ASRock Launches Z790 And B650E Taichi Lite Motherboards That Stick To The Basics
However, your author does have one big complaint about the X570 Taichi, and that's the big honking plate that covers most of the bottom half of the board. It doesn't serve very well as an SSD heatsink what with having no fins, and it makes getting to the M.2 sockets a pain. It's a common complaint with modern motherboards: form over function, where aesthetics take precedence over an easy-to-use product.
What kind of high-end features? Things like 24-phase VRMs to power thirsty high-end CPUs, PCIe 5.0 GPU and M.2 slots for the fastest interconnect possible, and tons of I/O including USB4 support. The Z790 board in particular has support for USB-PD 3.0 fast charging at up to 60W, too.
We say "should" because we don't actually know how these new boards will be priced yet, even though ASRock says that they are "here." We couldn't find them available for sale at any retailers worldwide, but the Z790 Taichi and X670E Taichi are both readily available—for $399 and $499 respectively. Hopefully these new boards will be closer to the $200 mark.
