The ASRock X870E Taichi OCF is an excellent, cost-effective motherboard designed for extreme overclocking, thanks to its specialized tools. If you’re not pouring LN2 and pushing the limits, the regular Taichi is a less-expensive option with the same specs.
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ASRock’s X870E Taichi OCF is a purpose-built motherboard designed for extreme overclocking. All the buttons you see, the two-slot/1 DIMM-per-channel DRAM configuration, and the overbuilt power delivery are just some tools of the trade. Strap a liquid nitrogen pot on top, pour in some of that -196 degree Celsius goodness, and see if you can break some records (there’s more to it than that, but get the idea). And while that’s incredibly fun to do, people tend to use ambient cooling as their daily driver. But don’t worry, the Taichi OCF can do it all well.
Priced around $499 (ASRock has not confirmed pricing at this time), the board has a long list of features and specifications, so it’s not a pared-down racer either. The X870E Taichi OCF comes with six M.2 sockets (two PCIe 5.0 x4), fast networking with 5 GbE LAN and Wi-Fi 7, and a flagship-class audio solution with a DAC. I didn’t expect to see dual front panel USB Type-C headers (the Taichi doesn’t have them), but they’re here if you need them. The DIY-friendly M.2 socket (toolless SSD and heatsink) and EZ Release PCIe slot make swapping out storage and video cards easy, which is common when benchmarking is the rig's primary purpose.
Overall performance in our testing suite was right around average overall, with results varying by test. We again had to use our ‘backup’ DDR5-6000 kit, as the Kingston Fury Beast DDR5-6000 kit we use for baseline testing did not boot. We match the primary timings, but the sub timings are left to auto, which could explain some of the results, as they are looser. No results were out of whack, and in the end, we don’t have any concerns about them.
Below, we’ll examine the board's details and determine whether it deserves a spot on our list of the Best Motherboards . But before we share test results and discuss details, here are the board’s specifications from ASRock’s website.
Specifications of the ASRock X870E Taichi OCF
Swipe to scroll horizontally Socket AM5 (LGA 1718) Chipset X870E Form Factor ATX Voltage Regulator 25 Phase (22x Vcore, 110A SPS MOSFETs for Vcore) Video Ports (2) USB4 Type-C
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