ASRock X370 Taichi (AMD AM4)

[Vayra86]

I'd almost build x99 or Ryzen just to have this board.

Sexy as f

 

[hankmooody]

my taichi got a short and one of the transistors (near the second PCIE port) burned like hell, all my other components where fine but the mainboard died without any given cause. Will RMA it, how long does the procedure take in Europa (GER) for Asrock? Lets Hope Asrock's warranty will be on point..

 

[Vayra86]

my taichi got a short and one of the transistors (near the second PCIE port) burned like hell, all my other components where fine but the mainboard died without any given cause. Will RMA it, how long does the procedure take in Europa (GER) for Asrock? Lets Hope Asrock's warranty will be on point..

Doesn't that depend entirely on Asrock? Your mileage may vary, greatly. In general an RMA takes about 2 weeks, if they're slow it can be 8 weeks.

 

[hankmooody]

Doesn't that depend entirely on Asrock? Your mileage may vary, greatly. In general an RMA takes about 2 weeks, if they're slow it can be 8 weeks.

I've read that the only Asrock Service Point in EU is in Netherlands..so the bidirectional shipping alone will take long, I suppose

 

[Vayra86]

I've read that the only Asrock Service Point in EU is in Netherlands..so the bidirectional shipping alone will take long, I suppose

Germany > NL won't take long, two days one direction at the most, so that's 4 days worth of shipping. Make it double that if you have to send it through a retailer first.

 

[Folterknecht]

https://www.hardwareluxx.de/community/f12/am4-mainboard-vrm-liste-1155146.html

 

[Black Flag]

So you stare at the motherboard? Or do you install it irregardless of a side panel window, and forget about it? It has blue LEDs on board so there's the missing blue.

At the end of June I will order my Ryzen platform 1800x, 64GB RAM, M.2 SSD, when it comes to the motherboard selection, we'll see.

 

[Fumero]

Wow, a perfect 10 score, i think my next motherboard will be a ASRock.

 

[Enterprise24]

C6H or Taichi for b-die overclocking ?

 

[MrMilli]

How come you tested with BIOS 1.4?

 

[Dethroy]

Boring... Where is ASRock's mini-ITX board?

Nice read though, Dave

 

[f22a4bandit]

I've been waiting for this board to come back into stock. Sadly, it's been unavailable for damn near a month now. I was hoping that they'd have more when Ryzen 5 launched, but that isn't the case.

Great review as always, Dave. Appreciate the time you put into these reviews for us tech nerds!

 

[cadaveca]

How come you tested with BIOS 1.4?

At time of writing, that is what was available. I test, layout review, write, edit, gets handed off to editor, he does his bit, we might have a discussion about something, then it enters queue to go live. There is some time between writing and appearing on front page.

As cadaveca has said earlier: "My scores don't necessarily reflect how one board performs vs any other, either."
So on one hand, X370 Taichi has a lot of very useful features, is well designed, looks OK and so on. It's hard to find a fault, if you're just looking at this single board - hence the perfect score (and the word "perfect" all over the text).

But there clearly are some more appealing motherboards out there: with better cooling, better OC abilities, better disk performance, better fps in games, better power consumption, better circuits etc.
And even if they're all for Intel CPUs, should it not be taken into account? AM4 is a new platform and more polished stuff is coming soon. How will it be rated if we got a "perfect AM4 board" a month after release?

And if the score doesn't reflect how a device "performs vs any other", why compare at all in the review? Why is there a "sort by rating" option on TPU?
https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/?category=Motherboards&manufacturer=&pp=25&order=score
So is this ASRock better than ASUS Maximus VIII? Is it not? Why?

If scores shouldn't be compared, why are they so precise? Why not a simple 5-star system?

Giving a 10.0 was a big risk. Like you, I was instantly pushed back by the poor M.2 situation. In the Kaby Lake generation, a 2x 32 Gbit/s in ATX boards got fairly pedestrian - it's seen in many mid-range models.
But then again: this is cadaveca's approach and he can evaluate according to his views and knowledge. That's the whole point of being a reviewer.
Other than the final score, the review itself is pretty good.

That is very fair feedback. I look at board like this: Here is a socket, and it supports specific CPU. This CPU has memory requirements, as well as chipset and then features-focused options. Board makers take these and makes board for the platform. So, I rate that process. As such, you cannot compare directly a $100 board and a $500 board... they are obviously very different, although they do the same task. Most people that buy $500 motherboard do not care about $100 motherboard, and vice versa. This is no different than a $100 VGA or a $500 VGA. Obviously you can compare these different products in different price brackets, but it is more accurate to compare boards of the same feature set, same target audience, and same platform. Platform is a very important thing, like you say, KabyLake and SkyLake can give boards with dual 32 Gb/s M.2 ports, but this Summit Ridge platform cannot in the same way, so this difference is not something that is held against the Summit Ridge boards. It is not my job to compare platforms. Yes, my scoring tables do show multiple platforms, for those that favor performance over anything, but it is up to the reader to be discriminate in noting these differences, and also understanding that these metrics are purely for the sake of general comparison, and not the end-all-be-all to determine a products worth or final score (you need to consider all info provided in the review). I have mentioned before that if I could, all graphs would be removed, but they are asked for, so they are provided.

I actually really like your comments. You are right, giving a 10.0 WAS a big risk. I FULLY understood that, and seeing you recognize that, seeing you repeat many of the thoughts I had before giving this score... is very validating, and I really appreciate it.

 

[lukart]

No wonder these babies were out of stock for so long

 

[HTC]

No wonder these babies were out of stock for so long

They were never in stock in my neck of the woods ...

 

[Kanan]

Great review. Just one thing: I would've liked a comparison with the new Crosshair MB, makes more sense to me than comparing it with Intel ones.

 

[acperience7]

This is the board I want, but like f22a4bandit said. This board is perpetually out of stock unless you want to pay $400 on ebay... Glad to hear it performs as good as it looks.

 

[anubis44]

Problem is, I bought one (picked it up yesterday) and it was defective.

Board showed an error '0d' message, no matter what I did. Changed the RAM, changed the graphics card, moved it to a test bench, changed the CMOS jumper, pulled out the CMOS battery, the board would not get past the '0d' message, so I had to RMA for refund and buy an Asus Crosshair VI Hero. No matter how feature rich the board is, if it won't boot, that's a deal-breaker, and I'm not the only one who's gotten a dead ASRock board.

We'll see if THAT board works shortly.

 

[Caring1]

No matter how feature rich the board is, if it won't boot, that's a deal-breaker, and I'm not the only one who's gotten a dead ASRock board.

You say that like Asrock quality isn't as good as other manufacturers, when they seem to surpass most.
I'm sure other people have had their issues with dead motherboards from Gigabyte, MSI etc.
I wouldn't be so quick to pass judgement based on one bad experience.

 

[Melvis]

Thats not a typo is it? a perfect 10? ive never seen a score like that before. Well done AsRock!

 

[Kanan]

Thats not a typo is it? a perfect 10? ive never seen a score like that before. Well done AsRock!

"Golden Editor's Choice" this is

 

[Tsukiyomi91]

Great review @cadaveca. The verdict part where u put "Too perfect" at the Cons section is kinda true xDD Hopefully those who wanna build a RyZen system will consider this decent board, especially after getting a Perfect 10.

 

[TheLaughingMan]

 

[Folterknecht]

 

[HTC]

Good to know: thanks!

Apparently, whoever thought this behaviour in the BIOS was a good thing was struck by a sudden but prolonged case of cerebral diarrhea ...