so intel's 11th gen is out
kind of we've seen results that are
already floating around the internet and
you can probably tell that they're not
that desirable and we've kind of as
rocker sent over their taichi z590
motherboard and said take a look at this thing and
i kind of feel a little bit sorry for
asrock with these upcoming cpus where
the motherboard in this case looks
extremely good and performs extremely
good which we're going to go over the
numbers here today
but could it be let down by the cpus well
that will be for you guys to judge
especially with the 11 900k review
right around the corner today though
we're going to take a look at
z590 the extra features you get and also
what asrock have done with the tai chi
motherboard
in the sense that they've improved the
14 phase design
especially on the choke frontage and
also they've given a few little extras
especially when it comes to the
aesthetic we've got now that turning cog
wheel up the top left-hand side
but you've also got this beautiful
amazing aesthetic to the point where i
don't usually focus too much on
aesthetics on motherboards but what
they've done this time around
is absolutely gorgeous so let's roll
that intro for you guys
and then we'll get into the nitty-gritty
details
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so let's be straight up with you guys
when it comes to a motherboard i look at
two of the main factors and that is
what's the price
and at that price is it going to work
for its intended market
so straight away this thing is expensive
there's no beating you guys around the
bush
it's 430 usd and at least that's the
price i'm seeing
on from retailers and then in australia
at 660 aussie dollars
so it's a premium board and then you're
probably wondering well is this going to
give me
a premium experience and here's where
we're going to move on to the first
most important part with any motherboard
and that is the vrm and the
implementation of it
we've got here a 14 phase design from
azeroth i'll put the details up
in terms of the mosfets as well as the
chokes being used as well as their 12k
nichikon capacitors
and the digital pwm controller where the
most important part is we did test this
with an eight core 16 threaded cpu
let's just call it a a retail sample for
all intents and purposes but out of the
box we managed to
score about 206 watts power usage now
from the wall
this did show us that the power numbers
were being pretty accurate at least the
ones provided by hardware info 64.
and this managed to stress the vrm in a
27 degree
ambient environment this managed to push
the vrm up to 75 degrees on the surface
temperatures which
for me personally is one of the most
important because it gets to see if
there's any trickery involved in some of
the numbers being reported by the
software and when it came to the
software that was reporting
as well to go into the 60 degree region
so
this was pretty much a very good board
in terms of controlling
the temperatures on the vrm
at least with terms of the mosfets so if
you want to overclock now you will be
getting into the 80 degree region of
course the cbu will start
juicing up even more power going close
to that of
300 watts though here's the thing if you
want to
overclock and you want even more cooling
azeroth do include an
option for an extra three centimeter fan
because there's already one
implemented into the heatsink over the
vrm which does
weigh in at 245 grams
so in terms of the vrm the tai chi
series asrock always do a good job of
implementing something
that is going to work and it's going to
work well considering a hotter ambient
climate here
it did do a very good job and of course
the noise on those heatsink fans if you
include the two or you just use the one
is going to be very low and that's one
thing they got right this time around
when they're using these fans is from
the get go they've got that quiet
profile but still providing
a little bit of extra cooling though
moving through the rest of the features
what about the onboard audio
and this is a very different design in
terms of them using a different codec at
the rear
versus the front and that is for the
rear they're using the realtek 1220
and i'll pull up the numbers here for
you guys where the crosstalk is still
really good
as well as the frequency response but on
the front they're using the es
sabre 9218 dax solution and here is
where
if you're a bit of an audio enthusiast
you definitely want to plug your
headphones into the front out
because you're going to be getting a
much better experience near that of a
perfect solution
and especially for a motherboard this
isn't very impressive even if you want
to use something like a
sennheiser hd 600 pair of cans is going
to give you a great
listening experience out of the box
you've also got the nahimic audio there
if you wish to tune things
so the audio experience on both the rear
and the front is pretty good but you
definitely want to use the front
and in terms of the mic out port here's
where they've done a really good job too
where
there was a little bit of noise
suppression being used but it was
very minor to the point where honestly
you could use this for streaming
and getting audio across to your viewers
and having them have
a very good listening experience though
what about the pca 4.0 which is the
biggest
jump up especially on intel side of
things where amd already implemented
that
a while ago intel are finally getting on
to implementing pci 4 native
with the 11th gen cpus and here is where
we scored on the m.2 scores
that of in the realm of pcie 4.0 speeds
when we used a
4.0 drive speeds were very good very
consistent
and the temperatures were also very good
too
at least with in terms of the heatsinks
because the pci 4.0
drives they do get very hot so you will
want to definitely have a heat sink on
them
and here is where we scored 58 degrees
maximum whilst doing our test and then
on the surface temperatures they were
lower however keep in mind you will want
to use the top port for pcie 4.0
connectivity with the m.2
as well as if you want to get your
graphics card in 4.0 mode then you want
to use the top slot as that's the only
pci 4.0
slot and that's the x16 slot what about
now memory speeds and also the topology
of the memory i'll put that up on the
screen for you guys but
the most important thing is they say it
goes up to speeds of 5000 megahertz on
the box
this is going to be very dependent on
how many sticks you're using in relation
to the cpu as well because
intel have admitted that there is a
difference in the binning
of the chips in terms of their imc
quality as well not just the core clocks
but also the i'm sin so if you get the
11 900k for example
that's going to have a gear one that's
higher than the 11700 k which will use a
gear 2
essentially half the memory core
controller clocks
to that of the 11900k now here's where
we did get our memory and gear 2 ratio
up to 4 400 megahertz across four sticks
which was actually very impressive
as this is the highest i've seen on a 32
gig kit
here at the studio now in terms of
getting to 5 000 megahertz if you had
maybe two eight gigabyte sticks
you could test that out but i can't
validate that claim here personally but
i will say one thing this board getting
up to 4 400 megahertz across four eight
gigabyte sticks
is quite an impressive feat the one
extra cool detail to mention is that
this board will support
non-registered ecc memory on ddr4 side
so if you have some of this memory lying
around and you want to use it
you can use it with this board it will
just turn off the ecc portion
though going through the rear of the
board this is where you've got eight usb
ports in total two of those being 3.2
type a and then two being the type c's
that we spoke about before
and then the additional four being just
usb 3.1
and we've got two lan ports one of those
being a killer 2.5 gigabits per second
the other being an intel
uh 219v and then they've also included
wi-fi 6e as well as bluetooth 5.2
and on top of that you get a bias
flashback button which does come in
handy
especially if you want to update well
actually it's not going to come in too
much handy for you guys
this time around because uh the next
generation will probably be ddr5 and pci
5.0
perhaps it's a good thing if you are
updating your bias in a thunderstorm
the last thing to go over with the rear
input output connectivity is asrock are
claiming they've got their patent
pending on this new technology for
gamers which separates the mouse packets
from the keyboard packets in that one of
the packets is going through the usb
controller through the pcie
and they're claiming this will give you
ever so slightly better latency and i
mean in a world of
mouse is now marketing with 8 000 hertz
i think some people might care about
this i honestly
am not going to be really doing anything
dedicated towards this because
after one millisecond after a thousand
hertz it does get extremely negligible
in terms of
the difference even if you are a top
tier pro
and the sad thing is about that is i
can't even pick it up with my 1000 fps
camera so
good luck picking it up with your eyes
though now it's time for the
most important thing if you are an rgb
lover and that is asrock have done some
really good things in terms of
aesthetics on this board to the point
where
i personally think this is the best
looking motherboard that has come
through here at the studio
they've used some kind of crocodile skin
esque
style on the heatsinks and i gotta say i
love it of course being down under here
i love myself a good croc
and what better than crocodile skin on
your motherboard and more importantly
that tai chi logo which on the top left
hand side
they've actually implemented now a
turning wheel that relates to i believe
cpu
load and then of course you've got that
rgb which you've got the option for
addressable
5 volt rgb or 12 volt rgb and you've got
different lighting zones even lighting
zones underneath the board which you can
change within the bios itself
which one thing i do love about azeroth
boards is that they do include that
native
bios controller which doesn't interfere
with your install of windows and doesn't
add on top of any extra bloatware which
can actually affect your fps
which if we compare it to other forms of
rgb control software those types of rgb
control can affect your fps
this is not going to affect your fps so
now the final things to go over we've
got eight sided ports supporting raid 0
1 and 5 and 10
on the intel native controller and
you've got usb 3.2 front outs and
there's a total of eight pwm fan headers
which are controllable
via the bios and you've got the option
to auto tune them from the motherboard
if you wish to
and speaking of the bios that is like
always
a good experience which doesn't need to
be changed azeroth have kind of
gone with the same formula now for
generations on end
but my opinion is if something works and
it works well
then there's no real need to change it
but i wish they would
implement the internet flash feature on
amd boards and since this is an intel
board you do get that internet flash
option so if you want to get the latest
bios
plug in a auto routed connection and
then you can download the latest update
on your bios with ease without doing
anything else so with all those tests
out of the way it's conclusion time and
what i saw here was a board that passed
everything with
flying colors but of course that price
tag that's lingering there you guys
most likely know what you're getting
into if you want to get this board
premium board that after all the tests
does offer a premium experience of
course it's not going to be for
even most people out there i'd say it's
going to be for
a very small amount of people building a
high-end rig but at least if you want to
get the best then this board
is definitely going to deliver that but
whether or not the 11900k
or the 11700k is the cpu for you as well
that's another
question that will be answered very soon
at least on tech city so stay tuned for
that review
anyhow guys with that aside i hope you
enjoyed today's review if you did then
be sure to smash that like button for us
also let us know in the comment section
below what you think
of z590 do you think asrock have done a
great job on this board
and they've sort of been maybe i don't
know put to the test by intel
do leave a comment down below let us
know those thoughts and opinions
and speaking of thoughts and opinions
we've got the question of the day here
which comes from jaden ford and they ask
hey tyc do you know if i can fit a btx
case
into an etx case so i think they're
talking about the motherboard and btx
when it comes to btx is basically
the reverse of atx forget the e on there
atx is just a standard where
the board you'll have the input output
in a standard sort of format that's
facing the left btx is sort of
the opposite so you've got the input
output going this way
and there's just really no way to do it
unless you
are extremely adventurous in terms of
your modding skills
and it's just going to be so much more
effort to do it i actually don't know of
any
retail btx cases if anything i would
just get an open test bed or even maybe
something off aliexpress
that you've got that open frame style
look though if you do this you might
have to drill some new holes and then
put the standoffs in
so that would probably be the path of
least resistance and at least having a
build
that looks somewhat normal hope that
answers that question if you guys have
stayed this far
and you're still watching and you're
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peace out for now bye
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