Board Layout

The PCB's size has the illusion of making the enormous heatsinks look quite small, but they're actually quite large and there are subtle differences compared to the full-fat Taichi board too. Most obvious is that some of the heatsinks are slightly smaller and the board in general features fewer advanced features like tool-free M.2 heatsinks. The rear of the PCB lacks the large backplate of its pricier sibling. Still it's an attractive motherboard, just with fewer flashy aesthetic features such as RGB lighting.


Strip away everything though and the PCBs are almost identical. That is except a few additions the full-fat board gets such as the extended GPU release mechanism, plus headers for the VRM fan and I/O shroud RGB lighting.


With a $400 price tag you'd expect plenty of testing and overclocking tools and ASRock usually delivers here. The X870E Taichi Lite has an LED POST code display, power and reset buttons and a few more features along those lines on the rear I/O panel that we'll get to in a minute. Next to these are three fan headers, configured for CPU, CPU_Opt and AIO_Pump.

The CPU fan header is limited to 1 A/12 W, but the other seven headers across the PCB sit in a pool of up to 3 A/36 W, so there's scope for running plenty of high-power fans or a custom watercooling pump. If you're planning on plugging high-speed external SSDs into the Type-C front panel port then you'll be pleased to know this supports USB 3.2 Gen 2x2.


A rare sight these days is more than four SATA ports. Six is certainly a luxury so for anyone that's looking to transplant a bunch of hard disks, but we'd imagine the need for more than four is quite niche these days. Another four of the fan headers sit at the base of the PCB, which is useful for routeing through holes in the case or PSU cover. The final fan header is located in the right of the primary M.2 port, which is maybe not ideal as it's in the center of the PCB, so will leave cables trailing whether it's the rear case fan or something in the front of the case you're connecting to it. However, if you want to use a fan-assisted M.2 heatsink then it's perfectly located.


The lower PCIe x16 slot is also Gen 5-capable just like the primary slot above, but using both will see both slots drop to x8. Down here you also get both 4-pin RGB and 3-pin RGB headers and an impressive three 2-pin thermistor headers so if anyone enjoys spending a weekend fine-tuning their PC's cooling with air and coolant probes, go and knock yourself out. It's just a shame that the EFI doesn't make the most of the impressive array of cooling power on offer. More on that later.


The single PCIe Gen 5 M.2 port is equipped with the very large heatsink, but thankfully the end of it is cut away to be more low-rising to prevent the GPU release lever from being totally buried - just as well as there's no discrete release mechanism which is rare for a board of this caliber these days. It features cooling on both sides of the SSD and ASRock's boards have been performing very well here making good contact with the SSD and taming our PCIe Gen 5 model too. This is the only one of three heatsinks that's tool-free, though, and the mechanism is a little fiddly.


The lower heatsink cools two of the three PCIe Gen 4 M.2 slots, which are cooled top side only. With four tiny screws to line up without being able to see them, this wasn't a particularly easy heatsink to deal with, plus it's also blocked by your graphics card as well as being at the mercy of any sideways exhausts.


Something that's all together easier to install and get at is the side M.2 port - again PCIe Gen 4. It's large with deep vents cut into it to boost surface area and while it's not tool-free, just needs two screws and isn't blocked by your graphics card. It's also double-sided in terms of cooling, making it an even more attractive option that's like to fare well in our testing.


The rear I/O panel is fairly standard, with both USB BIOS Flashback and CMOS Clear buttons, connectors for the Wi-Fi 7 module and an impressive 10 Type-A USB ports, only two of which are USB 2.0, with five USB 3.2 10 Gbps and the rest USB 3.0. As per usual USB4 is here by way of dual Type-C ports. There's also 5 Gbps Ethernet and dual 3.5 mm jacks and optical output for the Realtek codec.