ASRock’s Z790 Taichi Carrara motherboards feature the same hardware as the more traditional Taichi boards, but instead of the black-on-black premium look with the cog/gear accents this line is known for. , Carrara has a distinctive white marble look to most heatsinks. and a shroud. Along with its own style, you get robust power delivery, high-quality audio, five M.2 sockets, including one PCIe 5.0 x4 (128 Gbps) socket, and Killer-based networking. Priced at $499.99, its unique look and comprehensive specifications make it a solid option for building your Z790 system.
ASRock’s Z790 lineup (as of this writing) consists of 13 different motherboards. It comes in all shapes and sizes with familiar names such as Taichi, Steel Legend, Riptide, Pro and his new LiveMixer SKU, offering unique looks even in the more affordable parts of the product stack.The price range is $499.99 (opens in new tab) (Taichi Carrara) to ASRock Z790M PG Lightning/D4 $179.99 (opens in new tab)There are plenty of options in the existing lineup, but we hope to see a water-cooled Aqua in the future as well.
In terms of hardware, the Z790 Taichi Carrara has everything the Z790 platform has to offer. PCIe 5.0 slots and M.2 sockets, 40 Gbps USB4/Thunderbolt 4 capabilities, it’s all there. In addition, Taichi includes the latest generation flagship audio with Realtek ALC4082 codec and equipped with ESS SABER DAC. If storage is a concern, there are 8 SATA ports and 5 M.2 sockets available, but with some lane sharing and not all at the same time.
In terms of performance, the Taichi was used everywhere due to its liberal default power cap, and the system was able to pull nearly 500W out of the wall during our stress tests. Even with the 3x120mm AIO and the thermal limits of the board out of the box, some applications struggled to keep the temperatures normal, which regulated and resulted in marginally better results than other boards I’ve tested so far. You can tame the beast with a simple BIOS tweak to follow Intel’s power limits. However, some benchmarks are slower. Somewhere there is a happy medium.
Below, we dig into the board details and see if it’s worthy of being on our Best Motherboards list. As time goes on I’ll be reviewing and adding more boards to the list to give you a better idea of how each board performs before I go into the details from listing the specs from his website at ASRock start.
Specifications: ASRock Z790 Taichi/Taichi Carrara
| socket | LGA1700 |
| chipset | Z790 |
| form factor | form factor |
| voltage regulator | 27 phases (24x 105A SPS MOSFETs for Vcore) |
| video port | (1) HDMI (v2.1) |
| row 5 – cell 0 | (2) Intel Thunderbolt 4 (Type C) |
| USB port | (2) USB4/Thunderbolt 4 Type-C (40Gbps) |
| row 7 – cell 0 | (2) USB 3.2 Gen2 (10Gbps) |
| row 8 – cell 0 | (6) USB 3.2 Gen 1 (5Gbps) |
| row 9 – cell 0 | (2) USB2.0 |
| network jack | (1) 2.5GbE |
| audio jack | (2) Analog + SPDIF |
| Legacy Port/Jack | ✗ |
| Other Ports/Jacks | ✗ |
| PCIe x16 | (2) v5.0 (x16, or x8/x8) |
| Row 15 – Cell 0 | (1) v4.0 (x4) |
| PCIe x8 | ✗ |
| PCIe x4 | ✗ |
| PCIe x 1 | ✗ |
| Crossfire/SLI | AMD Crossfire |
| DIMM slots | (4) DDR5 7000+(OC)*, 128GB capacity |
| Row 21 – Cell 0 | *1DPC 1R up to 7000+ MHz (OC), 4800 MHz native. |
| Row 22 – Cell 0 | 1DPC 2R up to 6000+ MHz (OC), 4400 MHz native |
| Row 23 – Cell 0 | 2DPC 1R up to 6000+ MHz (OC), 4000 MHz native. |
| Row 24 – Cell 0 | 2DPC 2R up to 4800+ MHz (OC), 3600 MHz native. |
| M.2 socket | (1) PCIe 5.0 x4 (128Gbps) / PCIe (up to 80mm) |
| Row 26 – Cell 0 | (4) PCIe 4.0 x4 (64Gbps) / PCIe (up to 80mm) |
| Row 27 – Cell 0 | Supports RAID0/1/5 |
| U.2 port | ✗ |
| SATA port | (8) SATA3 6Gbps (supports RAID 0/1/5/10) |
| USB header | (1) USB v3.2 Gen 2×2, Type-C (20Gbps) |
| Row 31 – Cell 0 | (2) USB v3.2 Gen 1 (5Gbps) |
| Row 32 – Cell 0 | (1) USB v2.0 (480Mbps) |
| fan/pump header | (8) 4-pin (CPU, CPU/Water Pump, Chassis) |
| RGB header | (3) aRGB (3 pin) |
| Row 35 – Cell 0 | (1) RGB (4 pin) |
| diagnostic panel | (1) Dr. Debug |
| Internal button/switch | Power and reset buttons, CMOS reset |
| SATA controller | ASMedia ASM1062(?) |
| ethernet controller | (1) Killer E3100G (2.5GbE) |
| Wi-Fi/Bluetooth | Killer AX1690 Wi-Fi 6E (2×2 ax, MU-MIMO, 2.4/5/6 GHz, 160 MHz, BT 5.3) |
| USB controller | ASMedia ASM1074 |
| HD audio codec | Realtek ALC4082 (ESS SABREES9218 DAC) |
| DDL/DTS | ✗ / ✗ |
| guarantee | 3 years |
ASRock Z790 Taichi Carrara Box Contents
ASRock includes some accessories along with the motherboard. This isn’t the most extensive set of extras we’ve covered, but the basics are included, along with additional his 120mm Carrara Edition fans. Below is a complete list of included accessories.
- user manual
- (4) SATA data cables
- wireless dongle usb bracket
- 12CM Carrara Edition Cooling Fan
- ASRock WiFi 2.4/5/6GHz Antenna
- (4) Screw for M.2 socket
Design of ASRock Z790 Taichi Carrara
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The Z790 Taichi Carrara has a unique look for a motherboard. I can’t remember anything in the past that used a marble look/pattern on the heatsinks and shrouds or anything related to that. The DRAM and two of the three PCIe slots use reinforcement to prevent shearing from heavy graphics cards and reduce EMI. The black-on-white color scheme of the 8-layer PCB goes well with most build themes.
Carrara features a long RGB strip for lighting under the bottom M.2 heatsink. The colors are bright and saturated, illuminating the interior of the chassis. If you like Taichi’s board but didn’t like the cogs/gears and the existing black-on-black design, the Carrara is certainly a unique choice.
Focusing on the top half of the board, the left side has a nice marble accent on top of the heatsink/shroud. The thin plastic marble trim piece doesn’t seem to hinder the heatsink’s performance (for the M.2 socket below), but admittedly I haven’t quantitatively tested this either. In testing, ours did not overheat. This is all we are looking for (PCIe 5.0 M.2 module may change that).But if the PCIe 5.0 socket heatsink is not good, ASRock Blazing M.2 fan heatsinksold separately.
Just above the large actively cooled VRM heatsink are two 8-pin EPS connectors for powering the CPU (one is required). Past the right socket area and above the VRM heatsink are the first two (out of eight) 4-pin fan headers. All fans support PWM and DC controlled fans/pumps, but the output of each header is different. CPU_FAN1 supports up to 1A/12W, CHA_FAN1-6/WP supports up to 2A/24W, CPU_FAN2/WP_3A supports up to 3A/36W. That means there is enough power available on these headers to run cooling from the motherboard.
Heading to the right, there are four hardened DRAM slots with locking mechanisms on each side. Four slots support up to 128 GB of DDR5 RAM, with speeds listed up to DDR5-7000+. I had no issues with the two kits running up to DDR5-6000 out of the box. There is additional headroom, but it depends on the memory kit and the quality of his IMC (Integrated Memory Controller) in the processor, so your mileage may vary.
Along the right edge are the first two (out of four) RGB headers. In this case, two of the three 3-pin ARGB headers. The other two are found along the bottom edge. Moving the focus down to the 24-pin ATX powering the board and the horizontally mounted 6-pin PCIe power connector supporting 60W charging with the front panel USB 3.2 Gen2x2 connector (also here). come across. When no auxiliary power is connected, the output is reduced to 27W, which is the fast charging output of most mobile devices.
Moving to the VRM, power flows from the EPS connector to a 20-phase Renesas RAA229131 controller. For Vcore, the power goes from there to twenty-four 105A Renesas RAA22010540 SPS MOSFETs, making a whopping 2,520A available to the processor. Taichi’s power delivery is more than capable of handling an Intel Core i9-13900K at stock and overclocked.
A heatsink and shrouded bottom of the board hide the audio and M.2 sockets, leaving the PCIe slot fully exposed. Underneath the leftmost shroud is the flagship-class Realtek ALC4082 audio codec and ESS SABRE9218 DAC. Some red WIMA audio caps are visible and other standard audio caps are hidden. With flagship audio codecs and high-quality DACs, you won’t find better integrated audio anywhere else.
Start with the three PCIe slots in the middle of the board. Both top slots (primary graphics) feed lanes from the CPU and run at PCIe 5.0 x16 if only the top slot is populated, or x8/x8 speed if PCIE_2 is occupied. increase. The bottom slot runs PCIe 4.0 x4 and the lanes come from the chipset. If the bottom slot PCIE3 is occupied, SATA ports 0-4 will be disabled, so care must be taken when installing hardware on the board. If you’re considering a multi-GPU setup (whoever you are), this configuration supports AMD Crossfire, but NVIDIA SLI is not listed.
There are five M.2 sockets wedged around the PCIe slots and under the heatsink. The top socket M2_1 connects through the CPU and runs at PCIe 5.0 x4 (128 Gbps) speed, while M2_2 runs at PCIe 4.0 x4 (64 Gbps) and connects through the processor. When M2_1 is populated, PCIE1 will downgrade to x8 mode. M2_1 is disabled when PCIE2 is occupied. You can use M2_1 or M2_2, but not both, so plan accordingly here as well. In the worst case, you will have 4 M.2 sockets (5.0 or 4.0) and 4 SATA ports available at once. A more common configuration where the bottom PCIe slot is not populated yields four more SATA ports (8 total). Either is fine for most users, but anyone with more than 4 of his SATA drives and his PCIe expansion card should look elsewhere or upgrade to an M.2 module .
Along the right edge of the board are the USB 3.2 Gen 1 (5 Gbps) connectors and eight SATA ports below. Unless you want a closer look at the cool marbled pattern on the chipset heatsink, there’s nothing else to see here.
Several headers are exposed at the bottom of the board. You’ll find the usual stuff like extra USB ports, an RGB header, and a power/reset button. Below is the complete list from left to right.
- front panel audio
- Clear CMOS header
- 4-pin ARGB header
- 3-pin RGB header
- noise sensor
- (2) system fan header
- USB 3.2 Gen 1 (5Gbps) connector
- (2) USB 2.0 headers
- Dr. debug display
- (2) system fan header
- Power/reset button
- CMOS clear button
- TPM header
- system fan header
- system panel header
The Taichi Carrara (and Taichi) rear IO plate is pre-installed on the motherboard. There are black letters and some Taichi branding on a black background. A total of 12 USB ports are scattered across the rear IO. Utilizes 2 Thunderbolt 4/USB4 (40 Gbps) Type-C ports that double as video outputs, 6 USB 3.2 Gen 2 (10 Gbps) ports (2 low-latency Lightning USB ports), and 4 USB 2.0 ports I can do it. The network has Killer Intel 2.5 GbE and Intel GbE ports and a Killer Wi-Fi 6E antenna connection. Last but not least, the audio stack consists of two analog plugs and an SPDIF output.
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