If we had to pick a word to describe the ASRock Z890 Taichi OCF, it's undoubtedly "niche." There are definitely some compromises that have been made to offer the extreme overclocking features it does, but it's still great to see something this focused at the core of our hobby, even if Intel's Arrow Lake CPUs haven't got off to a great start. It looks great, has everything you need to overclock at the highest levels and even if you're limited to custom watercooling or below, there's still something exciting and fun about having physical buttons and switches to adjust overclock settings.

With its BIOS profile switching, frequency adjustment buttons, voltage readout points, CPU socket heater and ElmorLabs OC Panel Header, it's surprising that the board doesn't cost more given it seems to lack little compared to ASRock's other Taichi boards. In fact, the Z890 Taichi OCF is a good daily driver in its own right and more than happy to deal with gaming and content creation and go record chasing on the weekends.

The feasibility of that is another issue, as boards that have been insulated and pushed to their limits might not be the best choice for reinstalling in a PC that is crucial for everyday tasks. Still, the option is there and if you aren't going to be dipping below ambient, then that won't be as much of a problem anyway. It has plenty of M.2 ports, all of which have heatsinks, the majority of which are tool-free and one offers the best PCIe Gen 5 SSD cooling we've seen on an LGA1851 board yet. You also get dual Thunderbolt 4 ports, a decent audio codec, plus PCIe Gen 5 GPU and SSD support and Wi-Fi 7.

If you're a new or even a seasoned overclocker, why would you not get the ASRock Z890 Taichi OCF if your motherboard budget stretches to $500? Well, there are a few reasons. Some of those daily driver credentials are perhaps a little too compromised for some, such as only having five Type-A USB ports - barely half that of even ASRock's similarly-priced Taichi boards. Additional audio components such as the ESS SABRE9219 DAC are present on the Z890 Taichi, as well as an extra Ethernet port, M.2 port and additional fan header.

The Z890 Taichi has a similar power delivery design and also has the same actively-cooled heatsinks. It might not have the physical overclocking tools of its OCF sibling, but the standard Taichi arguably looks better, costs the same and has a few more features. There are other boards to consider too, such as Gigabyte's Z890 Aorus Master, which is dripping with tool-free features and has more than double the Type-A USB ports on offer, includes 10 Gigabit Ethernet while costing the same. The MSI MPG Z890 Carbon Wi-Fi is equally imposing and costs just a little more.

Of course, if the presence of actual buttons to adjust your settings in real time sounds like fun, and you want to take overclocking up as a hobby, or if you are just a seasoned enthusiast keen to put a Core Ultra 9 285K to the test with exotic cooling, then the Taichi OCF is one of the most affordable ways to do that, while still offering enough to keep most PC users happy as their daily driver.