ASRock AMD X870E Taichi Ryzen Socket AM5 X870 Dual Channel DDR5 DIMMs 256 GB 8200 EATX Motherboard M.2 LED WiFi 7

I was very skeptical about this motherboard, the last time I had purchased an ASRock motherboard was over 5yrs ago & it only lasted one year. I was very surprised when I received the package, and opened the box, it was literally so beautiful, I seriously paused for a moment to just appreciate the beauty. The motherboard is put together very well, I couldn't believe it's an 8-layer PCB, has a metal back plate, and all of the PCIe lanes correctly setup for the lower price that it is verses the competition. I do understand that there have been issues with previous versions of the bios mostly with PBO settings. My motherboard came with bios 3.20, and I promptly updated to 3.25, now there is another bios version available, however I believe this is for upcoming new CPUs & I haven't yet updated my bios to the latest. I also do not use PBO, I set a multiplier & set the CPU core voltage & SoC voltage & it's been stable. I am using a 9800 X3D, set all 8 cores to 5.4 GHz, set CPU core voltage to 1.24v (it actually goes lower on its own), & SoC voltage to 1.24v (it also goes lower on its own). While I don't dismiss there could be an issue with this motherboard & it killing CPUs, I do think it is mostly due to users just plugging in the CPU and just allowing it to run at system defaults, which has shown will do in the CPU based on how good the cooling it has. The only issue I had with the motherboard is that it has to have a thumb drive formatted as Fat32, which means you need a smaller size drive to get this done. Once I got found a smaller size drive, it updated quickly and all is well. The only other downside for me is that the bios looks likes & feels like something from early 2000s, so this is also why that you are stuck to using a Fat32 formatted drive, so if ASRock wants to truly fix something, this would be a huge plus if they could fix their bios & be able to use larger size drives for updates. One last issue I had is the memory list, I have 3 different memory kits & only one is on it, however, its rock solid on the EXPO I profile, so I just mention this as a warning to make sure to look at the qualified memory list, & also this is the first time I've seen a M.2 drive support list, again make sure to go over this list to make sure you don't have compatibility issues later. Overall, I would recommend this motherboard & has been completely stable since the start & I will come back and change the review should something happen. Speaking seriously, I am about to give up on AMD due to mostly memory compatibility issues, I still have Intel systems working today & are older systems & they were stable from day one & didn't have to jump through all these hoops to just get it working, I truly hope AMD can get this sorted out soon, because at this moment I have no hope, because we are like 3yrs or more into the platform & memory issues still exist. ASRock needs to seriously work on their own software for their products. The software they have made to control the system fans, while works, it doesn't work well & also their software for the lighting control works, it's just very clumsy & strange to use. It would be great if they could get their software put together better. My Computer build: Windows 11 Pro CORSAIR 7000D AIRFLOW Full-Tower ATX PC White Case ASRock X870E NOVA WIFI AMD X870E ATX Motherboard bios v3.25 AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D overclocked to 5.4ghz all cores 1.24 volts G.SKILL Trident Z5 Neo RGB Series 64GB (2 x 32GB) 288-Pin PC RAM DDR5 6000MT/s Model F5-6000J3040G32GX2-TZ5NR Samsung 980 Pro M.2 2280 1TB PCIe 4.0 x4 NVMe (boot drive) Crucial P3 Plus M.2 2280 4TB PCIe 4.0 x4 NVMe (game drive) Western Digital SN850X 1TB PCIe 4.0 x4 NVMe (backup drive) be quiet! Silent Loop 3 420mm CPU AIO Liquid Cooler with 6 Phanteks D30-140mm fans setup in a push/pull in front of case 3 Phanteks D30 140mm set as exhaust on top of case 1 Phanteks D30 140mm reverse blade fan as rear intake fan ASRock Phantom Gaming PG-1600G 1600W 80 PLUS GOLD & Cybenetics PLATINUM Full Modular Power Supply ATX3.1 & PCIe5.1 ASUS TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 4090 OC Edition Gaming Graphics Card Logitech Z906 5.1 Surround Sound Speaker System THX certified CORSAIR K70 RGB PRO Wired Mechanical Gaming Keyboard-Cherry MX RGB Red Linear Switches Corsair Dark Core RGB Pro SE Qi Wireless Charging Certified ASUS ROG Scabbard II Extended Gaming Mouse Pad Creative Sound BlasterX AE-5 Plus 32-bit 384 kHz PCI-e Interface Sound Card Samsung S90C 55” QD-OLED TV 4k UHD HDR 144hz Free sync Premium Pro (main monitor) LG OLED42C2PUA 4K evo OLED TV (2022) – (second monitor)

It seems every MB I considered had it’s detractors and I carefully considered the reviews I found on Amazon and Newegg and I read many. There seemed to be a consensus that the ASRock Phantom Gaming X870E Nova had the best bang for the buck feature wise. My experience with it is that it was relatively easy to work with, it’s well laid out, seems to be very robustly built with a sturdy back plate and has a robust power stage. The instruction manual has a lot to be desired, I’ve seen far better in the past and it took me a bit of time to figure out where everything is in the BIOS but with time and patience I figured it out. Remember to go to the ASRock website and download the Software/BIOS Setup Guide in addition to the User Manual. Remember to configure the BIOS to use the Integrated Graphics Controller from the MB prior to installing the GPU which requires the proper drivers being installed first which you download from the GPU vendor. Also ASRock can install the necessary drivers for the MB in the BIOS, Boot into the BIOS, and a notification will pop up in the lower right corner of your screen saying, "Do you want to one-step-install the latest drivers simply from ASRock Auto Driver Installer?" Select YES and it will do it as long as you have a network connection. After I installed Windows 11, the MB kept failing to boot because my BIOS was not set to by default to enable Security Device Support, the computer would go into a rapid cycle where it could try to open Windows and then reboot because it didn’t see “Security Device Support enabled”. So hit F2 go into the BIOS, click on “Advanced” scroll down to Trusted Computing and Enable it and it will boot! After this it has been smooth sailing ever since. It boots very quickly, is rock solid, it’s in use hours a day – no issues. I’m using G.SKILL Trident Z5 Neo RGB Series (AMD Expo) DDR5 RAM 64GB (2x32GB) 6000MT/s,CL30 (Remember to enable EXPO in the BIOS) Ryzen 9 processor, Asus RTX 4060, Seasonic Vertex 750 PSU, Scythe Mugen 6 Dual Fan Black Edition CPU Air Cooler – All purchased on Amazon. I would certainly buy this again now that I know a bit more about it. I hope this helped those of you struggling with the decision and may your next build be GREAT!! Art

If you are running an AMD CPU this board is great. They have had some issues with the X3D CPU's burning up but there's a new BIOS that was just released to put that problem to bed. I'm running an Ryzen 9 7950X on mine without any trouble. It does use 170 TPD and will run up to 95 degrees Celsius but I discovered that is normal for that chip. Most would throttle back but this one is designed to do that as every core runs at 5.1 mhz at the same time The big plus is you can put as many as 5 M.2 drives in it without cutting the GPU slot to 8X it remains running at 16 X. It will completely shut down the second PCIE slot. If you need that second slot just don't fill up all of the M.2 drive slots. The first M.2 slot can run the 5th generation of SSD and the first PCIE slot can run a 5th generation GPU once they start coming out. That helps to make this board future proof. It has more than enough USB ports running at different speeds including two USB C ports. It has several choices for sound including a digital output port. I don't use that, instead I have a sound card in a PCIE 1.2 slot which many boards never include anymore. It also has a 5GB ethernet port. It's easy to get set up, every connector is marked as to what it is used for. I haven't had any overheating problems and it can rum up to 256 GB of DDR 5 memory at speeds all the way up to 8000 but most don't need that kind of speed, even for gaming. It also has digital display on the board that shows any error codes. If you like lots of RGB it has plenty of options. The BIOS is functional but many say it's the boards only downfall. With the speeds this board defaults to the only thing you need to do in the BIOS is set the RAM speeds setting it to EXPO to get your RAM running at the speed it's meant to run at, set the boot order, and adjust fan speeds to keep it cool.

The motherboard itself was fine, it ran for approx 6 weeks in a new build, but then one night the customer was going to bed, and let the computer run updates as he went to bed. The next morning, the power had went out during the updates, including a BIOS update, and the BIOS was damaged and could not be reflashed. The company ASRock did indeed honor the warranty. However, I have been waiting about 8 weeks!!!! for my replacement! Update: ASROCK at last sent a motherboard to me, and it was my old board! It was not a new replacement , the board would not post ( obviously it was the same old , bad board) Stay clear of this board or JUST ASROCK all together! I at first gave this situation 4 stars ...I revise it now to 1 star...if I could give zero stars I would.

It seems every MB I considered had it’s detractors and I carefully considered the reviews I found on Amazon and Newegg and I read many. There seemed to be a consensus that the ASRock Phantom Gaming X870E Nova had the best bang for the buck feature wise. My experience with it is that it was relatively easy to work with, it’s well laid out, seems to be very robustly built with a sturdy back plate and has a robust power stage. The instruction manual has a lot to be desired, I’ve seen far better in the past and it took me a bit of time to figure out where everything is in the BIOS but with time and patience I figured it out. Remember to go to the ASRock website and download the Software/BIOS Setup Guide in addition to the User Manual. Remember to configure the BIOS to use the Integrated Graphics Controller from the MB prior to installing the GPU which requires the proper drivers being installed first which you download from the GPU vendor. Also ASRock can install the necessary drivers for the MB in the BIOS, Boot into the BIOS, and a notification will pop up in the lower right corner of your screen saying, "Do you want to one-step-install the latest drivers simply from ASRock Auto Driver Installer?" Select YES and it will do it as long as you have a network connection. After I installed Windows 11, the MB kept failing to boot because my BIOS was not set to by default to enable Security Device Support, the computer would go into a rapid cycle where it could try to open Windows and then reboot because it didn’t see “Security Device Support enabled”. So hit F2 go into the BIOS, click on “Advanced” scroll down to Trusted Computing and Enable it and it will boot! After this it has been smooth sailing ever since. It boots very quickly, is rock solid, it’s in use hours a day – no issues. I would certainly buy this again now that I know a bit more about it. I hope this helped those of you struggling with the decision and may your next build be GREAT!!

A few reasons for 4 star I'll get into later, but a 5 star board overall. Excellent motherboard and with what I'm using with it I am very happy with my purchase. The board looks great, the bios out of the box supported my Ryzen 9000 series CPU, and it supports my GSkill 6400 M/T CAS 30 memory. Great RGB control! I have full control of the RGB on my memory and the 6 fans (+2 on my 240 radiator) so I can pretty much make my glass case any color I want. Reason for the 4 stars: If you're not on Windows 11 yet, you'll have to be. I was running Windows 10 Pro completely content, and holding out until much later to make the free jump to Windows 11. Did a fresh Windows 10 Pro load after installing this motherboard, only to find that there aren't any Wifi 7 drivers for Windows 10. So to get onboard Wifi working I was forced to upgrade to Windows 11. Has plenty of M.2 slots, and this isn't an issue because I have 1 gen 5 and 1 gen 4, but this board has 1 gen 5, 1 gen 4, and 1 gen 3 M.2 slots. Not a huge deal, I just found it interesting when I did my sons build with a B850 Pro RS it came with 1 gen 5, 2 gen 4, and 1 gen 3. Again, not a dealbreaker, but I thought that was strange. Upgraded to a Ryzen 9 9900X and the EXPO stopped working in the Bios. Couldn't get my memory up to 6400 M/T. Not a big deal as I was able to bypass it and set the EXPO in Ryzenmaster. Build: Asrock X870 Pro RS Wifi Ryzen 9 9900X Thermalright Frozen Notte 240 Black ARGB V2 Water Cooling CPU Cooler Gskill 6400 MT 30 CAS RGB Memory (with EXPO) Asrock Challenger RX 7800 XT (16 GB) PNY CS2150 1TB Gen5 PCIe NVMe Samsung 990 EVO Plus SSD 2TB, PCIe Gen 4 2 4TB Ironwolf Pro 7200 RPM SATA (RAID 1) BenQ EL2870U Gaming Monitor 28" 4K UHD 1ms KTC 27 Inch QHD(2560 * 1440) 100Hz Computer Monitor

I had an MSI x870 (non E) that was only a week old but was dropping out nvme's randomly. So I started looking around for a board that had its USB4 ports on dedicated pcie lanes to cpu, and was able to not sacrifice anything major if I stick 4 or 5 nvme's in. Most of the x870/x870E boards will need to sacrifice something, ie if you use m2_4 maybe your USB4 will be cut to half speed, or if you use X your main pcie 5.0 x16 slot turns into an x8. This board doesn't really have any limitations that way. It does sacrifice some things like a second nvme slot directly connected to CPU, and if you populate the 5th nvme slot one of the pcie slots will off but 99% of people wouldnt ever use the x1 pcie slot anyways. The board is overbuilt, it has a near full backplate coverage making it very rigid and durable. The EZ latch system does work, and works better that I have has with the tilt out style on asus boards. If you do plan on dual booting or using all your nvme slots for lots of transfers please do keep in mind everything southbound of the CPU, ie m2 slots 2 ,3, 4, 5 your sata ports, most USB ports not on the IO backplate will share pcie 4.0 x4 bandwidth. This is not usually a problem but something to keep in mind. If you think your going to make a large raid array with 4 nvme drives you wont see the speed actualized. This x4 bus is piped to two chipset controllers which is how this board and most X870E boards get all the various IO. With that said this is definitely the best price to performance board with the most amount of things you can install. I currently run 4 x 4TB drives, 1 x 4TB pcie gen 5 nvme in the cpu nvme slot, and 3 x 4TB nvme on the chipset side. Dual booting off the gen 5 slot, gaming and other data southbound and I see or notice no negative performance. Everything on the chipset stays cool, this is in a be quiet 501 pure base with pretty mild fan speeds going. The board fits my Dark Rock Elite cooler without issue. The main cpu gen 5 nvme slot cooler is pretty lightweight, aluminum and could probably be replaced for better gen 5 heat dissipation by a thermalright cooler or something else especially if you are water cooling the cpu have room for a tall nvme tower cooler. With ASRock there is a lot of internet noise about x3d chip death because of gamersnexus and other outlets. I don't think anyone has a real answer as all the data out there is bro-science at best. People are buying enthusiast cpus and boards and smoking them, ASRock has patched out many issues on the boards this year. I am running 3.40 firmware, I set my SoC voltage to 1.10v (below the recommended 1.2) and I disable PBO limits (so just using default limits) with an overall -50mv undervolt and CO -25/-20 on a 9950x3d and all my voltages are pretty low and 100% stable. Overall I am very happy.

My 6 year old Asrock Taichi motherboard finally bit the dust. I had good luck with the old Taichi motherboard so I went to the Taiche for my new build, I went with a new modern Asrock Taichi motherboard. One of the items I love is this is a premium board that is inexpensive compared to other premium motherboards. It has 11 USB ports with 2 of them being type-c. I have a USB hub for all my external drives Now the downside: 1. This is an eAXT motherboard so I had to get a new computer case since the new motherboard won't fit in the old case. 2. The Bluetooth and Wi-Fi only works with Windows 11 (no support for Windows 10). When I contacted Support (I am very pleased Pablo. I got an email back the next day). 3. Windows 11 drivers for the Bluetooth and Wi-Fi don't work and you have to go through bios to force Windows 11 to take the new drivers . You have to download the new drivers from Asrock's website. 4. After updating the the drivers, the line out for audio stopped working. My workaround was to purchase an USB line out connector. Works great now. I am running the latest AMD Ryzen 9 9950x3d CPU. 32 gig of Corsair Dominator 7000 ram. I had to use my old Gigabyte RTX 2080 Super since the new Gigabyte 5070 was dead on arrival. Once I get my refund for the GPU, I will buy it again. Amazons refund policy for GPU and power supply is different than what I experienced with other returns (I had 2 Thermolake power supply's arrive defective. I went with a Corsair this time around). I guess they want to check the GPU and power supply out for themselves before they process the refund. You know, make sure the serial number on the GPU is the same serial number that is on the box. Makes sense to me. All in all, I highly recommend the Asrock Taichi motherboard.