ASRock X870E Taichi OCF Motherboard Review - A memory OC monster

TweakTown Rating: 91%

Our Verdict

If you love to tweak, and then tweak some more, the ASRock X870E Taichi OCF is well worth considering. There are better alternatives for non-OCers though.

Pros

• CPU and memory overclocking capabilities
• Strong thermal design
• Mega VRM
• Excellent audio section
• Lots of connectivity and expansion options

Cons

• BIOS is dated, especially the fan control page
• Non-overclockers should look elsewhere
• Lane sharing issues if fully populated

Should you buy it?

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Buy at Amazon for $499.99 USD

Buy at Newegg for $499.99 USD

Buy at Amazon for £501.82

Introduction, Specifications, and Pricing

Anyone who's interested in extreme overclocking is aware of the prowess of ASRock OC Formula motherboards. However, until now, they have been exclusive to Intel platforms. The ASRock X870E Taichi OCF is the first OC Formula board for AMD platforms, and it comes with extreme specifications designed to extract every bit of performance from your CPU or memory, whether you're playing with liquid nitrogen or more worldly cooling.

The X870E Taichi OCF is loaded with OC functionality, but extreme overclockers make up a very small part of the market. ASRock has also chosen to incorporate an array of easy DIY features, connectivity, and expansion options, making it a truly high-end board even without considering its OC focus.

The board includes native support for Ryzen 7000 and 9000 series CPUs. It also supports 8000 CPUs, which is important, as they are the AM5 CPUs best suited to extreme memory overclocking.

Yellow isn't a color you'll see much on 2026 motherboards. I personally like it, much as I did the OC-focused DFI boards 15 or 20 years ago (Yes, I'm that old), but some may find a more neutral black more appealing, making it easier to blend into a variety of build themes. It's a notably heavy board. The primary VRM heatsink is huge, and the back plate obviously adds weight too.

Alongside a host of overclocking features, including a top-spec VRM, the board includes dual PCIe 5.0 x16 slots, two memory slots, six(!) M.2 slots, WiFi 7, 5G LAN, and loads of speedy USB ports, including dual USB4.

At the time of writing, the ASRock X870E Taichi OCF is available for $499. That's pricey in anyone's language, but relative to competing boards such as the ASUS ROG Crosshair X870E Apex and GIGABYTE AORUS X870 Tachyon ICE, it's a relative bargain.

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Packaging, Accessories, and Overview

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The X870E Taichi OCF comes in a large box with a glitter-like finish. The motherboard itself is well secured, and it needed to be, as my box arrived with a large dent in one of the rear corners.

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The rear of the box features a comprehensive rundown of the board's key features. This is a board with specs that are clearly aimed at overclockers and ultra-enthusiasts.

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The X870E Taichi OCF comes with a fairly standard set of accessories for a board at this price. Included are two SATA cables, two thermistor cables, ARGB splitter cables, a case sticker, regulatory notices, a quick installation guide, and an ASRock keycap.

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The WiFi antenna is adjustable and feels well-built. Finally, there's a memory cooling fan that will come in handy for overclockers looking to push high voltages through their memory. High spec kits can get a bit hot under the collar when pushed hard.

Motherboard Overview

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The X870E OCF now falls under ASRock's Taichi brand and features the gears-and-cogs aesthetic common to Taichi boards. It is undoubtedly inspired by the OC Formula's of the past, though. As mentioned, the yellow theme is personally appealing, but some may prefer a more neutral color scheme depending on your lighting (if any) and partnering components.

The board comes with a huge array of overclocker-centric onboard headers and buttons. ASRock refers to these as the OC toolkit. The buttons labeled 1,2 and 3 are for storing profiles. By default, they include in-house overclocker NickShih's profiles. The + and - buttons provide instant frequency control in conjunction with ASRock's Hyper BCLK engine, which is a separate Base Clock generator chip. There are safe boot and OC retry buttons, LN2 and Slow Mode switches, power and reset buttons, and voltage read points.

There are seven 4-pin headers, six of which can supply up to 36W/3A. The USB header complement is excellent, offering up to two Type-C 20Gbps ports, two 5Gbps ports, and six USB 2.0 ports. One of the 20Gbps ports supports 36W PD, while the other supports 15W. ASRock recommends connecting a 6-pin PCIe power cable to the adjacent port when using both the 36W-supported USB header and PCIe slots simultaneously.

Even overclocking boards incorporate RGB these days. Should you fancy a bit of bling, the X870E Taichi OCF includes three addressable RGB headers and another 12V header for RGB strips up to 36W. The board itself features a row of RGB LEDs underneath the bottom-most M.2 heatsink.

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The backplate covers the entire rear of the board, except for the CPU area. It's not just cosmetic. It protects the rear components and serves as a secondary heatsink for the board's VRM subsystem.

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A common feature of OC boards is the inclusion of just two RAM slots, which results in shorter traces, cleaner signals, and, in turn, superior DRAM overclocking. The X870E Taichi OCF supports up to 10400 MT/s when paired with a Ryzen 8000-series processor. Ryzen 9000 chips support 8400+ MT/s. Of course, the speeds you can reach will depend on the capabilities of your memory and CPU.

Unfortunately, I don't have an 8000 series CPU, but I did have a go with a set of G.Skill 7600MHz 2x16GB memory and hit DDR5-8400, though stability was still a concern. Still, that's the best I have managed with my Ryzen 9 9950X processor and this memory kit. I look forward to seeing what the board can do when Zen 6 CPUs are released. It's also worth noting that CUDIMM memory is not supported on the AM5 platform except in bypass mode. That may change with Zen 6. Having said that, ASRock will likely release an X970E Taichi OCF for even more insane memory OC.

But mega speeds on the AM5 platform are mostly for prestige and app-specific benchmarking. Such speeds require switching the memory clock and the memory controller clock from their default 1:1 mode to 1:2 mode. This allows the memory to run faster, but it introduces a latency penalty that isn't overcome without substantially higher memory clock speeds. This is why AMD recommends memory in the DDR5-6000 to DDR5-6400 range with tight timings for the best performance.

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Storage-wise, the X870E Taichi includes a whopping six M.2 slots, two of which support PCIe 5.0 x4. Two support PCIe 4.0 x4, one supports PCIe 4.0 x2, and the final slot supports PCIe 3.0 x4. They are all located on the motherboard PCB. With that many slots, there's some inevitable lane sharing, even with the X870E chipset, so it's well worth checking out the board's website to minimize compromises if you intend to fully populate your system.

There are three expansion slots. The metal-reinforced slots support PCIe 5.0 x16 or x8/x8 modes. The primary slot features an EZ-Release mechanism that eases GPU removal. The third slot runs at PCIe 4.0 x4. I really like the layout as it keeps the two PCIe 5.0 M.2 slots above the graphics card and in the path of front-to-back case airflow.

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The primary M2_1 and secondary M2_2 slots each feature dedicated heatsinks. The other four are cooled by a single large plate that doubles as a chipset heatsink. The primary heatsink is notably chunky and features a well-designed retention mechanism. The other two heatsinks are secured with screws.

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The X870E Taichi OCF comes with one of the most powerful VRM systems you'll find on any consumer motherboard. It's a 22+2+1 phase design with 110A stages. Given that this board is built to chase extreme OC records, it's safe to say regular users will not be hindered in any way when using more down-to-earth cooling.

The picture above shows just how big the X870E Taichi OCF's VRM heatsink is. That much surface area is more than enough to keep VRM temperatures under control with any processor. A heatpipe connects the two separate areas. In our testing, we saw a peak temperature of 53 degrees, which is matched only by the MSI X870E Godlike, a board with finned heatsinks that costs over twice as much as the Taichi OCF.

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The X870E Taichi OCF's I/O panel is jam-packed for an OC board. The USB complement begins with dual USB4 Type-C ports with DP support. These are joined by another 10Gbps Type-C port, seven Type-A 10Gbps ports, and two USB 2.0 ports, giving it 12 USB ports in total.

A Realtek RTL8126 controller controls the single 5G LAN port. WiFi 7 is standard at this price point, but ASRock chose MediaTek's MT7925B22M, which supports 160MHz connections, not the faster 320MHz type common to competing boards. This is likely for cost-saving reasons.

Next are the audio ports, which consist of 3.5mm line-in and line-out ports and S/PDIF. These are driven by a Realtek ALC4082 codec. The audio section is bolstered by an ESS SABRE9219 DAC and WIMA capacitors, making this a very good onboard audio solution.

Finally, we have a single PS/2 port, an HDMI port, a CMOS clear button, a BIOS selection switch, and a BIOS flashback button. PS/2 is still favored by some overclockers because it allows USB to be completely disabled, freeing up CPU cycles.

UEFI, Software and Test System

UEFI

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ASRock has packed the X870E OCF BIOS with features and esoteric settings. However, it's unusual not to have an Easy Mode, making it a bit more difficult for a less experienced user to set up and go. It's clearly a board designed for overclockers.

There is nothing to complain about with the font and readability of the design. However, I have long been critical of the poor Fan-tastic control page. It looks like a throwback to something from two decades ago. ASRock's competitors have stepped up, and let's hope ASRock is hard at work creating something new for its next-generation boards.

I try to avoid installing motherboard manufacturers' complete software suites due to excessive bloat. A visit to the ASRock website will give you options to download utilities such as the ASRock motherboard control utility and Polychrome RGB control software. The Nahimic audio software might be worth a look, too.

All the relevant drivers are available, too, though it's worth checking the AMD website for newer versions of the chipset and integrated graphics drivers.

Test System

• CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 9950X - Buy from Amazon
• GPU: MSI GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Super Ventus 3X - Buy from Amazon
• RAM: G.Skill Trident Z Neo RGB 2x16GB DDR5-6000 CL30 - Buy from Amazon
• Cooler: Cooler Master MasterLiquid PL360 Flux - Buy from Amazon
• OS Storage: Teamgroup T-Force Z540 2TB - Buy from Amazon
• Power Supply: Super Flower Leadex Titanium 850W - Buy from Amazon
• OS: Microsoft Windows 11 Pro - Buy from Amazon

Benchmarks - Rendering and Encoding

Cinebench 2024

Cinebench 2024 is a reliable, widely used benchmark that measures both single- and multi-threaded performance. Note that all our benchmark testing used the latest available Windows updates.

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The X870E Taichi OCF performed as expected, achieving 2,287 in the nT test and 140 in the 1T test. That's about what we expect from our test configuration with small variances either way.

Blender

A rendering application like Blender is just one of many reasons a user might consider a high-core-count CPU, such as the Ryzen 9 9950X. We use the Whitelands demo file and record how long it takes to render the image.

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A result of 429 seconds means the Taichi OCF is the second fastest board here, though a second or two over a seven-minute test is negligible.

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 value indicates the task will take less time to complete.

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A result of 159.2 FPS is just over one FPS below the top result. Nothing to speak of, really

Benchmarks - File Compression and Memory Latency

7Zip

7Zip is a commonly used free file compression and decompression app. It's very sensitive to changes in memory speed and latency, and scales with the number of CPU threads.

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A score of 231.64 BIPS is a strong result for the X870E Taichi OCF. Maybe it's a coincidence, but this test and the AIDA64 memory latency test have the ASUS Apex and Taichi OCF in the top two spots. Is that an advantage the dual-DIMM boards have?

AIDA64 Memory Latency

Memory latency has been an area where Intel has traditionally held an advantage. Chiplet architectures inevitably add some latency compared to monolithic chips. The real-world benefits aren't that important, though.

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70.3 nanoseconds is right alongside the ASUS X870E Apex. Tweakers will love squeezing every fraction of memory performance out of this thing and will be able to get that number well under 70ns.

Benchmarks - PCMark and 3DMark

PCMark 10 Productivity

We'd love to use our PCs solely 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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Ultimately, all the tested boards are within a couple of percent of one another, though the Taichi OCF is in the lead!

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.

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Top of the pops for the X870E Taichi OCF here.

3DMark Time Spy Extreme

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

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The differences between the boards are minor, with only a few hundred points separating them when measured by CPU score.

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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It's no surprise that the motherboard makes little difference in graphically limited scenarios. Though again, the Taichi OCF is at the top of the chart.

Horizon Zero Dawn

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

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The OCF is proving to be a very competitive gaming option.

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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Just four frames per second cover the entire field in this test.

VRM and SSD Temperatures

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

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A peak temperature of 53 degrees is a very good result. That massive heatsink and overengineered VRM simply laugh off a stock 9950X.

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The Taichi OCF's primary M.2 heatsink has a lot of surface area. Not as much as some, but perhaps its slightly unusual 'tower' design helps it here.

Final Thoughts

It's really great to see several OC boards make their debut on the AM5 platform. No longer are boards like the OC Formula, ASUS Apex, and GIGABYTE AORUS Tachyon exclusive to Intel platforms. AMD overclocking was always there, but the AM5 platform has now gotten the attention it deserves after years of focus on Intel overclocking.

A board like the ASRock X870E OC Formula is mostly a known quantity for anyone serious about overclocking. Users at sites like HWBot will have seen the results the board can achieve when it's in the hands of skilled overclockers. ASRock itself sends out press releases citing this world record or that one. It goes without saying that if this board can handle a CPU and memory cooled by liquid nitrogen, it can handle air and watercooling too.

$499 is a competitive price for the Taichi OCF, at least compared to ASUS and GIGABYTE's OC offerings, but it's still very much a niche product. At this price, there are better daily driver options. Though the board doesn't lack in connectivity and networking, it's best suited to users who like to extract every last bit of performance from their CPU and, particularly, memory. It has to be said that the Taichi OCF has an excellent audio setup, with a separate DAC and additional circuitry.

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The board has an incredibly powerful VRM solution that is more than enough to power an overclocked Ryzen 9 9950X, even with liquid nitrogen cooling. It will easily handle whatever AMD comes up with for Zen 6.

I do have a criticism, and I've said it over and over again. ASRock's BIOS needs a redesign. It's looking very dated in the face of competitors' refreshes. ASRock fans will know where everything is and will find all the settings they need, but the fan-tastic page, put simply, looks bad. It's also curious that there's no Easy Mode page for the more casual users. On the plus side, the board is a strong performer, and gaming enthusiasts who love to tweak will have a lot of fun tuning their system to extract more FPS from what is already a strong baseline.

The X870E Taichi OCF still includes the expected features, such as USB4, WiFi 7 (though only 160MHz), and ease-of-use functionality. But you can add to that a 5G LAN, a high-quality audio solution, and a capable thermal design. The 36W PD option for the front USB-C port is also a nice feature.

If the price of the Crosshair X870E Apex turns you off, the ASRock X870E Taichi OCF is a compelling, cheaper alternative. But it's not for everyone. If you're a user who's more into setting PBO and leaving your memory at the EXPO setting, there are other options worth considering at this price. ASRock's own X870E Taichi Lite is one such option, and it will save you $200.