Out of our three motherboards being reviewed today, the Taichi Creator is by far my favourite in terms of the overall look and aesthetics. The black and gold theme is stunning and the design choices are excellent. Taichi Creator conforms to the ATX form factor and comes with four SATA cables, a Wifi antenna, an ARGB splitter cable, and a thermistor cable.
Taichi Creator uses the AM5 socket and supports AMD’s Ryzen 9000 Series CPUs. It boasts an 18 + 2 + 1 digital phase design with 80 A Smart Power Stage (SPS) modules for the VCore and SOC rails. All fan headers on this board are 4-pin and include 2 × CPU fan connectors 4 × chassis fan connectors 1 × AIO pump connector.
For memory we have 4x DDR5 DIMM slots supporting up to 256GB and 8000+ OC frequencies. In the memory region we have a debug panel, LED indicators for diagnosing issues on POST, onboard power/reset buttons and two addressable ARGB headers. There are a total of three RGB headers on this board for LED.
Storages sees us receive 4x SATA 6GB/s ports and in the PCIe region we have 4x M.2 slots – 2x PCIe 5.0, 1x PCIe 4.0 and 1x PCIe 3.0. The upper slot has a quick release, toolfree design for removing the heatsink.
In total we have three full-sized PCI Express x16 slots, with two being PCIe 5.0 and the lower slot being PCIe 3.0. The upper slot which should be used for installing the graphics card features the EZ Release system – a quick release latch for installing/removing the GPU.
The audio codec on Creator is managed by Realtek ALC4082 which delivers 7.1 channel HD audio. We have isolated left and right channels. ASRock has their full audio package on this board which includes Nahimic audio enhancements: static noise suppression, echo cancellation, voice stabiliser, lateral sound cancellation, and a “Sound Tracker” visual radar for directional audio cues.
Turning to the Rear IO panel, we are treated to a huge array of ports to satisfy every possible need. Available here we have:
2 × WiFi antenna connectors (Wi-Fi 7 module)
1 × HDMI 2.1 port
1 × Optical SPDIF out port
2 × USB4 Type-C ports (40 Gb/s)
2 × USB 3.2 Gen2 Type-A (10 Gb/s) ports
6 × USB 3.2 Gen1 Type-A ports
2 × USB 2.0 ports
2 × RJ-45 LAN ports: 1x 10 GbE (Aquantia / Marvell) and 1x 5 GbE (Realtek RTL8126)
A Clear CMOS button
BIOS Flashback button
