Taichi, the practice, is all about balance and flow. But while Asrock touts its long-running Taichi motherboards as enthusiast-class, premium products, its recent models in that family have felt a bit off-kilter. Questionable design choices, such as awkward port and header placement, and some lackluster networking and audio components, mar the $589.99 Z690 Taichi, the company’s latest entry in the series (here, for 12th Generation Intel “Alder Lake” CPUs). Those missteps, and a high price, make this Z690 board difficult to recommend for most users. Its saving graces are an exceptional BIOS, top-tier power-delivery hardware, and excellent overclocking tools; those elements deliver value if you’re hoping to overclock your new Alder Lake K-series chip to its limit. If that’s not your plan, though, other Z690 board options such as the similarly high-end Asus ROG Maximus Z690 Hero are a better bet, or you might want to look into the emerging, cheaper class of Intel B660-based models.
Design and Port Placement
Aesthetically, the Z690 Taichi is an attractive board with a black PCB, black heatsinks, and metallic copper highlights. Decorative LEDs are set over the chipset and the rear I/O shroud, as well as down the right side of the board, adding extra flair whenever the board is powered up. Much of the rear of the PCB is braced in metal plating for a sturdy, stiff feel.
Unlike some other Z690 boards, you’ll need an LGA1700-specific CPU cooler to build out the Z690 Taichi. Some Z690 boards are able to mount older LGA1200-compatible coolers in addition to LGA1700-specific models, which can make finding a cooler significantly easier. This Taichi board isn’t one of them. Asrock didn’t work such cross-compatibility into the design.
Header and cable-connector placement on the Z690 Taichi is a mixed bag. Most ports are, in general, well-placed, roughly where they are on most other motherboards. For example, the twin CPU-power sockets are in the upper left-hand corner, like always, and they aren’t too difficult to access. They are surrounded by heatsinks, but the heatsinks curve around the power headers and don’t obstruct access. This also means there aren’t any sharp corners floating beside the headers for you to cut yourself on, too often a complaint with really packed high-end PCBs.
Above the RAM slots are two fan headers, but they aren’t just for the CPU as you’d expect. One of the fan headers is for a small VRM fan that comes with the board, or for a water pump; it will give unusual results if connected to a CPU fan. The other header can be used for a CPU fan, but if your processor cooler has two CPU fans, things get a bit problematic.
Two additional four-pin fan headers are designated for use with a CPU fan or for a water pump, but these are located in a rather inconvenient spot. They reside between the CPU socket and the uppermost PCI Express card x16 slot, which ensures that no matter what hardware you have installed, they will be awkward to use, and hiding the cables running to them will be tricky.
The problem? If you’re installing a CPU fan or a liquid cooler, the cooling block mounted over the CPU (whether an air apparatus or a liquid-cooling unit) will always obstruct access to these ports. And if you opt to plug in the cables first instead, they will make mounting the cooling block difficult in turn. If you are mindful of build aesthetics and ease of use, you would never place these ports here. But this is at least the second time that Asrock has done so.
The rest of the ports on the board’s surface don’t pose any particular problems, but I noted a few other unusual design choices on the Z690 Taichi’s PCB. The board has seven SATA 3.0 ports in total, six of them set at a right angle on the right edge of the board. The seventh port is set at the bottom of the board with a straight-out connector, and this SATA port is connected to a special security feature that Asrock is promoting.
This security feature lacks a snazzy name, simply dubbed “Independent SATA & USB.” If you look at the board, you’ll see a USB 3.2 Type-A port near the RAM slots; it is also connected to this feature. These specific SATA and USB ports are controlled in the BIOS and can be set to one of three different modes of operation. In the Normal mode, the ports on the board act just like any other USB or SATA port. In Independent mode, all other USB and SATA ports are disabled except for these two. And in Disable Independent Ports mode, these two ports are simply turned off and do nothing.
Asrock lists this as a security feature, but the real benefit is cloudy. Indeed, it’s not something that would be easy to get around; all you would need to do is set a password in the BIOS and enable the feature, and all other USB ports and SATA drive connections would be locked down. That keeps other people from connecting a drive to copy your files onto, but it also prevents you from doing the same. It also locks you out of your own external USB ports, so you’d need to access the PC from Bluetooth peripherals (which wouldn’t access the BIOS) or the internal USB port.
It’s as effective at protecting data on a USB flash drive from being accessed by a hacker as simply unplugging the drive or shutting down the PC. At the same time, there would be little to stop someone from just taking the drives and connecting them to another PC if they had full access to the system. It’s clunky to implement, too, as you need to go into the BIOS to make the change, whereas you can unplug a SATA drive or USB flash drive at any time.
We puzzled over this feature for a while, and ultimately dismissed it. It seems more suited to a server or a business tower forced to be in a unsecured location. The internal USB port, though, could be useful for an item like a wireless-keyboard dongle that you’d never otherwise disconnect.
As for the internal storage support: In total, you get four M.2 slots on the Z690 Taichi, including one Key-E slot that is occupied by a Wi-Fi chip. The other three slots are the Key-M type for use with SSDs. Two of these are configured as PCI Express Gen 4×4 slots that can handle up to 32GBps of bandwidth. The third slot is a slower PCI Express Gen 3×2 slot; it can alternately be used with a SATA 3.0 M.2 device. All of the M.2 slots are covered by dedicated heat spreaders that also make contact with the chipset heatsink, to help share the heat emissions over a greater area.
A Look at the Networking and Audio
The Z690 chipset has a built-in Wi-Fi AX211 controller, but Asrock opted to equip the Z690 Taichi with a Killer AX1675 that works as the Wi-Fi chip instead. The AX211 and the Killer AX1675 are both Intel networking solutions and have identical specs, but the AX1675 has some extra software features bundled with it. The software for this controller can prioritize network traffic to help improve performance toward designated applications that need the widest possible pipe, such as fast-twitch online games or streaming services.
Another software feature, Killer DoubleShot Pro, can help boost overall network performance by letting your board make use of both a wired and a wireless connection simultaneously. This requires both a Killer Wi-Fi solution and a Killer LAN chip to work, and the Z690 Taichi has both, with a 2.5Gbit Killer E3100G LAN controller. As long as both of these connections are able to hit the net, the DoubleShot Pro software will attempt to send data over whichever connection has greater bandwidth at that given moment. Note that you also get a secondary Intel i219V Gigabit wired Ethernet controller for additional bandwidth.
The audio solution on the Z690 Taichi is the common and widely used Realtek ALC1220. This audio chip has been the de facto standard on midrange and high-end boards for several years now, but of late it has been replaced on some high-end boards by Realtek ALC4080 or ALC4082 codecs. On paper, these two chips have fairly similar specs, and I don’t see sufficient reason to knock the Z690 Taichi for not including the newer one. It is surprising to see, though, given the board’s elevated price.
The front-panel audio runs through a separate audio ESS Sabre9218 audio codec that’s rated to produce cleaner audio with a signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of 130dB. This chip is specialized for driving headphones, and it includes an integrated headphone amp. Note: This chip doesn’t support 5.1 or 7.1 surround sound, which is why it’s only used for the front audio port.
The Rear I/O Panel
Frustratingly, the Z690 Taichi inherited a poor rear I/O panel layout from its predecessor. For some reason, instead of placing the audio jacks at the end of the rear I/O panel where it should be, Asrock has been placing it in the worst possible location: in the middle of the panel.
Audio signal is highly susceptible to picking up noise from other electrical components. Most components on the motherboard communicate using digital signals, and this is true for the audio chip on the board as well. A key function of the audio chip, however, is to take the digital audio information and convert it into an analog signal for your speakers or headphones. This is why an audio controller is often referred to as a DAC or digital-to-analog converter.
After the sound signal is generated by the codec, anything that alters the signal that was produced will distort the audio and create unintended noise. That is why it’s important to keep the audio traces away from other components, and part of the reason why for ages motherboard designers have placed the audio hardware just below the rear I/O panel on the motherboard. More recently, motherboard OEMs have been segmenting the portion of PCB that contains the audio hardware from the rest of the components by leaving a dead zone without any traces running through it between the audio hardware and everything else.
Knowing this, we’re not sure why Asrock would design multiple boards that seem purposefully designed to circumvent established practice. Though how much noise you will hear will vary widely depending on the equipment you use, this would seem a suboptimal placement.
Bracketing these centered audio ports are a total of six USB Type-A ports. Two are configured as USB 3.2 Gen 2 and support 10Gbps bandwidth. The remaining four USB Type-A ports are all USB 3.2 Gen 1 and capped at 5Gbps. For high-speed external drives, you also get two USB 4.0/Thunderbolt 4 USB Type-C ports that each can handle 40Gbps of bandwidth.
The Type-C ports can also be used as video outputs if you have a 12th Generation chip with integrated graphics, and there’s one HDMI port, too, for displays that don’t support DisplayPort over USB Type-C. At the top of the panel is a single button that can be used to flash the BIOS to a newer version without booting the system.
The BIOS, and the Power Delivery: All About the OC
One area in which the Z690 Taichi doesn’t disappoint is its power-regulation circuitry. Asrock equipped the board with 20 105-amp SPS Dr. MOS power chips. We only see 105-amp circuits like this on the highest-end motherboards, as it gives them excess power headroom for extreme overclocking. For comparison, it’s worth noting here that many enthusiast-class boards ship with 75-amp or 90-amp VRMs, and these tend to perform well while overclocking, too. The excessive amount of current these higher-end components can handle will only raise the ceiling on what you can do while overclocking without damaging the board.
The Z690 chipset and Alder Lake processors have support for DDR5, but many Z690 boards will alternatively use DDR4 instead. At the moment, this is likely a smart decision as DDR5 is expensive and costs significantly more than DDR4. The Z690 Taichi is a flagship, though, equipped to give you the best performance the platform is capable of, and thus supports DDR5. The board supports RAM overclocked up to 6,400MHz, which is a hefty increase over the 4,800MHz standard that the Intel officially supports.
To make overclocking easier, the board has buttons on its surface for clearing the CMOS, resetting the system, and powering up the board. There’s also an “88”-style debug LED for diagnosing hardware issues.
Then there’s the BIOS, this board’s shining star. Asrock’s Z690 Taichi has unquestionably one of the best BIOSes that we’ve ever used. It’s something that Asrock gets right from top to bottom. When booting into the BIOS, the board initially goes into its EZ Mode interface. A surprising number of OEMs have been configuring their boards to boot straight into the Advanced menu, leaving the EZ Mode as little more than wasted space. It’s nice to see Asrock get this right.
The EZ Mode interface has everything that a novice user will need to access. Most of the time, more-advanced users won’t need to go past this page, either. You can set the memory profile, see the storage devices, change the boot priority, and check other basic system information from this screen.
The Advanced menu is also a treat, with excellent overclocking controls. Seeing as this is an Alder Lake board, the clocks are adjustable for both the Performance and Efficiency cores (P-cores and E-cores) independently, and you can disable any number of either type of cores you like.
This means, therefore, that you can disable all of the P-cores or E-cores to attempt to push one specific core higher. Though this isn’t practical to improve your gaming performance, it does make the Z690 Taichi a prime candidate for attempting to set overclocking records. For everyday use, a ton of other controls can help you stabilize the system at higher clock speeds with all cores enabled.
Verdict: A Taichi Imbalance
Taken together, the Asrock Z690 Taichi is a mixed bag, which is almost fitting. Coming back to our introduction: The “Taichi” name and the practice associated with it share its origins with Taijitu, the philosophical underpinnings of yin and and yang. Conceptually, it’s focused on a balance of forces both good and bad, and the Z690 Taichi is painfully representative of this.
On the good side, the board is exceptional for overclocking, with a top-line power-regulation system, a robust and easy to use BIOS, and other overclocking-friendly features. If your primary concern is pulling the most performance you can out of your hardware, then the Z690 Taichi should be at the top of your list of potential boards to buy. For overclocking, we would recommend it over the Asus ROG Maximus Z690 Hero that we previously reviewed.
In most other ways, though, the Z690 Taichi comes across as the lesser product. The CPU fan headers are just in a bad spot. And although many won’t care if they are reliant on headphones, the placement of the rear audio jacks is also iffy. It’s a design choice without upside, which serves only to potentially degrade audio quality.
Then there’s the price to consider. At $589.99, the Asrock Z690 Taichi is pricey for what it is. The only notable feature enhancement it has over the $599.99 Asus ROG Maximus Z690 Hero is its higher-end power phases and a slightly better BIOS. The Asus board counters this with a more colorful LED aesthetic design, a bundled add-on card with extra M.2 slots, a better-designed rear I/O panel, and support for LGA1200 coolers in addition to LGA1700 ones. In general, the Asus offers better value, even if both boards are priced higher than we’d like to see. Unless you plan to overclock to excess, consider other Z690 motherboards first.
