BEST AM5 board you SHOULDN'T BUY: ASROCK B650E TAICHI

hey everybody Welcome to Crazy Tech Lab and today we are checking out this bad boy here which is the azrock B 650e taichi now this is a very desirable fairly expensive motherboard for amd's socket am5 and ryzen 7000 series processors but you do get quite a bit for your money there is a motherboard that sits above it which has the xx70 chipset and a motherboard that actually sits below it as well that has the same chipset but is called the taichi light so we're going to be comparing the specifications of those three boards incl well including this one and uh seeing whether or not this is The Sweet Spot or whether you should go for the cheaper light or the more expensive x670 model as well for your ryzen 7000 series processor and of course don't forget that this motherboard will be compatible with future generations of ryzen processors as well so whether it's going to be called ryzen 8000 or 9,000 we don't know what it's going to be uh actually called yet the Next Generation Zen 5 processors but they are due to launch later this year here this motherboard could be a bargain right now if you go for it cuz it will support those future processors so we are going to be taking a look at the features that this board offers focusing on the stuff that it offers above and beyond your typical uh B more budget focused motherboard such as USB 4 we've got PCI Express 5 support here as well on both the PCI Express slots for your graphics card probably not that useful at moment but we do have a PCI a PCI Express 5 compatible m.2 Port which we will be testing we're going to be be seeing how hot the vrms get when they are pitched against the ryzen 9 7950 x with its 16 cores and come to some conclusions at the end having looked at all of the other features as well so thanks to azrack for sending over this motherboard it's a very very desirable one I think it looks absolutely fantastic as well I would be more than happy to have this in my PC but how does it compare for the price and should you buy it that's the conclusion that we're going to come to at the end so don't forget to like and comment on this video as well just helps punch me through the algorithm if you get engaged and do those things and also if you want to subscribe don't forget to turn on the notifications as well because you'll be notified when I upload new videos and I've got lots of cool stuff in the pipeline as well so that's it for me thanks to ASRock let's crack on with the review so here we are with the azck b650 E Tai Chi then and we're just going to have a very quick run through of the features and I do a quick unboxing to see where you actually get in the Box as well so the first thing you'll probably want to familiarize yourself with is where to put your m.2 ports or ssds and um you can see under here we've got two PCI Express for m.2 slots and these are obviously backwards compatible with PCR Express 3 as well no under PCB Cooling and no tool-free fittings here either for the heat sink or the uh the SSD itself you do get that with some of the other manufacturers out there so that's maybe something that as ASRock wants to look at in the future um but for now it's a very large heat sink that will um take you just a little bit longer to actually install your SSD over here if you've got a PCI Express 5 SSD then this is where you want it again no tool-free fitting and no under PCB cooling just a very large heat sink on top which is kind of really all you need to be honest so this is where you want to have your PC Express 5 SSD Pap so you've got a crucial t705 or t700 um that's where you want to have it but again this port is backwards compatible with previous generations PCR Express 4 and PCR Express 3 so one very useful thing um to note if you do have your SSD in there it means that you don't need to remove your graphics card in order to get at these ones so obviously if your graphics card hangs down which most of them do um if it's water cooled again you're going to have to probably dismantle your water cooling system or drain it to be able to get the graphics card out unless it's a very thin single slot water block so just a a nice useful feature to have uh ports in different locations so I am just going to remove the heat sinks cuz I don't want to waste your time on the video just watching me screw them back on so I'm going to remove them for now and so we can have a look at the the rear panel and and an absolutely insane number of type a USB ports here so I don't think anybody is going to come up short I'm definitely not complaining about this having less than my minimum which I consider to be about five we've got more than double that here with 11 in total so we have USB 3.2 uh Gen 2 going on and all of these are either USB 3 or faster or USB 3.1 uh gen1 as it's now known so we also have a USB 4 Port down here so so this is essentially compatible with Thunderbolt 4 it has a very very uh similar specification very high high power output and very high bandwidth so the latest ssds that are pushing well over 1,000 megabytes a second will run absolutely fine on that Port as well lots of other devices as well so that's probably one of the main reasons you would buy this motherboard and it's certainly something that adds to the price tag as well so we've got the usual audio audio ports there but just take note that you don't get the full six ports there so if you're planning on connecting um very elaborate speaker systems to this thing um you might find that you don't have enough ports so we do have a uh a video output which is useful because the ryzen 7000 series CPUs do have a video output probably not what you're going to be what you're going to be wanting to use with this motherboard I'd imagine most people are going to have discret graphics card but it is useful for troubleshooting if you think your graphics card might be might have failed or a port on the motherboard is failed you can actually use this port to um to troubleshoot as well um we do get 80211 uh ax Wi-Fi so Wi-Fi 6 we get on this motherboard as well with an antenna included in the box that we're going to look at in the moment we get 2.5 GB ethernet obviously backwards compatible with one g 1 GB as well and uh pretty essential for AMD motherboards cuz I do find that they um they sort of struggle to boot occasionally especially if you're especially if you're overclocking so we have a seos clear switch down there as well as a USB bios flashback button which you may need to use when it comes round to installing ryzen 6 uh 9000 Series Zen 5 CPUs if you get this motherboard off eBay or something um and it hasn't been it doesn't have the latest bios installed you can use that button there to update the BIOS without a compatible CPU in the socket or without a CPU in the socket at all so when it comes to the vrms uh Power circuitry we've got 24 plus 2 plus 1 power phases so a total of 27 power phases with very very very large heat sinks down here you can see just how massive these things are they are absolutely crazy in terms of their size so I don't think we're going to have any problems at all uh with the vrm temperatures today so I'm just going to do a very quick H up of the fan headers that we've got on this motherboard so we' got one two three nothing down here but then a whole bunch down on the south end of the board so we've got four 5 6 7 8 it looks like so that's a pretty decent number of um fan headers you're going to be able to deal with an entire case load of fans and probably radiators and all that kind of stuff as well so um that's pretty much all we need to go over with the uh the top side of the PCB except for the fact you obviously get a USB 3.2 gen 1 header USB 3.2 Gen 2 header and we also get SATA ports as well uh which you would kind of expect if you want to transplant your hard diss loads of of RGB headers and all that kind of stuff as well and you obviously get the PCI Express 5 uh PCI slot up here as well so that's pretty much it from the motherboard point of view so we're just going to have a quick look in the box now and uh just see what we get again probably the most disappointing part of this motherboard is that you don't get a massive accessory box I do like a large accessory box because it just means that you just get loads of cool features you might get expansion cards or audio cards and all that kind of stuff you just get your uh typical uh Wi-Fi aerial you do get um an expansion card for usb2 ports I'm have no idea why you need that given how many type A ports this thing has um I think that's kind of a pointless inclusion uh just to kind of fill the accessory box then you get your usual SATA connectors and you do get a little funky um sort of TIY ASRock uh key cap if you have a um mechanical keyboard that's compatible with with those kind of things of course that is pretty much it in the accessory box so that's the only reason I'm sort of a bit um yeah you obviously get the cable ties as ASRock cable ties as well but there's not that many in there I I probably want maybe six or uh six or eight of those I think you only get four in the box so yeah that's probably my most um sort of annoying feature about this motherboard is that the accessory box isn't uh as wow um factoring as other motherboards you have out there so um other things that I'm not so ke on um I would have liked to have seen another m.2 Port down here because I feel that the uh the heat sink up here is great but you need to remove your graphics card to actually get at those ports so if you're adding in multiple M2 ssds on this motherboard which is you know what a lot of people are doing these days um given that 8 tab ssds are very expensive um people are tending to double up with 2 terabyt and 4 terabytes um just to get that extra super fast data um that's just something I would have liked to have seen is maybe just one of those dropping down here or even having both of them down here or something like that um another thing I find a little bit um irritating is having the uh the diagnostic LED down here and that kind of stuff it just can prove a little bit difficult to see those in the case I do like the fact that it has them though CU a lot of a lot of motherboard manufacturers don't have these things anymore and they are so useful having the diagnostic LED on an on an AMD motherboard especially uh just because they tend to be a bit slow to boot up and a bit prone to um hanging sometimes you just it's just nice to see uh what the what your board is actually doing um and obviously having a reset button and power button on there is always great for benchmarking and testing and all that kind of stuff so that's pretty much it from the unboxing let's crack on with the review so first up we have the peak vrm temperature which at 41° C was achieved after a 10-minute stress test in C bench the multi-threaded test putting all of the CPU calls under load and that's an excellent result generally I'd expect the uh a very very good board to be under 50° C and that's exactly what we saw here so the PCI Express 5 and not 2 temperature not quite as impressive the temperature with our crucial t705 which dishes out data at over 14,000 megabytes a second was only a couple of degrees away from that thing throttling so 78° not a great result here and the heat sink isn't that large and also the uh the underside of the SSD isn't cooled either which you do get on the um the Heat sync equipped version of the t705 and on lots of other motherboard uh motherboard manufacturers uh m.2 heat sinks as well so you would definitely want some active air flow flowing over that heat sink if you're going to be using a PCI Express 5 SSD back to good results now then and the audio performance of this board and uh we have a noise level of minus 111 DBA dynamic range of 111 DBA and a THD of 02 they are all excellent results for onboard audio and these are similar results that you'll get to the x670 version of this board as well because that uses the exact same audio codec and uh technology so you're likely going to be getting um much better audio quality on this board than you would with something like the uh the real Tech um ALC 892 codec or something like that something that's much older and probably equipped on a budget uh motherboard but if you want to use this board for gaming or music then you probably won't have any complaints and it's going to be performing fairly close to a discrete sound card as well okay so the final part of this video is just comparing the three azrock taiichi boards that you can potentially own uh for your socket A5 system so the one that we're looking at today is the b650 E taiichi which retails for around $370 so here we can see the pricing at Newegg and uh we have the x670 E taii which retails for around 70 bucks or so uh more at $430 and we have the taichi light which has a pretty awesome price of $260 so it is over $100 less than the b650 taichi now I'm going to say first off that while I love the looks of the two more expensive boards the b650 e taii the one that we're looking at today and the x670 taichi I cannot re recommend either of them over the taichi light the taichi light is an absolute steel for what you're getting for the simple reason you are getting pretty much everything that you get with the much more expensive b650 taiichi now that board admittedly as I just mentioned does look awesome but what it looks like is as rock has used pretty much exactly the same PCB with exactly the same features uh but just slapped a a big heat SN on it that we we can see here so yeah that looks great as do a lot of the other specifications um we've got some bigger vrm heat sinks as well but we have the exact same power circuitry the 2 plus two uh sorry 24 plus 2+ 1 power phases on both boards and that is just absolutely crazy to get that kind of level of vrms on the a board of uh of this price on the with the taii light what's more we also get a PCI Express 5 PCI Express Port not that useful as I mentioned but you still get it but you also get a uh PCI Express 5 m.2 Port so if you do want to go all out and get a crazy fast 14,000 megab a second uh PS Express uh 5 SSD you can house it on the taii light as well so other things uh that kind of put the nail in the coffin of the b650 E Tai is the fact that the cheaper board also has a USB 4 type c Port um so you've got fast charging there for your smartphone you've got the extra bandwidth as well you get exactly the same number of ports on the rear IO panel as well these two are identical so I can't honestly see any reason why you would go for the b650 E taiichi unless you were willing to spend another 100 120 bucks just for the better Aesthetics it does look gorgeous I have to to admit but is it worth the extra cash probably not um the m.2 heat snc for the PCI Express 5 slot is maybe a little larger on the taii but you I would probably recommend you have um you know a fan pointed at that heat sink or use an actively cooled heat sink for a PCI Express 5 SSD anyway because even the b650 E Tai was getting a little warm for comfort so honestly I kind of expected today to come out recommending the P 650 e taiichi um but looking at the specifications I just really can't justify that there is literally a um a hair between them it's absolutely crazy given the price difference so whether or not a rock has technically shot itself in the foot I don't really know I think it's kind of offered up the two more expensive boards to start with bcer am5 it's then Stripped Away Stripped Away some of the Aesthetics and sold the board at a much cheaper price so this is the board that I would go for the b650 taichi light and you can see a link to that board and all three of these boards in the description below so that is uh pretty much it from here for me here today sadly I can't recommend the board that I've reviewed unless you're absolutely sold on the Aesthetics which I I don't know maybe um but for me I think the uh the best option for pretty much everyone out there is the Far Far cheaper option in the form of the b650 taii light so it's still an ASRock board hopefully they won't be too disappointed with this review um all three of these boards are really really good overl look to all of them so um I would thoroughly recommend the b650 TA light over the other two boards so that's pretty much it for me here today thanks for watching thanks to ASRock for sending over the motherboard and don't forget to like comment and subscribe and I'll be back very very soon

Channel: CrazyTechLab

Views: 4,841

Keywords: ASRock b650E taichi, asrock b650e taichi lite, ASRock b650E taichi review, best am5 motherboard, best am5 socket motherboard, best socket am5, pcie 5.0 ssd, crucial t705, crucial t700, best amd motherboard, asrock audio, asrock vrms, best b650 motherboard, best b650 motherboard for 7800x3d

Id: NOMhkRUSeyk

Length: 16min 59sec (1019 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 04 2024