ASRock has released two cutting-edge Z890 motherboards in sync with Intel’s release of Arrow Lake-S chips. One of these mobos, the Z890 Taichi OCF, is designed for extreme overclocking and supports up to 128GB of non-ECC DDR5 memory with an overclock speed of up to 10,133 MT/s, according to product pages. In addition, ASRock also released the Z890 Taichi Aqua, which stands out by giving up all USB-A ports in favor of 10 USB-C ports on the rear I/O panel.
Although ASRock has been on the market for over 20 years, producing motherboards and other components, it has always lived in the shadow of the massive three – Asus, Gigabyte and MSI. Therefore, it must find a way to distinguish its products from the competition. The company is doing this by expanding overclocking options and allowing enthusiasts to squeeze every drop of performance from their high-end processors with its modern line of Taichi OCF motherboards.
The Z890 Taichi variant motherboard can support DDR5-9200 memory, but its OCF variant increases this number to DRR5-10133+ through overclocking. ASRock says the latest Z890 Taichi OCF combines the OCF series, known for its water cooling performance, with the OC Formula series, designed for overclocking. This combination makes the Z890 Taichi OCF the perfect motherboard for extreme overclockers. Please note that the fastest retail memory currently available only offers 9600 MT/s, so ASRock expects users to achieve these speeds through their own DIY and extreme cooling experiments.
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ASRock also released the Z890 Taichi Aqua motherboard – which stands out from the rest for a completely different reason. It is still designed for Intel Core Ultra 200S chips with support for up to 256 GB of DDR5-9200 memory, has three expansion slots (two PCIe 5.0×16 and one PCIe 4.0×16) and supports two PCIe Gen5.0 x4 slots and up to four PCIe SSD slots Gen4.0 x4 M.2 NVMe. However, what sets this board apart from the rest of the competition is the number of USB-C ports on the rear I/O.
The Z890 Taichi Aqua comes with two USB4 Type-C/Thunderbolt 4 ports, four USB 3.2 Gen2 Type-C ports, and four USB 3.2 Gen1 Type-C ports. It also comes with two USB 3.2 Gen 2×2 Type-C ports on the front, bringing the total number of USB-C ports to 12. And while you could be forgiven for thinking it’s sacrificing USB-A ports, the Taichi Aqua still supports four USB 3.2 ports Gen1 Type-A and four USB 2.0 ports on the front I/O panel. This gives a total of 20 USB ports, which allows you to connect any number of USB devices to your computer.
These modern motherboards show how much ASRock wants to be a leader in motherboard design with its exotic offerings. Let’s hope the company manages to maintain its momentum and constant attention to quality and reliability, helping it fight the bigger fish in the pond.
