Though these lengthy, chilly, and darkish nights are beginning to come to an finish, EVGA has launched its darkest and most devilish desktop motherboard to this point, the EVGA Z690 Darkish Ok|NGP|N Version. Designed in collaboration with legendary excessive overclocker Vince ‘Ok|NGP|N’ Lucido, the Z690 Darkish Ok|NGP|N Version boasts a formidable function set together with help for DDR5-6600 reminiscence, three PCIe 4.0 x4 M.2 slots, eight SATA ports, and a big 21-phase energy supply to push Intel’s Alder Lake to the acute.
Constructed across the Intel’s high-end Z690 chipset, the EVGA Z690 Darkish Ok|NGP|N Version is not a standard motherboard by any stretch of the creativeness. It’s based mostly on the E-ATX kind issue and has fascinating design traits, together with a transposed LGA1700 socket that enables excessive overclockers to mount LN2 pots extra simply.
To make the board extra strong, EVGA contains a big black steel backplate on the rear of the board to strengthen the PCB. This additionally contains right-angled connectors, together with two 8-pin 12V ATX CPU energy inputs and a 24-pin 12V ATX motherboard energy enter that intrudes into the PCB with a useful cutout designed to make cable administration extra easy. It additionally contains a formidable equipment pack that options an EVGA flat take a look at bench plate that we noticed in our earlier evaluate of the EVGA Z590 Darkish motherboard.
Wanting on the function set, the Z690 Darkish Ok|NGP|N Version contains two full-length PCIe 5.0 slots that may function at x16 and x8/x8, with three PCIe 4.0 x4 M.2 slots that sit in between the PCIe slots and beneath a big black finned ‘Darkish’ branded heatsink. There are eight SATA ports for typical storage and optical drives, six of that are from the chipset with RAID 0, 1, 5, and 10 help, and two that come through an ASMedia ASM1061 SATA controller.
Although the Z690 Darkish has a stable function set for fans, the actual focus by EVGA with this mannequin is on excessive overclocking. This contains a big 21-phase energy supply cooled by an energetic heatsink with two followers. It additionally has a 10-layer PCB all through and comprises an overclocker’s toolkit within the prime right-hand nook that consists of twin two-digit LED debuggers, an influence button, a reset button, dip-switches to disable PCIe slots, and a sluggish mode swap. There’s additionally a probe-lt header the place customers can monitor voltages in real-time from varied parts on the board, such because the CPU and energy inputs.
The big black steel backplate on the rear of the EVGA Z690 Darkish Ok|NGP|N Version
When it comes to connectivity, there’s lots on the rear panel, together with one USB 3.2 G2x2 Sort-C, 4 USB 3.2 G2 Sort-A, and two USB 3.2 G1 Sort-A ports. For networking, EVGA makes use of two Intel I225-V 2.5 GbE controllers and contains Intel’s newest AX211 Wi-Fi 6E CNVi. Regardless of specializing in efficiency, EVGA has additionally gone with a premium audio resolution, together with a Realtek ALC1220 HD audio codec and an EVGA NU Audio SV3H615 headphone amplifier with 5 3.5 mm audio jacks and a single S/PDIF optical output.
The EVGA Z690 Darkish Ok|NGP|N Version is at the moment obtainable to buy on the EVGA web site for $830. Nevertheless, on the time of writing, purchases are restricted to 1 per family, and it appears as if it is solely obtainable to EVGA Elite Members right now.
Supply: EVGA