Quickly to the right hardware equipment …
Layout, Design and Features
ASRock X370 Taichi Equipment and other features
ASRock X370 Taichi Expansion cards
ASRock X370 Taichi Memory
ASRock X370 Taichi Hard disk drive connectors
ASRock X370 Taichi USB and Firewire
ASRock X370 Taichi Network
ASRock X370 Taichi Sound
ASRock X370 Taichi ATX back panel connectors
ASRock X370 Taichi PC System
Layout, Design and Features …
Here you see the nice black and white motherboard box of the ASRock X370 Taichi Socket AM4 motherboard.
The differences between AMD X370, B350 and A320 are basically in the possible connection, and thus also in the equipment. The AMD X370 chipset supports for example overclocking, two PCIe 3.0 x8 slots, up to eight PCIe 2.0 slots, 2 x USB 3.1 Gen2, 6 x USB 3.0 and 6 x SATA3. The AMD B350 chipset supports only up to six PCIe 2.0 lanes for slots, 2 x USB 3.1 and 4 x SATA3 ports, 2 x USB 3.0. Last but not least the entry level AMD A320 chipset supports no overclocking, only up to four PCIe 2.0 slots, 1 x USB 3.1, 2 x USB 3.0 and 4 x SATA3 ports. Thus today, we test the best chipset.
On the back of the box you can see a few features such as WiFi, SLI, PCIe Steel Slots, RGB LED, Dual M.2, USB 3.1 type-C as well as USB 3.1 type-A, Hyper BCLK Engine II and a lot more.
Inside the box is another box.
After removing and opening the box, we take a look at the contents.
As most high-quality ASRock motherboards, the X370 Taichi is bordered in foam for safe transport.
Already at the first glance this ASRock X370 Taichi high density sapphire black board looks very high-quality processed. It has very durable Nichicon 12K Black Caps capacitors, Premium 60A Power Chokes, 16 Power Phase Design, Digi power, Dual-Stack MOSFET and 7.1 HD Purity Sound 4 over ALC1220 with Nichicon Fine Gold Audio capacitors, 120dB SNR DAC and TI NE5532 headset amplifier.
The ASRock X370 Taichi offers one fast Ultra M.2 slot for PCIe Gen3 x4 modules with up to 32 GB/s and one M.2 slot for conventional 2230/2242/2260/2280 20 Gb/s M.2 modules.
On the picture you can see the new PCIe Steel Slot and a M.2 slot, where you can install 2230/2242/2260/2280 M.2 modules.
We have tested the X370 Taichi with a Crucial MX300 M.2 SSD.
On this white 4-pin 12V RGB header you can connect conventional RGB stripes in order to lighting, for example, the chassis. In addition, the X370 Taichi has even an AMD Fan LED connection.
ASRock has also RGB LEDs integrated below the chipset heatsink, which can be controlled as desired. The following image shows a few freely-selected colors on the previously tested ASRock Z270 Killer SLI motherboard.
The RGB LED header and the integrated RGB LEDs are controlled by the supplied ASRock RGB LED software. Currently there’s no RGB setting in the UEFI like known e.g. from Z270 Killer SLI except activation and deactivation. But the ASRock RGB LED Software menu offers a lot of variations like e.g. different colors.
You can select, if you like to control the RGB header separately or together with the RGB lighting below the chipset cooler.
And you can adjust in the ASRock RGB LED menu, if the LEDs should light continuously, breathe, random or even light up to the music. The user has numerous ways how and how fast light up the LED stripes or the chipset cooler LEDs and can of course also completely disable it. Certainly as already mentioned in the previous Z270 reviews, it’s no “must have” feature, but definitely “nice to have”!
Here you can see the internal USB3.0 header and the 24-pin ATX power connector as well as a few of the high-quality Nichicon 12K Black Caps capacitors.
Here you can see a motherboard side view with the protective I/O panel cover (I/O Armor) and the large XXL heat sink made of aluminium alloy, which is carefully installed on the MOSFETs.
Equipment and other features …
The ASRock X370 Taichi motherboard came with a manual, software setup guide, DVD, four SATA data cables, SLI HB Bridge 2S, two screws for the M.2 sockets, two ASRock WiFi 2.4/5 GHz antennas and an ATX I/O shield. USB Slot brackets and the ASRock 3.5-inch USB 3.0 front panel are optional available.
The ASRock X370 Taichi offers numerous features like for example the ASRock A-Tuning Tool, ASRock Instant Flash, ASRock Internet Flash, ASRock Easy RAID Installer, ASRock Easy Driver Installer, 16 Power Phase Design, Digi Power, ASRock RGB LED and ASRock FAN-Tastic Tuning.
Expansion cards …
The motherboard offers two PCI Express 3.0 x16 slots for AMD CrossFireX or nVidia SLI, whereby either one graphics card with x16 bandwidth or two graphics cards with x8 lanes bandwidth can be installed. In addition to the PCI Express 3.0 slots, there is a PCI Express 2.0 x16 slot and two PCIe 2.0 x1 slots.
Memory …
The ASRock X370 Taichi can be equipped with up to four DDR4 modules and is expandable depending upon operating system used (see list) up to maximally 64 GB memory.
Here you can see a picture of the four DDR4 memory slots with dual channel support:
The AMD AM4 motherboard supports DDR4 memory modules and can be optimized in the BIOS for DDR4-2667 Dual Channel modules with an AMD Ryzen processor. The UEFI offers the selection from DDR4-1866 up to DDR4-3200. Higher clock-rates are currently only possible with BCLK overclocking.
Thanks to XMP support (Extreme Memory Profiles), XMP memory modules are set correctly with one mouse click in the UEFI and of course there are far more memory adjustments and more OC-options, but more on that later. Before buying the RAM, you should check the officially supported RAM modules at the ASRock memory support page, which is very important especially (but not only) for AMD Ryzen systems.
Hard disk drive connectors …
The ASRock X370 Taichi offers eight angled SATA3 ports and two more SATA3 ports over the ASMedia ASM1061 chip.
Here you can see the ten SATA3 ports!
The SATA 3 ports are supporting RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 5, RAID 10, NCQ, AHCI and the Hot Plug function in AHCI mode (AHCI stands for Advanced Host Controller Interface and can/should be selected in the UEFI, especially when using SSDs). Thanks to the UEFI BIOS also drives with more than 2 TB for the installation of Windows 10, Windows 8.1 or Windows 7 x64 can be installed. Installing the drivers was absolutely no problem with Windows 10 and the Windows 10 installation was done very quickly. But even for Windows 7 AMD offers an All-In-one driver package that is installed easily and quickly.
Quite fresh to the test, we’ve received the AMD chipset driver 17.10 (amd-chipset-drivers-software-17.10rcp22-apr17) with optimized Ryzen power plan.
Drivers for Windows 10, Windows 8 and Windows 7 32-Bit and 64-Bit can be installed over the Easy Driver Installer or Easy RAID Installer button in the UEFI, are provided on the DVD, and can be downloaded at the ASRock support page, where Windows 10 is currently the preferred installation.
USB and FireWire …
The ASRock X370 Taichi has six USB 3.0 Type-C ports at the ATX panel. On the picture you see the upper USB 3.1 Type-A port and the bottom USB 3.0 Type-C port (can be inserted in both directions).
Internally there are two more USB 2.0 connectors for up to four optional USB 2.0 ports, as well as two USB 3.0 connectors for up to four optional USB 3.0 ports. The 20-pin connector can be connected either to an optional USB3.0 front panel or to an enclosure with USB3.0 support.
Network …
The ASRock X370 Taichi motherboard is equipped with an Intel I211AT, offering the 10/100/1000 network connectors on the ATX panel. The LAN connections are WoL capable, offers LAN cable detection, supports the 802.3az energy efficient Ethernet standard and supports Intel Remote Wake Technology, ASRock Full Spike Protection, PXE and more. Additionally the ASRock X99 Gaming i7 has onboard WLAN 2,4/5 GHz IEEE 802.11a/b/g/n/ac with up to 433 Mbps transfer rate.
Sound …
The ASRock X370 Taichi motherboard is equipped with the ALC1220 audio codec with content protection, 120dB SNR DAC, TI NE5532 Premium Headset Amplifier and Purity Sound 4, which supports 7.1 surround sound at the internal front panel audio connector and has analog output over 5x 3.5mm connectors on the ATX panel. Additionally, there is an optical SPDIF digital output and premium Blu-Ray audio support. So most users do not need to buy an additional sound card with digital outputs.
ATX back panel connectors …
From left to right, you can see Clear CMOS button, 1x PS/2 connector for PS/2 keyboard or PS/2 mouse and 2x USB 3.0, WiFi antenna connectors, 1x USB 3.1 Type-A port and 1x USB 3.1 Type-C port, RJ45 Gigabit LAN and 2x USB 3.0 Type-A port, 2x USB 3.0 Type-A port, optical SPDIF output and 5x 3.5mm jacks for sound.
Test System …
Now we come to the AMD AM4 CPU socket.
First, we have installed the new AMD Ryzen 5 1600 CPU, then we have tested the motherboard with an AMD Ryzen 7 1800X CPU.
AMD Ryzen processors offers dual channel mode support. This is how two of four possible memory modules have to be installed on this X370 motherboard to get dual channel mode support.
Here is again a side view of the correct memory assembly.
Here is the AMD AM4 test system with MSI Radeon R9 280 video card.
As we have reported extensively on OCinside.de, for many CPU cooler new AMD Ryzen cooler upgrade kits are required. To test such an AM4 upgrade kit, we have requested it from the company Enermax and thus made the tested Enermax ETS-T40F-BK AMD Ryzen ready.
In the following picture you can see the AMD AM4 test system along with Enermax ETS-T40Fit cooler, AM4 upgrade kit, MSI Radeon R9 280 graphics card and Icy Dock MB171SP-B Turbo Swap for fast replacement of SSD and HDD.
As you can see on the thermal image of the assembled PC system, the AMD promontory X370 chipset remains pleasantly cool.
Here you can see again the heat distribution of the complete ASRock X370 Taichi motherboard, where you can see that the temperature of the voltage converters and 60A premium power chokes remains remarkably low.
And this is how the 8 cores with SMT (16 threads) of the AMD Ryzen 7 1800X CPU looks like in the Windows Task Manager.
ASRock X370 Taichi BIOS and Overclocking …