ASRock X870E Taichi White Review: a premium AM5 motherboard with 10G LAN and WiFi 7

TweakTown Rating: 93%

Our Verdict

Stunning looks, great cooling and a strong feature set make this ASRock one to consider for lovers of a clean and white build.

Pros

• Lovely design
• Very good cooling
• Powerful VRM
• 10G LAN
• Lots of fast USB ports

Cons

• Lacks official high-speed memory support
• No front USB PD support
• Expensive compared to the regular Taichi
• Dated BIOS design

Should you buy it?

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Introduction, Specifications, and Pricing

ASRock's Taichi motherboards have a long history of offering excellent feature sets at competitive prices. Their designs have evolved over the years too, going from simpler yin-yang designs to a more premium steampunk aesthetic, complete with cogs and wheels. The X870E Taichi White - as the name suggests - is the company's first all-white Taichi. It joins the ever-increasing number of white motherboards, and it really looks the part.

Just one glance at the X870E Taichi White leaves no ambiguity that this is a high-end motherboard. It's got a great set of connectivity options. The headline features include 10G LAN, WiFi 7, a high-spec VRM, lots of USB, including dual USB4, four M.2 slots, and a 64MB BIOS ROM which guarantees support for Zen 6 and likely Zen 7 CPUs.

The X870E Taichi White supports AMD AM5 Ryzen 7000, 8000, and 9000 series CPUs. It supports up to 256GB of memory at 8200MT/s+. It comes with a range of ease-of-use features, including two toolless M.2 heatsinks and a PCIe quick-release mechanism. It's a watercooling-friendly board too, and pairing it with a white-colored AIO cooler or custom loop and a matching case will look really lovely indeed.

The board is available for $439. For what you get, that's a good price, but it's worth noting that the regular X870E Taichi is available for under $300, which is a real steal for what it offers.

Packaging, Accessories, and Overview

Packaging and Accessories

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White really does look all right.

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The rear of the box is jammed with all of the board's key specifications, features, and compliance logos. Not that it matters, but an actual photo of the board would have been nice.

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The X870E Taichi White's list of bundled accessories is solid. The Wi-Fi antenna comes with a sticky pad on the bottom to keep it standing upright. You get a case badge and the usual set of documentation.

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You get four SATA cables, which is odd given the board only has three SATA ports. There are three thermistor cables for measuring the temperatures of anything you wish to attach them to. Finally, there's an ARGB splitter cable to help minimize cable spaghetti.

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How many M.2 and SATA drives can I install on this motherboard, and are there any lane-sharing concerns?

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Question #2

Does the X870E Taichi White include 10G LAN and what controller does it use?

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What WiFi standard and bandwidth support does the onboard wireless provide?

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Motherboard Overview

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The X870E Taichi White is an EATX board, so care is needed in choosing a case.

ASRock really nailed the board's aesthetic. Looks always come down to individual tastes, but the white coloring with its mix of straight lines and circular patterning looks amazing. All of the cables are white too. There are two ARGB sections located atop the rear I/O area and along the bottom M.2 heatsink. Three ARGB headers and a 12V RGB header make the X870E Taichi White an excellent choice for a resplendent RGB build.

The USB header complement is good, offering a range of options to suit your case. There are headers supporting up to four USB 2.0 ports, four USB 5 Gbps ports, and a single Type-C 20 Gbps port. Sadly, the 20 Gbps port lacks PD support, which is becoming an increasingly common feature on high-end motherboards.

The board includes an impressive eight fan headers, with all but one supporting up to 36W, making it a good option for powerful water cooling or daisy-chained fan setups. No fewer than three thermistor headers show that the X870E Taichi White will happily support full custom loops. You also get power and reset buttons, and a debug LED display.

Common to all refresh 800 series boards is a 64MB BIOS ROM. AMD has confirmed that AM5 will remain supported for many years to come. AM6 will not arrive until DDR6 and PCIe 6.0 become viable, and that large ROM means the board won't have a problem supporting the entire AM5 CPU family. ASRock integrates a LAN driver so users can get online after a Windows install. However, a WiFi driver would be preferable as your modem/router might be several rooms away.

ASRock doesn't go all-out on increasingly common DIY-friendly features. The important ones are present, though, consisting of two toolless M.2 heatsinks and a PCIe quick-release mechanism.

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A full-cover backplate covers the rear of the board. It helps to cool the VRM and the dual X870E chipsets too.

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The X870E Taichi White's four DIMM slots support up to DDR5-8200+ speeds. Some competitors support speeds well above 9000 MT/s. The Taichi White is almost certainly capable of more than 8200 MT/s, but given the ridiculous pricing of high-speed kits, that's not a problem at this point. With CUDIMM support almost certain for Zen 6, I'd expect ASRock to validate faster kits in the future.

It's always worth mentioning that for Zen 5, AMD recommends memory in the 6000-6400 MT/s range in 1:1 mode for the best balance of speed, latency, and compatibility.

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The board offers two PCIe 5.0 x16 expansion slots. They can operate in x16 or x8/x8 modes.

The X870E Taichi White supports up to four M.2 SSDs, with one supporting PCIe 5.0 and three supporting PCIe 4.0. The primary slot supports PCIe 5.0 x4 drives and is cooled by a dedicated heatsink. A second slot is also cooled by its own heatsink. It is well-placed next to the memory slots, allowing it to benefit from cooler intake air in a typical front-to-back airflow case. A single large plate cools the other two slots. It's independent of the heatsink used to cool the dual X870E chipset.

While some boards offer dual PCIe 5.0 SSD support, using two concurrently inevitably entails lane-sharing compromises, which the X870E Taichi White avoids.

Curiously, the X870E Taichi includes just three SATA ports (despite shipping with four cables). SATA is losing relevance, but it's worth noting the regular X870E Taichi included six.

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The primary PCIe 5.0 M.2 heatsink has a large surface area and attaches via a well-designed toolless mechanism. It supports dual-sided drives. The second heatsink is identical and also includes a backside thermal pad.

A single large plate cools the other M.2 slots. It uses a screw-in design which can be a bit fiddly, but its large surface area is welcome.

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The X870E Taichi White includes a very powerful 24+2+1-phase VRM with 110A stages. This board won't have any problem powering an overclocked Ryzen 9 processor, even if Zen 6 and Zen 7 have large increases in TDP and core count.

The VRM heatsinks provide a large surface area with deep channels. The larger section includes a small embedded fan. I always worry about the noise such fans can make, but in this case, it was all but silent. When the CPU is loaded, the AIO fans easily drowned out any noise coming from it. The VRM cooling test result was excellent, peaking at 54 degrees Celsius.

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The rear I/O of the X870E Taichi White is very good. The dual USB4 Type-C ports are joined by five 10 Gbps ports, three 5 Gbps ports, and two USB 2.0 ports, for a total of 12 ports. The yellow USB ports are what ASRock calls Lightning Gaming ports. These have their own interfaces, which aim to reduce latency and jitter. The Ultra USB Power ports draw power from the 12V PSU rail and are better suited to sensitive devices such as a DAC or headphones.

A Marvell Aquantia AQC113 controller provides a single 10G LAN port. The MediaTek MT7925 WiFi 7 controller supports 160 MHz connections only.

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. ASRock adds an ESS Sabre DAC and WIMA capacitors. It's one of the better 2026-era motherboard audio solutions.

Finally, there's a single HDMI port, CMOS clear, and BIOS flashback buttons. Overall, the board offers a strong set of connectivity options. It would be nice to have full 320 MHz WiFi 7 support though.

UEFI and Test System

UEFI

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I'm surprised that ASRock didn't take the opportunity to refresh its aging UEFI interface with the release of the X870E Taichi White.

There is nothing to complain about with the fonts and readability of the Advanced Pages. But the Easy-Mode page looks very dated. I have long been critical of the poor Fan-tastic control page. It looks like it hasn't even reached the UEFI era. 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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A result of 2,286 in the nT test and 139 in the 1T test is right in the window of what a 9950X should score, even if it's a tiny bit behind the leaders.

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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Though the entire field is covered by only 9 seconds over the course of a test that takes over 7 minutes, it's better to be near the top rather than the bottom.

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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It's a mid-pack result for the X870E Taichi White, which means it performs as expected.

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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It's a par score in the 7-zip test.

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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The AM5 platform and its AGESA microcode are well and truly free of the glitches common to early AM5 BIOSes, and the X870E Taichi White performs as expected. A nanosecond here or there is inconsequential in the real world.

Benchmarks - 3DMark

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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Well well, that's a good result! The ASRock grabs the top spot.

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 in Time Spy Extreme 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 features like ray tracing are disabled, it becomes more sensitive to differences in CPU and memory performance.

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It's no surprise that the motherboard makes little difference in graphically limited scenarios. A rogue background process can steal a frame or two here or there.

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 differences here are negligible in percentage terms.

Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition

Metro Exodus received an update that added improved DLSS support, enhanced ray tracing, and variable rate shading, among other features. Still, with a powerful graphics card, the CPU, and memory affect 1080p performance, 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. The X870E Taichi White won't have any issue pushing high frame rates with a powerful GPU. With a more affordable card, the motherboards make very little difference to gaming performance.

VRM and SSD Temperatures

These tests are performed to highlight 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 54 degrees is an excellent result for the X870E Taichi White. It beats several boards that cost a lot more.

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ASRock Taichi boards with AMD or Intel chipsets usually include highly capable SSD heatsinks, and that is the case again, with an excellent result.

Final Thoughts

ASRock's first white Taichi is a capable, feature-rich board that stands out thanks to its attractive design, strong feature set, and relative affordability. That last point comes with an asterisk, though.

If you are a fan of white motherboards, the ASRock X870E Taichi White is automatically appealing. A build with this board will look great. It demands to be shown off inside a windowed case with a helping of appropriate ARGB lighting.

Its feature set will hold it in good stead for years to come. Truly next-generation features such as USB5, PCIe 6.0, and DDR6 memory won't be available on 900-series boards. The X870E Taichi White's headline features, such as 10G LAN, PCIe 5.0 support, high-quality audio, and a powerful VRM, will remain up to date with Zen 6, and maybe even Zen 7.

There is an area where ASRock is lagging behind its competitors: its UEFI. It looks very dated compared to competitors' refreshes. It's surprising given how long 800 series motherboards have been on the market. Longtime ASRock users will know where everything is and will find all the settings they need, but the Easy-Mode page, and particularly the FanTastic page, put simply, look bad.

The board performed as expected in our benchmarks, and it's got a highly commendable cooling system. It easily kept our 9950X and PCIe 5.0 SSD cool at all times. It's got powerful fan headers, making it a great option for users planning a watercooled multi-fan build.

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The board has a good set of connectivity and networking features. 10G LAN is the highlight, which is welcome for those with high-speed devices on their network, such as an SSD-based NAS. Criticisms are that it doesn't include full-speed 320MHz WiFi 7 or front USB PD. But with plenty of high-speed ports, the Taichi White is well-placed to sit at the heart of a system with many fast peripherals.

While some boards include five - or even six M.2 slots, the X870E Taichi White's four M.2 slots mean it avoids lane-sharing compromises that are inevitable with fully populated five-slot systems. A little more surprising is the inclusion of just three SATA ports. If you can afford one, a good 2TB or 4TB SATA SSA is perfectly capable of functioning as a storage or scratch drive. I think four ports should remain present on all motherboards for years to come. Well, I hope so.

When viewed in isolation, the $439 price of the X870E Taichi White is very good for what you get. But motherboards don't exist in a vacuum. ASRock's own X870E Taichi is phenomenal value at $300, and it loses just the 10G LAN and larger BIOS. It's also predominantly black. But $140 is a big chunk of change that can be allocated towards a better GPU or memory. Other boards such as the GIGABYTE X870E AORUS Pro Ice deserve consideration too.

But its strong feature set holds it in good stead. You have to spend a lot more to get more. The ASRock X870E Taichi White's amazing looks, excellent cooling, capable VRM, strong feature set, and future-looking capabilities make it a good investment for a system that will last for years to come. It earns our Best Feature award.