No USB Type-A here
ASRock next-gen Intel motherboard shows an interesting design choice.
ASRock Z890 Taichi Aqua, Source: @OLISPEC
The company is showcasing its broad portfolio of Intel Z890 and AMD X870 motherboards at Computex. Interestingly, Intel has forbidden its partners from advertising these boards as Z890, although it seems obvious at this point. AMD wasn’t as strict with the promotion of their next-gen platform, which is supposed to launch next month, in fact, AMD themselves confirmed the new chipset.
At the ASRock booth, one will find a plethora of new Z890 boards, one of which is the upcoming Taichi Aqua. As a reminder, ASRock announced it is merging the Aqua lineup with Taichi (so the name is not a mistake).
The Aqua is a liquid-cooled motherboard, which in this case means a block on the VRM section. The liquid cooling is not required but is an optional feature that may allow users to expand their liquid systems to cool down the motherboard components for overclocking. This won’t be required for most users, and this design is among the few using such a cooling design.
ASRock Z890 Taichi Aqua, Source: Club386
The board is equipped with a 33-phase power stage design and comes with two PCIe x16 slots, four DDR5 DIMMs, and supports up to six M.2 slots (two of which are Gen5 and two are Gen4). It could easily serve as a storage server, but it could also apparnetly replace a USB hub.
This board features not two but ten USB Type-C connectors, with not a single Type-A connector on the board. Of course, the board will still have the front panel connector, and you can easily attach a chassis that almost certainly has such connectors, but the motherboard itself does not have any.
It is unclear whether ASRock will bundle a single USB Type-C to Type-A adapter, nor whether that’s actually a needed feature given that you can buy almost every device with a Type-C connector at this point. However, the lack of a single connector means that without the adapter, you will not be able to plug in any older devices.