The last word:
Let’s cut to the chase: we’ve fallen under the spell of this ASRock Taichi Z890 OCF, which is likely to make the XOC competition sit up and take notice. It’s been a while since ASRock offered an XOC card, and we’re delighted to see this OCF model back on the market. The first excellent point is its price, since it can be found at around 500 euros, which is a great price for this type of card. Even if it’s not for the average person, it can of course be used as an ordinary card, just bear in mind that you’ll only have two memory slots.
The BIOS is also very comprehensive, with profiles for overclocking both the processor and memory. The difference with the competition is the presence of profiles of interest to overclockers. If you already own an 8000 MT/s kit, there’s little point in having a dozen profiles below this frequency. In the case of our ASRock Taichi Z890 OCF, the profiles start at 8800 MT/s and prove very interesting. We’ll come back to overclocking in more detail, but the news of the next few weeks means we’ll have to put this platform on the back burner for a while.
Finally, an added bonus is the presence of Nick, ASRock’s in-house overclocker, who very, very regularly provides new BIOS and motherboard information. As a reminder, this model was not supplied to us by ASRock, it was a personal purchase.
ASRock Taichi Z890 OCF :
We liked:
- A high-performance, well-designed power stage
- The possibility of using high-capacity, high-frequency CUDIMM memory
- Tools inserted on the PCB to facilitate overclocking, with remote power and reset button location
- CPU overclocking profiles
- Memory overclocking profiles, very interesting in the face of competition from XOC models
- Unlock/lock mechanism for graphics card and M.2 SSD slots
- Nick’s readiness to offer new BIOSes for this OCF model
- The motherboard’s design, which we find very successful
We would have liked :
- Even if it doesn’t concern ASRock, we’d like to know how long this LGA-1851 socket will last…
As you can see, this ASRock Taichi Z890 OCF motherboard is a real “coup de coeur”. It ticks all the boxes we’re entitled to expect from an XOC model aimed at overclockers: a decent price for this type of board, an ultra-complete BIOS, regular BIOS updates, “useful” profiles in the BIOS, a well-thought-out design for cold testing and, of course, the many tools available on the PCB. So, a big yes for this OCF model!
