Ever since the debut of ASRock's "Taichi" brand, we have been fans of its high-quality blend of price, performance, and features. It is also one of the few sub-brands that does not stick to a "gaming" theme, which many people appreciate. I do too. However, the brand has changed somewhat under the influence of Razer; with the release of the B550 Taichi Razer Edition, the traditional yin-yang and gear machine aesthetic has been eliminated.

This revamped ASRock Taichi board has a minimalist yet unmistakably upscale look with integrated Razer Chroma RGB support If you are invested in the Razer ecosystem, this is definitely a board to consider when building your Ryzen 5000 series. If you're invested in the Razer ecosystem, this is the board to consider when building a Ryzen 5000 series.

Depending on your country of residence, the US$299 B550 Taichi Razer Edition may be the most expensive B550 board, but it is certainly one of the best B550 motherboards. This is not a bargain-basement cheapie that belongs in the budget bin. This is a full-featured premium layer board with almost all the bells and whistles you would expect from an enthusiast motherboard. Want to run an overclocked 5950X with 64GB of RAM; pair it with an Nvidia RTX 3090 or an AMD 6900XT? Over.

As the name suggests, the biggest marketing buzz for this board is support for the Razer Chroma RGB ecosystem. On the surface, it is just another flavor of RGB, but Razer has gone beyond the general implementation to include a wider range of effects while offering extensive customization with the Chroma Studio app. There is also integration with games, support for many external apps, and integration with Amazon Alexa. In other words, if you want RGB to RGB, Chroma could do it.

Chroma looks really beautiful, although it is common for graphics cards to cover most of the PCH heatsink. However, with all the other RGB devices that might be added to such a system, this is not much of an issue. [Other notable differentiators include the Killer E3100 2.5G and AX1650 WiFi with DoubleShot support. The gaming community tends to have a bit of a love-hate relationship with Killer. Much of it goes back to the clunky Manager app; the days of LAN gaming are over, but it would have been a great environment to test. Including all the reaching puts a lot of stress on the network; the network outside of the PC and home is the real bottleneck these days. In our tests, Killer's network performed exactly as it should.

The board is dominated by a subtle large black heatsink featuring stylish RGB lighting; the RGB and ARGB fan headers are just above the RAM slots, and the RAM slots support up to 128GB with DDR4-4733. While this speed sounds good, it is actually better used 1:1 with Infinity Fabric up to around DDR4-4000.

The primary M.2 slot is covered by its own heat sink. Thankfully, this means you don't have to remove the entire heatsink to connect the drive. Perhaps a problem for the first global reviewer. Also included are eight SATA ports, which are becoming increasingly rare on high-end boards as the switch to NVMe and M.2 accelerates. Those who accumulate files should take note.

Also worth noting is the inclusion of a USB Type-C case header. At the bottom of the board is another RGB header and power and reset buttons. This is becoming more common in many cases.

The VRM used on the ASRock Taichi Razer Edition is the best available on a B550 board; the 16-phase setup with 50a mosfets easily powers an overclocked 5950X. Twin 8-pin EPS connectors provide power.

I/O is typical of premium boards. Curiously, though not color-coded, there are eight USB ports on the back panel: two USB 3.2 Gen 2 ports, four Gen 1 ports, and a pair of 2.0 ports. (Side note: Hopefully USB 4 will fix the USB naming mess. It's really BS. I have no complaints about the HDMI 2.1 and DP 1.4a ports. However, it is better to have them than not, as a Zen 3-based APU with a monolithic die may surprise you with its performance.

As we often say when testing motherboards, performance between motherboards is usually within a few percent margin of error. It proved to be very strong in most of our multi-threaded tests with the AMD Ryzen 9 5950X, often leading other X570 and B550 boards we have tested. However, the board was in the middle of the pack in our gaming tests.

Now that we understand the characteristics of the 5950X sample, it is much easier to know what to expect from the board; we were able to achieve 4.5 GHz again with a 1.26 V load, but running 32 threads at 100% got very hot. In fact, it got up to the 80°C range, so we called it quits there. There is more room on the board, but the CPU gets too hot even with a 360mm AIO; the VRMs did not break a sweat and recorded a maximum temperature of 55°C. This is far from dangerous or concerning.

As for memory overclocking, DDR4-4000 or 2,000 MHz with a 1:1 Infinity Fabric clock was easy. We achieved higher clocks with the Asus Crosshair VIII Dark Hero, which is a top-class board; a good set of DDR4-3600s with a 1:1 Infinity Fabric ratio and selectable capacity would fit right in the sweet spot.

The ASRock B550 Taichi Razer Edition is arguably the pinnacle of B550s, and whether a B550 board costing as much as the Taichi Razer Edition is right for you depends on how important RGB is to you and Many X570 boards are priced at this price point. Many X570 boards offer three M.2 slots and more PCIe 4.0 general-purpose lanes at this price, including the ASRock X570 Taichi Razer Edition, which costs about $100 more. Is it worth the extra? Probably not, unless you have special needs.

The ASRock B550 Taichi Razer Edition can be overclocked as much as cooling allows, can run fast memory, has Killer 2.5G LAN and WiFi 6, and has decent audio. It looks beautiful and will appeal to RGB lovers. Ask yourself if you need the extra M.2 slots, 10G LAN, etc. If not, this is definitely a board worth considering. Just for the aesthetics alone.