ASRock X370 TaiChi Motherboard Review- Ryzen | Level One Techs

I only have an MSI b350. It's been okay in Windows but no memory past 2933. Linux has been rough.

It was a retail board too. Shipped UEFI was only good enough to update UEFI. I am in contact with them and waiting for a UEFI that fixes my list of issues.

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Yes :) They must have had a panic all that stock of CPUs let put them out what could go wrong.

One of the reasons I wanted to build is I managed to get 32 Gig DDR4 at a bargain price in one of Amazons mad moment glitch prices, so have been champing at the bit to get a new build. Lucky it was single sided single rank just by luck (Micron chips).

I have mostly overclocked but at the cautious end of the spectrum as want my investment to last and be reliable.

looks like I'm getting the TaiChi if I can find one, did not want to spend as much UK prices are high with 20% sales tax.

I can't wait months and months for the prices to drop it would do my head in not getting this done now .

I wonder if this platform will offer a worth while upgrade from Ryzen 7 in a few years or just fade out as new CPU and socket comes out or is left behind by optain type tech which will need a new board ? I've stopped useing windows pretty much except for a few games I boot on an other drive. Ryzen seems to be good for Linux/gnu (Hopefully the get the passthroug iommu stuff for those that need it sorted out).

Asrock seem to be on the ball with timely BIOS updates, Asus cant access their stuff to see.

This has got to last me a long time at all the cost. My Intel i5 system has lasted well though had my moneys worth there.

I'm supprised its that bad, must have been lets just ship what we have.. fix it later.

This just seems such a botch up, all the slick marketting hype but real hardware not so much.

Just glad that Ryzen is looking like a reasonable CPU when it all gets sorted out, at the mercy of the BIOS updates now !
For me I'm going to be slower to jump on the new things, I did think when ordering my CPU, AMD is a big company and has a lot rideing on this, they will have spent all this time to get it right. Which I think they have but its just a premature birth.

That's all on the motherboard manufacturers. Not very much AMD can do about it, the CPUs are more than capable though.

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With a big launch like this I would of expected them to work together more, as it is a "consumer product"
I know they had the Chinese new year and all.

I'm not sure AMD is so innocent here, but I don't know.

The only thing AMD could really have done is given motherboard manufacturers more time to use & test ryzen.... But that would have delayed launch so.

And yeah, you would think the motherboard makers would work on the products they release but ... Well... You can see exactly how well that's been going lol.

I think it will work out, just take some more time, the platform works ok if you do not overclock it seems (iommu stuff excepted) on the Asrock boards so it not a flop at least.

I did have a suspition that they might try to limit power consumption rather than clock speed to differentiate the cpus (sort of short bursts of frequency), but that might just be my twisted mind.

In your position, don't let the memory burn a hole in your pocket. Particularly if you want a long term investment, treat it that way and give it enough time for you to make a considered decision. A 2500K is getting to EOL but retiring it in May instead of April could be the difference between getting a PC you love or one you cant wait to get rid of fast enough. That is not ideal for longevity.

Check if your memory is on the QVL for any of the boards. Support for memory is improving rapidly but there are still gaps where mainstream memory SKUs just don't work.

Also, dont buy a PC with a view of upgrade paths (excepting Ram amount and GPU). If you can upgrade parts of your rig in 3 tears, that is a bonus. It is getting to the point now that upgrades are done due to lacking features more so than CPU performance. You definitely wont get the 2020 features on a 2017 motherboard. PCIe 4 is due out later this year and in 3 years may have relevance, anything you buy today will not support that.

Yes, sound advice. my DDR4 is in the support list crucial G4DFS8213 8GB dimms x4 2133 GT/s hopefully will overclock a bit.

I have the CPU already, new PSU and my GFX is a 1060 (obduction in windows) seperate boot drive.

only motherboard needed, I think the TaiChi would be as good as it gets for quiet a while, at least in my price range, this is at the high end of what I wanted. I'm sort of committed to build now !

Asrock have been releasing BIOS updates, would like to know more about power management states.

I could get a budget motherboard now run stock speed and wait for a Taichi price drop in the future.

Or just get the TaiChi when available,, how bad could it be.

I expect I will keep this system a long time and would be a whole new ball game then I expect, unless they make a low power 16 cylinder 32 thread engine in the mean time,,,,,, Haha

Thanks gtbtk

I'm more or less in a similar position. My old mainboard broke in Decembre, which is why I decided to wait for Ryzen. Over time I picked up things like a new PC case, new PSU, DDR4-RAM modules and I even got a Ryzen CPU. The only thing missing is a nice mainboard and Asrock's Taichi seems nice. That being said, ASUS seems to have fixed their issues too...

Well of course the Taichi or professional gaming are in a whole diffrent league then the X370 Gaming K4.
X370 Taichi and X370 professional gaming are in the higherend of the spectrum.
The Gaming K4 etc, are lowerend boards.
The higherend boards have more feutures and a way better vrm implementation.

And how important would you personally judge that to be?

Well if you want a great overclock experiance,
then i would say with R7 cpu´s it does make sense to look at the higherend boards.

I mean the gaming K4 with a 8+4 phase design 4+2 doubled.
Highside and lowside fets are from Sinopower SM4336 lowside fets and SM4337 highside fets, 40A and 35A at 100°C effectively.
Those super alloy inductors are arround 40A / 45A or so.
I´m not fully sure yet which particular pwm they use on this board, since i dont have one on my hands.
But i suppose its probablly the IR35203 4+2 phase pwm.
Its not a bad vrm, but just mediocre.

Asrock Taichi and Professional gaming using the IR35201 6+2 phase pwm.
Its running in 12+4 phase mode using IR3599 doublers.
60A blackwing inductors and 12K caps.
I´m still trying to find out which particular mosfets / powerpacks they use on these boards.
But i suppose those might be Ti nexfets CSD87350 40A at 125°C,
since Asrock is also using those Ti nexfets on their highend Z270 boards.
But i´m not fully sure yet, as soon as i have the exact detaills about the Taichi vrm i will post them here.

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Apparently AMD improves with faster ram. Probably due to the CCX architecture.

I am correcting myself. I was using 2133 ram when I said intel was better at gaming. The better all rounder imo now is amd. Better SMT and single threaded application atleast in gaming now that I bought 3200 mhz ram. I am getting on par with my 7700k. 3200 is quite expensive though. So Intel with 2133 performs just as good as AMD with 3200 mhz ram. Thats the thing AMD might beat intel if someone or myself purchases even faster ram.

Right now I have 4 systems in use. 7700k, 5820k, 8320, and 1700. All decent for gaming the best all rounders are the 5820k and the 1700.

Not that far down, yes the VRMs are lower grade, but for the mild overclock I would like I think the K4 would be OK, I'm not at full tilt all the time its only when encoding my videos I really need full load/

Its more that you get the better options like P-states in the bios and for me if the K4 did the power management well I would be happy with that (I do not know if the K4 has a good UEFI or not).

The Taichi is about 50% more cost.

Yeah well but B-clock generators and fully digital IR pwm´s,
is only a thing you will find on the higherend boards most of the time regardless.
Those boards are of course more expensive for a reason.

With an R7 8 core chip in my opinion it just makes more sense to invest in a more decent board imo.
But for people that dont really focus on getting the best overclock experiances,
are probablly gonne be more then happy with a midrange board like the K4 etc.
To me personally the B350 boards dont really make a whole lot of sense for R7 cpu´s.
But lateron wenn the R3 and R5´s they would make a bit more sense with those chips imo.

Sure, I don't know say for a 3.8 or best case 4.0 Ghz overclock with maybe a single bump in RAM speed would you think it's worth the Taichi over the K4, I expect the the Taichi will last longer as less stressed in any circumsatance, I'm trying to get the best value for my situation but of course do not want to cheap out if its a false saveing.

Some part of this I think is to prevent the competition from reacting. I will give amd more leeway than I would normally because if I were in their position I'd be super paranoid too

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Well electronics can allways fail of course.
But theoreticlly the Taichi has a way better and more efficient vrm,
that will run cooler under high stress for longer period of times etc,
and therefor basiclly "theoreticlly" should life longer.
However lifespan is of course a relative story electronics can allways fail.
And like you said yourself better OC feutures.

You know I will say that the 4+2 on the MSI was pretty solid but much warmer with the 1700 overclock. 3.8/3.9 was just fine. Somewhat surprising.

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