At Computex 2023 in Taipei, Taiwan, ASRock announced two motherboards based on the popular and long-running Taichi series, but with a little twist. The Z790 Taichi Lite and B650E Taichi Lite are designed to offer alternatives to the flagship Taichi series and, as the model name suggests, are lighter versions of the premium models. The Taichi Lite series maintains the Taichi aesthetic, retains some premium features, and offers a lower-cost alternative to ASRock’s flagship lineup.
Motherboard prices have been a hot topic over the last 5-10 years, with prices rising with each new generation of processors. Based on the premium Intel Z790 chipset for Intel’s 13th Generation Core series processors, the ASRock Z790 Taichi Lite features the same core feature set despite its “lightweight” approach to cost, but at a cost savings. There are some differences.
ASRock Z790 Taichi Lite’s most prominent features include the advertised 24-+1+2 power delivery, one PCIe 5.0 x4 M.2 slot, four PCIe 4.0 x4 M.2 slots, and eight SATA ports. It is included. These are all great choices for storage connectivity. Other connectivity includes two Thunderbolt 4 Type-C ports with an additional nine rear panel USB ports and numerous front panel heads for an additional nine USB ports. As for networking, ASRock includes a Killer-based pairing consisting of a 2.5 GbE controller and Wi-Fi 6E CNVi, plus one Gigabit Ethernet port.
Also, this is not the smallest board with a large E-ATX sized PCB, it has all the traditional, gear-inspired styling seen in recent ASRock Taichi boards. At first glance, ASRock has made some changes to the look compared to his regular Z790 Taichi, with a smaller chipset heatsink and lack of integrated his RGB LEDs on most of the board. ASRock Z790 Taichi Lite omits most of the PCIe slot covers and adopts a simpler design. There may be other differences as well, but at the time of writing ASRock has not published a complete list of specs or list of controllers.
ASRock B650E Taichi Lite on display at Computex 2023 (Image credit: toms hardware)
ASRock has also extended its latest motherboard family to AMD’s AM5 platform with the ASRock B650E Taichi Lite. Designed for AMD Ryzen 7000 processors and the X3D variant with lots of 3D V-Cache, the B650E Taichi Lite features his VRM design similar to the B650 Taichi, with the advertised 24+2+1 phase of It has a power supply. ASRock includes one Thunderbolt 4 Type-C port and an additional 11 rear panel USB ports. In addition, users can take advantage of his 7 additional ports via the front panel headers, with a competitive network configuration consisting of Killer 2.5 GbE and Wi-Fi 6E pairing.
Similar to the design differences between the Z790 Taichi and Z790 Taichi Lite, the B650E Taichi Lite has similar design characteristics. Most of the aesthetic changes are due to the heatsink and armor that normally covers most of his Taichi. Removing most of the casing/heatsink means fewer integrated RGB LEDs and a simpler and smaller design for the chipset’s heatsink. As with the Z790 Taichi Lite, ASRock has not released a full spec list.
At the time of this writing, ASRock has not disclosed the expected prices of the Z790 Taichi Lite and B650E Taichi Lite models and how much they will differ compared to the regular Taichi models. However, ASRock says both boards should be available on his retail channel sometime in July.
