ASRock Z590 Taichi Motherboard Review

ASRock Z590 Taichi Motherboard Overview

The ASRock Z590 Taichi is a standard ATX motherboard. This time around ASRock has changed the overall look of the board with a more solid black design. So the PCB as well as the heatsinks and accents are all black. The “gears” on the board are silver and “Z590” and “ASRock Taichi” logos are gold. I honestly liked the look of the Z490 Taichi a lot better.

ASRock Z590 Taichi Motherboard

Starting with the CPU socket we of course have Intel’s LGA 1200 socket. Z590 motherboard will support Intel’s 10th and 11th generation Core processors. ASRock is making use of a 14 phase (12+2) power design with Renesas ISL99390 power stages. These are 90A power stages so you have 1080A to the CPU and 180A for the SoC.

ASRock Z590 Taichi Motherboard ASRock Z590 Taichi Motherboard

The power delivery components are covered by two large heatsinks which connect with the I/O cover, which gives the top of the board a really nice look. The vertical heatsink has a fan embedded in it and both heatsinks are connected by a heatpipe. At the top corner of the board are two 8-pin EPS connectors.

ASRock Z590 Taichi Motherboard ASRock Z590 Taichi Motherboard

Moving over to the right side of the board we have our four DDR4 DIMM slots. These slots support up to 128GB of DDR5-5000 memory. They do not have locks on the bottom, which makes it easy to swap out your memory once you have your graphics card installed.

ASRock Z590 Taichi Motherboard ASRock Z590 Taichi Motherboard

At the top edge of the board there is a single 3-pin addressable RGB header (labeled grey). Moving over to the edge of the board we have a 4-pin fan header, 24-pin ATX power connection, two USB 3.2 gen 2 headers (one at a 90-degree angle, the other normal orientation), and a USB 3.2 gen 2×2 header. The 2×2 header is the only way you are going to get 2×2 speeds from this board, there is no 2×2 connectivity on the rear I/O.

ASRock Z590 Taichi Motherboard ASRock Z590 Taichi Motherboard

Coming down the board there are eight SATA 6GB/s ports as well as two more 4-pin fan headers. The first six SATA ports are controlled by the Z590 chipset while the last two are controlled by the ASMedia ASM1061 controller.

ASRock Z590 Taichi Motherboard

At the bottom of the board you’ll find the rest of your headers and connections. From left to right we have our HD audio header, 3-pin addressable RGB header, 4-pin standard RGB header, two 4-pin fan headers, clear CMOS jumper, TPM header, two USB 2.0 headers, POST code display, power and reset buttons, a small clear CMOS button, and front panel headers.

ASRock Z590 Taichi Motherboard

Like most motherboards these days the bottom half of the board is characterized by heatsinks. Again these are all black, but you do have silver gears on the chipset heatsink. Removing these reveals the three M.2 slots. The top slot is your Gen4 slot, while the bottom two are Gen3 slots. The bottom two slots also support SATA-based M.2 drives. The heatsinks to have thermal tape pre-applied.

ASRock Z590 Taichi Motherboard ASRock Z590 Taichi Motherboard ASRock Z590 Taichi Motherboard ASRock Z590 Taichi Motherboard

As far as expansion slots go you have three PCI-Express 4.0 x16 slots (x16, x8, x4 electrical) and a single PCI-Express 3.0 x1 slot. The three x16 slots are metal reinforced with ASRock’s Steel Slot.

ASRock Z590 Taichi Motherboard ASRock Z590 Taichi Motherboard

One thing that is interesting is that the CPU fan and optional CPU fan headers are above the top M.2 slot. This placement is going to make them very hard to access once you have a graphics card installed.

ASRock Z590 Taichi Motherboard

Moving on to the rear I/O we have a nice I/O cover that I mentioned earlier. It has a gear on it that actually moves! (more on that in a bit). Like most motherboards these days we have an integrated I/O shield as well. From left to right on the rear I/O we have a BIOS flashback button, WiFi antenna connections, HDMI out, two USB 3.2 gen 1 ports, audio connections, 1G LAN (Intel I219V), 2.5G LAN (Killer E3100G), two four USB 3.2 gen 2 Type-A ports, two USB 4.0 Thunderbolt 4 Type-C ports. These USB 4.0 / Thunderbolt 4 ports are interesting, in our testing with a USB 3.2 gen 2×2 drive we only get speeds up to 1000 MB/s (USB 3.2 gen 2) so we assume the USB-handoff is going to the 3.2 gen 2 controller on the board not the 2×2 controller. WiFi on the board is powered by the Killer AX1675x 802.11ax Wi-Fi 6E Module.

ASRock Z590 Taichi Motherboard ASRock Z590 Taichi Motherboard

The back of the board is covered in an aluminum plate which not only helps with cooling but adds stability as well.

ASRock Z590 Taichi Motherboard ASRock Z590 Taichi Motherboard

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