ASRock B650E Taichi motherboard – breaker of several records

ASRock B650E Taichi in detail

The AMD B650E chipset is a compromise solution to some extent, but the ASRock Taichi motherboard that is based on it makes an ultimate impression. And it’s not just a “feel”, it really is that… The VRM of the CPU didn’t fit in our thermal image with the standard procedure. There are a few quirks and things that you might find it worth tweaking, but those are usually related to other things, like the more modest chipset features.

Conclusion

The ASRock B650E Taichi motherboard is based on a rather unique design. Competing Asus, Gigabyte, and MSI don’t really have a similar board with the B650E chipset. The E-ATX format isn’t used to its full potential here and some things about it may seem a bit bizarre (for example, only four SATA ports), but others have room to shine in the best sense of the word. For example, the really elite SSD cooler above the first M.2 slot. It is the most effective design we have tested on motherboards so far (and there have been a few of those…), yet in its atypical position it doesn’t interfere with anything.

But most people don’t buy a motherboard because of the SSD cooler, the features of the CPU power delivery probably matter more. The latter is monstrous in this case, although the voltage regulators are “weaker”, but their relatively higher temperature compared to other high-end motherboards is compensated by an effective cooler. And it is such (effective) even without the activity of the fan. It only occurs without interfering with its settings in critical situations of very aggressive overclocking, i.e. in conditions where the fan increases the TDP of the cooler. This creates better conditions for tuners to wring the maximum out of the processor. Without a fan, purely with passive cooling, you might not get to this point because you will hit a limit in VRM cooling rather than a limit in CPU capabilities.

CPU power supply efficiency in high load is high, at the level of the MSI MEG X670E Ace (It’s worse in idle, where we’ve measured the highest power draw so far. Not only within the AMD AM5 platform, but overall).The ASRock B650E Taichi’s voltage regulators may be less efficient and heat up more, but the B650E Taichi took the top spot in terms of lowest power draw thanks to its more efficient power supply voltage management. This gives less margin for undervolting, but in the default settings the lowest-power operation is achieved under very high CPU load (with the AVX instructions engaged). The differences are small, and it’s true that they’re also due to slightly lower computing performance (on the B650E Taichi). Why? (answer below the image with the editorial award “Approved“)

In addition to the lower average CPU core clock speed in the order of tens of megahertz, this is also due to the lower memory speed associated with the less aggressive DRAM mode. This means that some settings prioritize the best possible compatibility over maximum performance. This could hopefully limit the cases where, especially with faster modules, the board does not POST after activating a memory profile. In case it does POST, there is of course room for additional tuning where the memory subsystem bandwidth can be increased and thus you get better performance in practice. For some applications more, for some less, it depends on how dependent they are on memory speeds.

Overview of tests of speeds of M.2 slots, USB ports and Internet connection shows that results are achieved as expected (neither significantly above nor significantly below the average of other boards). However, in sequential read and write tests, the Intel Killer E3000 network adapter does not show its main advantage over the Realtek RTL8125 without the Rivet software add-on. Thanks to it, prioritization of selected packets can achieve, for example, lower ping in games and the like.

The features around the audio adapter are also above standard, and the portion of external USB ports (led by the 40 Gb USB4 interface) is also exceptionally generous. But there are some things that don’t belong in this class of boards. Whether it’s the USB 3.2 gen. 2×2 only in internal form (i.e. no representation between external connectors), “only” three M.2 slots for SSDs, and someone may also miss PCI Express 5.0 support in the second PCIe ×16 slot, as the more expensive Taichi model (with X670E chipset) has it. But at least on the B650E Taichi there is no redistribution of PCIe lanes, as they are only routed from the processor to the first slot (on the X670E Taichi to both), the second PCIe ×16 slot is connected to the south bridge (B650E chip).

We can’t help but say that the B650E Taichi is an expensive board and there will be plenty of users who won’t be able to justify the price with its features. But then there will also be those for whom it will be the closest thing to what they are looking for. It’s as always about different preferences for different things.

English translation and edit by Jozef Dudáš

Some of the tested boards are also available in the Datacomp e-shop

Special thanks to Blackmagic Design (for licenses for DeNoise AI, Gigapixel AI and Sharpen AI) and Topaz Labs (for licenses for DeNoise AI, Gigapixel AI and Sharpen AI)

• Contents
• ASRock B650E Taichi in detail
• What is looks like in BIOS
• Methodology: Performance tests
• Methodology: How we measure power draw
• Methodology: Temperature and clock speed measurements
• Test setup
• 3DMark
• Borderlands 3
• F1 2020
• Metro Exodus
• Shadow of the Tomb Raider
• Total War Saga: Troy
• PCMark and Geekbench
• Web performance
• 3D rendering: Cinebench, Blender, ...
• Video 1/2: Adobe Premiere Pro
• Video 2/2: DaVinci Resolve Studio
• Graphics effects: Adobe After Effects
• Video encoding
• Audio encoding
• Photos: Adobe Photoshop, Affinity Photo, ...
• (De)compression
• (De)encryption
• Numerical computing
• Simulations
• Memory and cache tests
• M.2 (SSD) slots speed
• USB ports speed
• Ethernet speed
• Power draw without power limits
• Power draw with power limits
• Achieved CPU clock speed
• CPU temperature
• VRM temperature – thermal imaging of Vcore and SOC
• SSD temperature
• Chipset temperature (south bridge)
• Conclusion