Gadgetory

welcome back to tech yes it is brian coming to you guys today with a look at as rocks latest refresh on their x99 motherboard this is the Tai Chi which is essentially and cosmetically overhauled motherboard from Azeroth coming in a very aggressive price point so let's have a look at the features and then I'll do some tests for you guys and give you my personal opinion on this board though straight away getting straight into the cosmedix of this board which will probably be the first thing you guys have noticed they've gone with a black and white themed clockwork sort of steampunk look here and I must say that paid very particular attention to detail here with even things like the input/output shield having those same markings there and even the screw holes having those similar markings there as well now one thing I will say is kudos to asrock for changing those clips there and making them the same color as the DIMM slots so in terms of cosmetics I think this board is a real hit they straight away getting into the power delivery we've got a 12 phase design here with eight phases dedicated to the CPU and then two phases dedicated to each of those four dimm slots on either side now there is a black heatsink with X 99 branding covering that power delivery and I noticed that in practice when I started overclocking with pretty aggressive overclocks on air the vrm temps did get a little bit hot I managed to get in after about two hours of running a benchmark there on the CPU at about 55 degrees so a little on the high side though just above that you've got your 8 pin connector and then to the side you got your 24 pin connector and in between there you've got your fan connectors now this board has a total of five different fan connectors there and one of them up the top there being dedicated to water pumps providing an additional two amps and 24 watts of power as opposed to the one amp 12 watt power for Cingular fans moving down the board you've got two USB front out then you've got 10 SATA connections there and also an additional sadr Express connector moving on to the MDOT two configurations we've got two of those one conveniently located in the middle of the board and then one down the bottom right now both these connectors will fit up to five different configurations of MDOT two and different sizes then moving down the board there you've got your doctor debug led as well as a comport header or TPM header and as well as a power LED and speaker header as well as your front audio out and also your front two USB ports there there's also a bias selection switch down the bottom which allows you to select between two different biases if you had a bad update or if you just want to test out a new bias to see if it fixes your problem then moving on to the left side of the board there we've got that armor they're covering the purity sound three which is as rocks implementation of the realtek LC 1150 audio codec now there's good thing about this is they put good amps on not only the audio out there which is a Texas Instruments any five five three two headphone amplifier but they've also put in a decent amp on the mic in so I'll let you guys quickly listen to that so here's a little test for you guys on the x99 taichi mic import here with a volume level of 50 at 20 DB boost here this is my sweet spot generally for motherboard onboard audio so you can tell the asrock actually has a really decent mic in port so if you were using it for streaming or whatnot or even just want good clarity and games then this mic input is definitely going to deliver that and the microphone I am using is the V mode of boom Pro crosstalk was also extremely low on this motherboard and also when I was listening to music with my v motor headphones I noticed the separation was really good and is pretty much as good as it gets for onboard audio and then glancing over the center of the motherboard that we got that clockwork theme as well as 5 PCI Express ports there two of those being one speed and three of those being 16 speed the 16 speed ports there do have the steel reinforced armor as as where I call it I think it's more of a cosmetic thing as I've never busted a PCIe port due to savagery and believe me I'm a savage when it comes to handling PC parts though depending on your CPU and the PCIe leans available there you will be able to do either x16 x16 or x8 x8 x8 then moving on to the side of the motherboard there we've got two USB 2's appears to point them below that you've got a dual band wireless there which actually works really well in practice below that you've got your clear CMOS button USB 3.1 a and C connectors then below you've got an additional three USB 3 ports and an additional USB 2 port all connected to those dual Intel ni C's there which are the two one atvs and then below that you've got your 7.1 Audio HD connections there which also has an optical out so let's take a look at what I like and don't like about the taichi now moving straight into the boss I will give kudos here to asrock for bringing that clockwork theme into the boss and also having a simple setup there if you're new to overclock and you can lock in and easy overclock you got all your settings on one page so if you hit f6 you change to Advanced Mode where this is what used to and you just got all your settings there you can tweak voltages change different over clocks change the PCI Express to the beer clock clock ratio there and you can even update the bias itself within the bios if you just have an internet connection from a router it'll download the firmware and then i'll do the rest for you and then you've also got the fantastic tuner there which allows you to tweak all your different fans that are connected to the motherboard and change the speeds of those if they are TPM connections there how about the actual overclocks that this motherboard was able to obtain well with my 5820k i had the extreme 6 previously here that got 4.5 gigahertz this was no different it scored another 4.5 gigahertz overclock stable there so very good motherboard for overclocking pretty solid though as I mentioned before those vrm temperatures we're a little bit high especially for 24/7 use and this was in a 25-degree controlled environment here also as I said before those crosstalk levels in the making on the sound there is really good then you've got those dual intel n ICS which work really well in practice and then besides that you've really got not a lot to not like about this motherboard also other things here you've just got so much expandability on this motherboard and i think it comes in at $219 so the only graph that I had with this motherboard was that it was missing a power button which I'm kind of used to since I use it in a lot of test bed scenario setups so I'd like to see them add that though really isn't a big winning and losing point of this motherboard since a lot of people are going to be putting these in cases and I will say the cosmetics is an absolutely hit out of the park here I love what asrock have done with this motherboard now I believe it is coming in at 219 u.s. MSRP which is incredible considering the feature set you're getting on this motherboard as well as the fact that they've added in things like Wireless and they haven't gone with fancy RGB LEDs and making you guys pay for it while skimping on things like sound so in conclusion asrock are just getting it right they're hitting home runs when it comes to motherboards nowadays they know what people want and that is a really solid motherboard also one thing I forgot to mention was the motherboard itself actually feels really damn solid and really sturdy I think they've gone with an eighth layer PCB design here so very good job with asrock and I can highly recommend this motherboard for someone looking for not only in sort of the best motherboard a nice use out there but also someone looking for the best value for money don't you guys that's about it for me if you like these videos and be sure to give it a big thumbs up if you have any questions or comments about the Azeroth taichi then be sure to drop a comment in the comment section below and I'll get back to you as soon as I can and yeah this thing is definitely going to be making its way into a build very soon and also I was provided this as a review sample from asrock if there is any ambiguity in the air out there then I hope that clears it off there is hope to see you another take video very soon peace out for now bye