gen 1 header and eight SATA 6GB/s ports. All of these are at a 90-degree angle. Four of the SATA 6GB/s ports are powered by the B550 chipset and the other four are powered by the ASMedia ASM1061 controller.
At the bottom of the board you’ll find the rest of your headers and connections. From left to right you have your HD audio header, 3-pin addressable RGB header, 4-pin standard RGB header, two 4-pin fan headers, speaker header, two USB 2.0 headers, POST code display, large power and reset buttons, a smaller clear CMOS button, and your front panel headers.
The entire bottom-half of the board is basically covered by heatsinks and dust-covers. Even though they are individual pieces they go together and look like one. On top of the chipset heatsink is a really cool gear design, which of course the Taichi boards are known for. You can remove the top and bottom sections which reveal the two M.2 slots on the board. The top slot is of course the PCI-Express 4.0 slot and supports M.2 SSDs up to 80mm. The bottom slot is a PCI-Express 3.0 slot and supports M.2 SSDs up to 110 mm.
As far as expansion slots go you have two PCI-Express 4.0 x16 slots, a single PCI-Express 3.0 x16 slot, and two PCI-Express 3.0 x1 slots. All of the X16 slots are metal reinforced with ASRock’s Steel Slot.
Coming along to the rear I/O we have an integrated I/O shield which is nice to see. As far as connections go from left to right you have your antenna connections, a BIOS flashback button, clear CMOS button, DisplayPort, HDMI, four USB 3.2 gen 1 ports, 2.5G LAN, two USB 2.0 ports, two USB 3.2 gen 2 ports (1x type-A, 1x type-C) and your audio connections. ASRock is making use of Intel 802.11ax or WiFi 6 for the wireless on the board and Intel’s I225V for the 2.5G Ethernet connection.
The back of the board features a metal backplate, which not only looks awesome but adds strength to the board. There are only thermal pads on the backside to help keep heat on certain sections of the board down.