Question Ascrock X870E Taichi or Lite?

[piechockidocent9]

Hello yall, my old MSI Z370 Godlike Gaming has been dying on me for a while now. Systematically audio, wifi, half of the usb ports and lately lan is gone.
With xmas and new year coming I decided it's about time to retire it and move on, more than doubling my cores in the process.

I wanted to go with Asrock X870E Taichi because of it's ability to slot 4 m.2 without gutting the gpu line, however it seems that many more ppl like that as mb is out of stock everywhere.
I've done some digging and it seems the lite model aside from lacking some backplate, having tad simplified heatsinks and less flashy look seems to be almost identical but I have my doubts.

I'll be thankful for yall's opinions, maybe you dealt with these boards and can share something that will push me towards waiting for main model to be back in stock or going with lite.

 

[popatim]

I believe the AsRock Phantom Gaming Nova Wifi also has the 4 m.2 slots in addition to the one pcie5 slot.

 

[piechockidocent9]

I believe the AsRock Phantom Gaming Nova Wifi also has the 4 m.2 slots in addition to the one pcie5 slot.

Thx for the input but sadly I'm set on going with amd this time, Ryzen 9 9950X to be precise. Maybe if similarly performing intel cpus didn't cost 300+$ more (for brand sticker or some additional cores which somehow do not help in performance ...) who knows.
That being said if I were to go with intel that mb would be a nice pick.
It does gut the pcie but only if gen 5 m.2 slot 1 is occupied. Not a problem since that leaves 4 gen 4 slots and I don't plan buying gen 5 m.2 anyway.
Gain is not that noticable for price of burning so hot you need a cpu class cooler for them, preferably active one.