ASRock Z890 Taichi Lite Motherboard Review - Substance over style

TweakTown's Rating: 94%

The Bottom Line

If you rate features and value for money ahead of aesthetics, then the ASRock Z890 Taichi Lite is very tough to beat.

Pros

• Attractive pricing
• Dual LAN and six M.2 slots
• Strong VRM
• Lots of USB ports
• Fast memory support

Cons

• Only two expansion slots

Should you buy it?

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Introduction, Specifications, and Pricing

As if you didn't already know, a well-specced Z890 board will set you back a pretty penny. Much of that is due to costly feature sets, electrical complexity, and a good dose of post-pandemic inflation. Some boards also come with a premium aesthetic, highly stylized heatsinks, and artistic flourishes. But what if you care nothing for bling and want a fully capable Z890 motherboard with a high-end feature set?

Enter the ASRock Z890 Taichi Lite.

The Z890 Taichi Lite is a Z890 Taichi with a much simpler aesthetic. Its true appeal lies in its price, which is $100 less than the Z890 Taichi. ASRock says the steampunk cogs and wheels styling of the Taichi costs a lot to make. It's an attractive board for users with a glass-sided case, but think about it. If you add a large air cooler and a triple-slot graphics card, a lot of that bling will be hidden anyway, and if you have a close-sided case, you won't see the board at all.

Looks aside, the Z890 Taichi Lite is undoubtedly a high-end motherboard. It's got a long list of features, including dual Thunderbolt 4, dual LAN, including 5G, 320MHz Wi-Fi 7, a very powerful VRM, high-quality audio with a dedicated DAC, loads of USB ports, and six M.2 slots. These specs wouldn't look out of place on anything less than a flagship-tier board.

The ASRock Z890 Taichi Lite has a recommended retail price of $399, which is a very competitive price for what it offers.

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Packaging, Accessories, and Overview

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The ASRock Z890 Taichi lite comes in a compact, if unremarkable box, which makes sense given the board's theme. Only a few of the trademarked features make it onto the front of the box.

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In contrast to the mostly bare front of the box, the rear is absolutely packed with a rundown of the board's highlights, complete with a full spec table.

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The bundled accessories are about what you'd expect from a modern-day motherboard. You get a Wi-Fi antenna, four SATA cables, an ARGB splitter cable, three thermistor cables, M.2 screws and standoffs, an ASRock keycap, and some regulatory information, including a quick setup guide.

A flash drive with drivers and utilities would have been a nice addition, but they're easy enough to download from the ASRock website, and omitting it helps to keep costs down.

Motherboard Overview

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As mentioned, the Z890 Taichi Lite is designed with a focus on features and performance rather than a fancy aesthetic. Still, its silver-on-black theme is not unattractive. It doesn't look like a high-end motherboard packed with ARGB lighting or things like a fancy LCD screen.

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ASRock didn't totally ignore the board's look, though. There's a tiny splash of ARGB lighting underneath the triple M.2 heatsink, and there's a tiny plastic cover over the e-Key Wi-Fi card. The Wi-Fi card stood out like a sore thumb on the Z790 Taichi Lite, and hiding it at the cost of a one-cent plastic cap was a good idea.

Should you have a case with a glass side panel, the Z890 Taichi Lite includes three ARGB headers and an RGB strip header. Combine these with the bundled ARGB splitter, and you can still use the Taichi Lite in a resplendent ARGB system without any drawback.

Other key headers include support for eight 4-pin fan and pump headers and three thermistor cable headers. You also get power and reset buttons and a debug LED display.

There are headers for a single Type-C 20Gbps USB port, four 5Gbps ports, and four USB 2.0 ports.

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Four DIMM slots support speeds of DDR5-9600+, with up to 256GB supported. To reach such speeds, you'll need CUDIMMs.

The Z890 Taichi Lite is one of several ASRock Z890 boards that come with what ASRock calls the Memory OC Shield. It does exactly what its name suggests. It's designed to limit electromagnetic interference, meaning cleaner signaling between the CPU and memory. ASRock seems confident, as the Z890 Taichi Lite's rated support of 9600 MT/s is higher than that of the more expensive four-DIMM GIGABYTE Z890 AORUS Master and MSI MEG Z890 Ace.

In the days before the Core Ultra 200S series launch, we could not boot Z890 Taichi Lite at 9600MHz with CUDIMMs, but a post-release BIOS enabled us to achieve it. It wasn't 100% stable, but even the best four-DIMM boards are unlikely to match two-DIMM boards, so for the Z890 Taichi Lite to approach those speeds without resorting to silly voltages is a feather in ASRock's cap.

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The Z890 Taichi Lite inherits the strong VRM of the more expensive Z890 Taichi. A 20+1+2+1+1 phase design with 110A stages for the VCORE and VCCSA is strong enough to handle even liquid nitrogen-cooled CPUs, so it won't break a sweat when presented with the loads a typical air or water cooling user will throw at it.

For all of Intel's talk on the improved power efficiency of the Arrow Lake CPU family, the VRM designs of premium motherboards are at least a match for their 14th-generation predecessors. Most of them are overengineered to meet the needs of a typical user. But if we see an Arrow Lake refresh or next-gen CPU family come to LGA 1851, it's better to be overpowered.

The Z890 Taichi Lite's VRM heatsinks are more than adequate for the job. A peak load temperature of 56 Degrees Celsius is a testament to their effectiveness.

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The Z890 Taichi Lite has six PCB-mounted M.2 slots. That's impressive for a four DIMM ATX board, where PCB space has to be carefully optimized to fit that many in. Four SATA ports join them, meaning the Taichi Lite supports up to ten storage devices.

The primary M.2 slot supports PCIe 5.0 drives, while the other five support PCIe 4.0. Interestingly, only four of the six slots have heatsinks. The primary slot gets its own cooler with a large surface area, while three more share the plate with the Taichi name written on it.

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At a glance, that might seem like ASRock is cutting corners a little, but leaving two slots open and separate from the main M.2 heatsink makes them a natural choice for users with drives with integrated heatsinks, of which there are many on the market. Such drives can be rendered useless on boards that share large multi-drive M.2 cooling plates.

Though the Z890 Taichi Lite is a feature-packed board - especially for its price - its expansion slot count is not its strong suit. The primary PCIe 5.0 x16 slot is joined by a single PCIe 4.0 x16 slot, which runs at x4 electrically. If only Intel and AMD had given us HEDT-level PCIe lane counts, then such compromises wouldn't have been necessary. But that's a story for another day.

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The Z890 Taichi Lite's rear I/O is about as good as expected at this price. The USB complement includes dual Thunderbolt 4 Type-C ports with DP support, four 10Gbps ports, four 5Gbps ports, and two USB 2.0 ports.

The yellow-colored USB ports are what ASRock refers to as Lightning Gaming ports. These ports have their own interfaces that aim to reduce latency and jitter. The dark blue Ultra USB Power ports support PD 3.0 and provide up to 15W charging capability.

ASRock opted for a Realtek RTL8126 controller for the 5G LAN port and an RTL8125BG controller for the 2.5G port. An Intel BE200 Wi-Fi 7 controller handles Wi-Fi 7 duties. This controller supports 320MHz connections and also provides Bluetooth 5.4 support.

Next are the audio ports, which consist of 3.5mm line-in and line-out ports and S/PDIF. A Realtek ALC4082 codec drives these. The Taichi Lite incorporates several enhancements, including a high-quality ESS Sabre 9219 DAC, a dedicated headphone amplifier, and WIMA capacitors.

In the center of the board, you'll find CMOS clear and BIOS flashback buttons, while on the far left is a single HDMI 2.1 port for use with chips that include the dramatically improved Xe LGP graphics.

UEFI, Software and Test System

UEFI

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The ASRock Z890 Taichi Lite BIOS follows the same layout and theme of recent ASRock UEFI designs. It's simple, with few graphical flourishes. Anyone familiar with an ASRock BIOS from the last few years will find it easy to navigate.

While its simple, tried-and-true design is worthy of praise, some aspects look dated. The fan control page could use a refresh. However, the EZ page, in particular, looks good and has almost all the settings a set-and-forget user could want.

A visit to the ASRock website will give you options to download things like the ASRock motherboard control utility, Norton 360 trial (if you really must), and Polychrome RGB control software. All of the relevant drivers are available, too, though it's worth checking the Intel website for newer versions of things like the chipset and integrated graphics drivers.

We first tested the ASRock Z890 Taichi Lite on a prerelease BIOS. Its performance with a Core Ultra 9 285K was a little behind what we got from the other boards tested in that timeframe. However, visiting the ASRock website to grab the latest BIOS brought performance up to scratch. So, if you're an early adopter of this board, be sure to grab the latest BIOS.

The 2.02 BIOS also allowed us to reach DDR5-9600 with a set of G.Skill Trident Z Royal CUDIMMs, albeit not fully stable. That's a solid result for a four-DIMM board, and surely there's more to come as the CUDIMM ecosystem matures.

Test System

Benchmarks - Rendering and Encoding

Cinebench 2024

Cinebench is a long-standing render benchmark that Intel and AMD have relied on to showcase their newest platforms during unveilings. The benchmark has two tests: a single-core workload that utilizes one thread, or 1T, and a multi-threaded test that uses all threads, or nT, of a tested CPU.

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Cinebench shows the Core Ultra 9 285K at its best. The Z890 Taichi Lite returns a result within a margin of error of the ASUS and MSI dual-DIMM boards.

Blender

A rendering application like Blender is just one of many reasons a user will consider a high-core-count CPU like a Core Ultra 9 285K. We use the Whitelands demo file and record how long it takes to render the image.

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The motherboard makes little difference in our Blender test; the result of 397 seconds is nearly the same as that on the other Z890 boards we've tested so far.

Handbrake

Handbrake is a simple-to-use video encoding and transcoding application. Here, we convert a 4K movie trailer to 1080p. The results below show the average FPS, where a higher result means the task will take less time to complete.

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The 285K is an excellent chip for rendering and encoding; we see it again here. The ASRock board is marginally behind, but not by a notable amount.

Benchmarks - File Compression and Memory latency

7Zip

7Zip is a commonly used free file compression and decompression app. It's influenced by memory speed and latency changes and scales with the number of CPU threads.

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A result of nearly 190 BIPS in this memory-sensitive benchmark puts the Taich Lite slightly behind, but again, only by a little.

AIDA64 Memory Latency

Memory latency has traditionally favored Intel and its monolithic designs; however, Arrow Lake is far less impressive in that regard. A nanosecond or two here or there is not noticeable, but more significant margins, particularly when the memory is frequently accessed, will result in more undesirable and cumulative idle cycles.

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The 285K's memory latency performance is a weak point of the new architecture, but a decent DDR5-7200 kit such as the G.Skill one we use for testing shaves a good 10ns off of what you'd expect from a DDR5-6000 kit.

Benchmarks - PCMark and 3DMark

PCMark 10 Productivity

We'd love to use our PCs purely for leisure, but some of us have to work, too! The PCMark 10 productivity test performs a series of tests using office productivity applications.

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The ASRock falls into second place in the PCMark10 productivity benchmark.

3DMark Storage

UL's newest 3DMark SSD Gaming Test is the most comprehensive SSD gaming test ever devised. It is superior to testing against games themselves because, as a trace, it is much more consistent than variations that will occur between runs of the actual game. This test is the same as running the actual game without the inconsistencies inherent in application testing.

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The MSI leads the pack here, perhaps due to its M.2 slot location, but the ASRock isn't far behind.

3DMark Time Spy Extreme

Time Spy Extreme is losing favor as a graphics benchmark in favor of Speed Way and Steel Nomad, but its CPU test is still a good measure of multi-core performance.

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The ASRock delivered a strong CPU test result, though its graphics score was slightly behind.

Benchmarks - Gaming

Cyberpunk 2077

Cyberpunk 2077 is brutal on graphics cards, but when things like ray tracing are removed, it becomes more sensitive to CPU and memory performance differences.

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The tested boards all deliver essentially identical results in this GPU-limited game.

Horizon Zero Dawn

Horizon Zero Dawn can achieve high frame rates with powerful graphics cards when using the' favor performance' preset.

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Here's another gaming result that shows the boards all neck and neck.

Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition

Metro Exodus received an update that added improved DLSS support, enhanced ray tracing features, and variable rate shading, among other things. Still, with a powerful graphics card, it is affected by CPU and memory performance at 1080p, though less so with a card like the RTX 4070 Ti Super.

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The three gaming results show that the motherboard usually makes little difference in gaming performance when all other components and settings are equal.

VRM and SSD Temperatures

These tests are performed to show off the differences between each motherboard's cooling assemblies. In the case of VRM testing, each board is subjected to a 20-minute Cinebench loop, while the SSD test records the peak temperature recorded during the lengthy 3DMark Storage test.

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The Z890 Taichi Lite's heatsink might not be the most attention-grabbing, but it's fully capable, and a fully loaded 285K presents it with no challenge.

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It's 55 degrees all around here. The Taichi Lite's primary heatsink has enough surface area to handle the demands of a PCIe 5.0 drive without an issue, as long as your case has decent airflow.

Final Thoughts

If the cost of a high-end Z890 motherboard is off-putting, but you still want all the features the Z890 platform offers, the ASRock Z890 Taichi Lite may be just the board you're looking for.

ASRock or any other motherboard maker could create a 24-carat gold-plated board that looks amazing, but it won't mean squat if it has a weak feature set or performs poorly. On the flip side, ASRock could have made the Taichi Lite with a green PCB covered with pink polka dots, and it would find buyers given its attractive price, high-end feature set, and competitive performance.

Not that the Taichi Lite is ugly, but the point stands. The concept is an excellent one. Motherboards are just circuit boards with eye-catching flourishes and an expensive coat of paint. Things like 5G LAN, Wi-Fi 7, and MOSFETs are just chips on a PCB. The fact that they're there is more important than how they look. If you're like me and prefer to keep your system out of sight and out of mind, then there's little else on the market that competes in terms of feature set and value for money.

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Realistically, there's little more you could want short of a fancy OLED screen or 10G LAN. Sure, it's not perfect. An extra PCIe slot or two would be welcome, and some would prefer a single 10G LAN port to 2.5G and 5G, but for a user looking for an affordable board with loads of storage capability, lots of USB ports including TB4, good connectivity and a VRM designed for an overclocked 285K or any other chip Intel will release in the future, then the Z890 Taichi has few competitors that tick all of those boxes at its price point.

The GIGABYTE Z890 AORUS Pro, MSI MPG Z890 Edge TI, and ASUS ROG Strix Z890-A come close, but none of them has six M.2 slots, dual LAN, 9600MHz+ memory support, and a VRM as strong as the Taichi's.

Undoubtedly, looks are important to many folks, especially if you have an open case and want to build a PC that's as much of a showpiece as it is a PC. If that is so, some lovely-looking and competent boards out there deserve attention. But, if you rate features and value for money ahead of aesthetics, then you need to check out the Z890 Taichi Lite.