The Box and Packaging
The box and packaging comes with a lot of extras. You get the usual user’s manual, software setup guide, a Taichi post card, a Taichi key ring, 2 pairs of SATA cables, 3 sets of M.2 screws, velcro straps for cable management, a USB bracket, along with a drivers disc, as well as the graphics card holder, a bundled 3cm active fan and the WiFi antennas.
The ASRock Z690 Taichi Motherboard
The motherboard is absolutely feature-packed and comes in a matte black finish with some gold trimmings thats’s typical of their Taichi series. The entire board is covered by serveal large full length heatshield/heatspreaders that helps cool your SSDs. Near the top of the board, you’ll find extra heatsinks with heatpipe that helps to cool the VRMs/Mosfets surrounding the processor socket.
The DDR5 DIMMS slots are reinforced and surfaced mounted onto the motherboard to give better physical strength as well as a more stable memory signal. This superior design, allows improvements in overclocking your ram. Please take note: The DDR5 memory slot is NOT compatible with DDR4 ram.
The board also comes with 2 x PCIe 5.0 x16 steel slot, 1 x PCIe 4.0 x16 slot, and 1 PCIe 3.0 x1 slot. Don’t worry, we can confirm the PCIE 5.0 slot is backward compatible with PCIE 4.0 graphic cards and/other expansion cards.
The I/O panel is completely covered by the shround displaying the Tacihi logo, which of course comes with RGB. The 4 little red squares located on the bottom left-hand corned of the board are the high end audio WIMA Caps. There’s also an internal independent SATA & USB Ports for extra secutiry. Once this feature is activated from BIOS setting, the independent SATA & USB port is cutoff from other ports to prevent malwares and ransomware from accessing.
A Closer Look
There are 2 x 8-pin PCIE power connectors on the top left-hand corner of the board. These are required to power the board to give you that extra stability.
For storage, it comes with 2 x Hyper M.2 PCIE Gen4x4 and 1 x M.2 PCIE Gen3x4 slots, as well as 6 SATA3 ports for SSDs. The board comes with plenty of LAN and Wifi options, and this is well-handled by Killer E3100 2.5G LAN, Intel Gigabit LAN and Killer AX1675 802.11ax (WiFi 6E).
For connectivity, the board offers 2 x Thunderbolt™ 4/USB4 Type-C, 1 x USB 3.2 Gen2x2 Front Type-C, 2 x Rear USB 3.2 Gen2 Type A, a total of 8 xUSB 3.2 Gen1 (4 Rear, 4 Front), and 1 x Independent USB 3.2 Gen1 Type A Port. I also like the usual onboard power on/off and reset buttons, as well as their clear CMOS button and their diagnostic LEDs.
Other connectors on the I/O panel include the BIOS flashback button, connectors for your WiFi antenna, HDMI port, an array of audio connectors, USB 3.2 Gen 2 ports Thunderbolt 4 Type-C ports, Killer E3100 2.5G LAN and an Intel Gigabit LAN port.
