Unlike previous years, this year's Computex tech show was not packed with motherboard highlights. While several vendors displayed prototype Z790 refresh boards for the upcoming Raptor Lake refresh, it was ASRock's Z790 and B650E Taichi Lite motherboards that caught my attention.

The concept behind the ASRock Z790 Taichi Lite we will be reviewing is simple: a motherboard that is designed to be a "Lite" motherboard. This motherboard retains all the features of the non-Lite motherboards while eliminating premium aesthetics and lowering the price by $100.

According to ASRock, the beautiful cogs-and-wheels styling of the $479.99 Z790 Taichi cost a lot to manufacture. But add a graphics card, a large air cooler, or water cooling tubes, and much of the board is hidden. It may or may not be visible. Many users with sealed cases do not.

Historically, I've been impressed with Taichi boards, which debuted in the mid-2010s in an era of RGB excess and seemed to have the word "gaming" attached to every product ASRock's Taichi series is a great example of affordable prices, simple black and white aesthetic and a typically excellent blend of a solid feature set, bucked this trend.

In recent years, ASRock has elevated the Taichi brand to the flagship class. The cyberpunk aesthetic with its gears and wheels and retro analog-like styling is great, but the price has also gone up, making Taichi Lite in many ways a throwback to the brand's early days.

Looks aside, the Z790 Taichi Lite inherits all the premium features of the Z790 Taichi. Its long list of features includes dual Thunderbolt 4 Type-C ports, high-end audio and VRM solutions, high-capacity storage, dual LAN, etc. No other motherboard in the Z790 Taichi Lite's price range ticks all these boxes. There is no other motherboard that ticks all of these boxes in the Z790 Taichi Lite price range.

The Z790 Taichi Lite features RGB lighting. Gears and wheels printed in white, combined with a predominantly black design, give it an intermediate, almost utilitarian look that is not ugly. However, the board would be attractive to someone like me who values function over form, cost-effectiveness over excessive ornamentation.

The Z790 Taichi Lite has a lot to offer for an E-ATX board. A total of eight fan headers make the board suitable for water cooling. Just below the bottom M.2 heatsink is a series of RGB LEDs, and there are four more RGB headers, three of which are addressable. The board itself may be a bit plain, but the materials are still there if you want to light up a fully functional build.

You will notice a 6-pin power connector adjacent to the front USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 port. When power is connected to this, the front port will support 60W of fast charging. Without it, the port is limited to 27W.

It supports dual PCIe 5.0 x16 slots and up to 192GB of DDR5 (7200MHz) The Wi-Fi card looks a bit unsightly, but it is hidden under the graphics card so it is not a concern.

The board has five M.2 slots, but only four can be used at a time. This may seem odd, but the two primary slots can be used by PCIe 4.0 or PCIe 5.0 drives. This means that the PCIe 4.0 drive can benefit from the larger heatsink while the PCIe 5.0 x16 slot remains at full speed; when the PCIe 5.0 M.2 slot is used, the primary x16 slot drops to x8.

It is worth checking the motherboard manual before purchasing a Z790 Taichi Lite (or any other Z790 board).

The board also has eight SATA ports. This is increasingly rare. Adding these to the M.2 slots opens up a lot of storage possibilities.

The VRM is a true highlight. It is a 24-phase design with 105A stages cooled by large heat sinks. The Z790 Taichi Lite can drive a liquid nitrogen-cooled Core i9 13900K without breaking a sweat and can handle future refreshed K models under the same conditions.

Moving on to connectivity options, the Z790 Taichi Lite has a better feature set than any other product in this price range. Highlighting the rear I/O are dual USB 4/Thunderbolt 4 ports, supporting 27W PD and display connectivity. They are joined by two USB 3.2 Gen 2 ports, six USB 3.2 Gen 1 ports, and a pair of USB 2.0 ports.

The audio section is top-notch, combining a Realtek ALC4082 codec with an ESS Sabre 9218 DAC and WIMA capacitors. You would be hard pressed to find a better integrated solution.

The board's networking capabilities are hit or miss depending on what you need. In addition to Intel WiFi 6E, there is a killer E3100G 2.5G and Intel I219-V 1G wired LAN port. These will be attractive to those who need dual LAN, but would like to see 5G, if not 10G. That way it could support a fast SSD NAS. However, Asrock's idea of dual LAN rather than one faster port is understandable.

System Performance

Gaming Performance

The Z790 Taichi Lite is built around a mature platform. Engineers have had time to optimize the PCB layout, and the underlying BIOS microcode has had several years of bug fixes and tweaks. In other words, the Z790 boards should operate within the margin of error of each other.

In previous LGA 1700 tests, the test CPU was set to Intel's default settings. i9 13900K, this means 125W PL1, 253W PL2, and 56 seconds Tau, because it requires changing several settings and navigating submenus, setting is time-consuming. For this reason, we started with the Z790 Taichi and left the default settings for the other boards in the graph above. While not ideal from a thermal and power consumption standpoint, and motherboard manufacturers exercise discretion, this best reflects the out-of-the-box performance of a given motherboard.

Let's take a look at the results: the Z790 Taichi Lite didn't surprise us. It showed excellent multi-threaded performance, and the PCMark results and 3DMark Storage scores show it to be an excellent all-rounder. There is little to worry about when it comes to gaming as well.

I've recently decided not to overclock my CPU, as cooling is by far the limiting factor on a top-spec VRM like the Z790 Taichi Lite, and we'll never know anything about the board itself. while looping Cinebench, the VRM heatsink was quite warm at default settings. With a reported temperature of 60°C, it is recommended that airflow be provided.

Fast memory requires an optimized trace layout and BIOS. I was able to boot two 24GB of G.Skill DDR5-7200 at 7600MHz, but that requires excessive IMC voltage. My CPU does not handle very fast memory well. This is a trait seen on many boards; I think I need to hook up a Raptor Lake refresh chip to see if it can pass DDR5-8000 I am confident that the Z790 Taichi Lite will pair well with these future CPUs.

The ASRock Z790 Taichi Lite is a refreshing change to a market that has only seen price increases over the last few years; spending $500 on a motherboard before considering GPUs, memory, and CPUs can get you a console for a fraction of the overall price. In the circumstances, it is a tough pill to swallow. I hope other motherboard makers take notice. The less, the better.

The board is packed with high-end hardware; there's nothing more to add except 10G LAN and additional features like PCIe M.2 add-in cards and an integrated LCD. And a board with those things is definitely not priced at $379.

If features are more important than form, the Z790 Taichi Lite is one of the best options. In many cases, it is a flagship-class board without unnecessary bloat that becomes completely useless once the side panels of the case are closed. Simply put, nothing else offers what the Z790 Taichi Lite does.

We are pleased that ASRock has gone back to its Taichi roots. Its rich feature set, less emphasis on expensive aesthetics, and excellent price are very pleasing features, and it is easy to highly recommend the ASRock Z790 Taichi Lite.

At the time of this writing, only US prices have been announced. We will update this review as soon as UK and AU prices and availability are confirmed.