ASRock Z790 Taichi Overview
Taking a first look at the Z790 Taichi we can see that it is quite a large board. This is an E-ATX motherboard so you are going to want to make sure it will fit in your case. As far as the design goes ASRock is sticking with the black, silver and gold that we saw on the Z690 Taichi. Overall I think the board looks quite good.
Starting at the CPU socket we have Intel’s LGA 1700 socket, which will support both 12th and 13th generation Intel core processors. Surrounding the CPU socket we have our power delivery components. ASRock is making use of a 24+1+2 power phase design that makes use of 105A smart power stages. So with 24 phases for the CPU that will give you 2520A of power. This is more than enough power for the Intel Core i9-13900K.
The power delivery components are covered by two very large heatsinks. These heatsinks come together with the rear I/O cover and really bring the top section of the board together. The heatsink closest to the rear I/O actually has a fan embedded inside of it. The rear I/O cover has the gears and clockwork design that we are used to from Taichi motherboards, but we have no moving gear here like we’ve seen on previous Intel Taichi motherboard from ASRock.
At the top corner of the board you’ll find two 8-pin EPS connectors. Moving over the top edge of the board there are two 4-pin fan headers. The first one of for your CPU fan and the second one can be used for a fan or pump. It supports up to 3A or 36W.
There are four DDR5 DIMM slots on this board, which are metal-reinforced. These support up to 128GB of DDR5-7000 memory.
Coming over to the edge of the board we have two 3-pin addressable RGB headers, your 24-pin ATX power connection, a 6-pin power connection, USB 3.2 gen 2×2 header, USB 3.2 gen 1 header, and 8 SATA 6GB/s ports. The SATA ports as well as the USB 3.2 gen 1 header are at a 90-degree angle so they are not in the way of your graphics or expansion cards.
At the bottom of the board you’ll find the rest of your headers and connections. From left to right you have your HD audio headers, a 4-pin standard RGB header, 3-pin addressable RGB header, two 4-pin fan headers, a USB 3.2 gen 1 header, two USB 2.0 headers, POST code display, two 4-pin fan headers, power, reset, and clear CMOS buttons, another 4-pin fan header, and your front panel headers.
The bottom half of the board is really characterized by heatsinks. These go together quite well and have different designs on them. There are three heatsinks that can be removed, which reveal your five M.2 slots. The top slot (M2_1) connects directly to the CPU and runs at PCIe 5.0 x4, while the other slot there (M2_2) runs at PCIe 4.0 x4. Also you can see by their design you can only use either M2_1 or M2_2, not both. If you populate M2_1, PCIE1 will downgrade to x8 mode and if you populate PCIE2 M2_1 will be disabled completely. The bottoms three slots (M2_3, M2_4, M2_5) are all PCIe 4.0 x4.
As far as expansion slots go you have two PCI-Express 5.0 x16 slots and a single PCI-Express 4.0 x16 slot (x4) electrical. The top slot will run at x16 speeds with a single card installed, but if you popular the second slot both slots will run at x8 speeds. The top two slots are metal reinforced.
Coming over to the rear I/O we have an integrated I/O shield which has the Taichi logo on it. As far as connections go you’ll find two USB 2.0, HDMI, WiFi antennas, audio, four USB 3.2 gen 1 Type-A ports, Gigabit LAN, 2.5G LAN, two more USB 3.2 gen 1 Type-A ports, two Thunderbolt 4 / USB4 Type-C ports that support video output, and two USB 3.2 gen 2 Type-A ports. The 2.5 LAN port is powered by the Killer E3100G and the WiFi is powered by the Killer AX1675.
The back of the board is covered in an aluminum plate which not only helps with cooling but adds stability as well.
