ASRock has used a gear pattern as part of the design on its flagship Taichi motherboards for a few generations, but as you can see in the video below, now the gear actually spins on the Z590 iteration of the motherboard. Perhaps this is a new ploy to land a spot on our best motherboards list?
As Chinese publication XFastest demonstrated in its Z590 Taichi review, the gear on the I/O cover rotates in a clockwise fashion. ASRock even added a special option inside the motherboard's firmware so you can control the spinning interval. Surprisingly, ASRock doesn't brag about this little design detail on the Z590 Taichi's product page, so it could just be a gimmick for the review unit. As far as we can tell, the gear serves no practical purpose, and it certainly isn't going to help you hit higher overclocks.
Either way, at least ASRock is thinking outside of the box and doing something truly different other than simply adding more Christmas lights to the motherboard. The Z590 Taichi also has a set of gears on the passive heatsink for the Z590 PCH – maybe those will be next in line for some spinning action.
The new Z590 Taichi brings a couple of improvements over the Z490 model. Although the Z590 Taichi has lost a power phase in its power delivery subsystem (14 phases vs 15 phases), the new power chokes are rated for 90A instead of the 60A ones on the Z490 Taichi.
Of course, there's also the PCIe 4.0 M.2 ports and PCIe x16 expansion slots on the Z590 Taichi and the upgraded Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.2 connectivity that aren't present on the Z490 Taichi.
The Z590 Taichi hasn't landed at retailers yet, since Intel's 11th Generation Rocket Lake-S processors aren't out either. Nevertheless, the Z590 Taichi is expected to debut with a $429.99 price tag. For comparison, the Z490 Taichi normally sells for $369.99. Therefore, ASRock slaps on a $60 premium for the Z590 Taichi compared to the previous motherboard. In reality, considering the feature set, ASRock's pricing for the Z590 model isn't asking too much.
And, of course, there's the spinning gear. As you would imagine, it probably doesn't serve a practical purpose, but it might be appealing to enthusiasts that like to show off their rigs.
