EVGA Releases the X570 Dark: First Ryzen Motherboard from EVGA, Built for OC
by Gavin Bonshor on September 23, 2021 1:00 PM EST- Posted in
- Motherboards
- AMD
- EVGA
- Overclocking
- AM4
- X570
- X570S
- EVGA X570 Dark
- EVGA Dark
Back in July, we reported that EVGA was teasing its first AMD-based motherboard since the AM2+ days. Fast forward to now, and that dream of an EVGA model for AMD's Ryzen processors led by in-house engineer and extreme overclocker Vince 'KINGPIN' Lucido is now a reality. The EVGA X570 Dark benefits from a large premium 17-phase power delivery (14+2+1) designed for pushing Ryzen 5000 to its limits and support for up to DDR4-4800 out of the box across two memory slots to minimize latency.
The EVGA X570 Dark, as expected, is primarily suited to extreme overclockers, with a variety of performance-enhancing features across the large E-ATX sized PCB. One of the most notable design characteristics includes a transposed AM4 CPU socket for better support when mounting an LN2 (liquid nitrogen) pot, and an empty CPU socket area to minimize risks when insulating for sub-ambient cooling. All the major power connectors are also at right angles, to be less of an issue when extreme overclocking for records.
EVGA uses a 16-phase power delivery organized into a 14+2 configuration, with fourteen premium 90 A power stages for the CPU section. It's a slightly different design to accommodate the transposed socket as it stretches around the bottom of the AM4 socket. It is using active VRM cooling with two cooling fans and uses a 10-layer PCB design. The 17th power stage is for the memory. Providing power to the CPU is a pair of 8-pin 12 V ATX CPU power inputs. Some of the most notable features of the EVGA X570 Dark include voltage monitoring points at the top of the board, as well as a variety of switches to enable/disable features that might be critical to sub-zero overclocking stability.
For end-users wanting to have a daily system, there are dual PCIe 4.0 x4 M.2 slots, eight SATA ports with support for RAID 0, 1, and 10 arrays, as well as 2.5 GbE wired and Wi-Fi 6 wireless networking. Looking at PCIe support, EVGA includes two full-length PCIe 4.0 slots operating at x16 and x8/x8, with a half-length PCIe 3.0 x4 slot. Other features include a Realtek ALC1220 HD audio codec backed by EVGA's NU audio solution, eight 4-pin cooling headers, a passively cooled chipset heatsink, and two USB 3.2 G2 Type-A, four USB 3.2 G1 Type-A, and one USB 3.2 G2 Type-C port on the rear panel.
The EVGA X570 Dark is currently available to purchase directly from the EVGA website for $690. This isn't a cheap motherboard, but overclocking-focused motherboards such as this come at a hefty premium. Although it has plenty of features for a daily Ryzen 5000 based system, the hope is that it provides the substance for extreme overclockers looking to push Ryzen 5000 silicon to its limits.
Our review of the EVGA X570 Dark will be coming very soon - it arrived a couple of days ago and is currently on our testbed!
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24 Comments
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Leeea - Thursday, September 23, 2021 - link
So basically,If you have a LN pot this is useful
and for the rest of us it is useless.
kaidenshi - Thursday, September 23, 2021 - link
Nearly $700 for a E-ATX board...with only two DIMM slots. Useless doesn't even begin to cover it.Dromic - Thursday, September 23, 2021 - link
Assuming you don’t know what this board is for, the people buying this have no intrest in running more than 2 DIMMs and in fact it’s a feature of the board lol.kaidenshi - Friday, September 24, 2021 - link
I know what it's for, OC competitions, a niche of a niche of a niche market. Outside of the couple of hundred people in the entire world who would actually want AND know how to use something like this, it serves absolutely no purpose and is in fact a detriment to any real world use case.I'm not trying to shit on people's hobbies, gods know I've dumped a ton of cash into my 4x4 that I'll never see back in resale value. I just find it hilarious that a $700 board that is intended for OC competitions even has things like SATA and WiFi, I'm guessing so they can fool ordinary power users into thinking it's good for a daily driver, and yet they gimp the RAM slots for daily use. They wanted this board to appeal to two completely different markets at the same time and they look stupid for it.
FreckledTrout - Friday, September 24, 2021 - link
They are only trying to appeal to one market when they priced it at $700.Samus - Tuesday, September 28, 2021 - link
Complaining about 2 DIMM slots on a board that is designed to take advantage of only 2 DIMM slots demonstrates how clueless you are about the target market of the board. You might as well start complaining how a Miata can only carry 2 passengers...kaidenshi - Wednesday, September 29, 2021 - link
I've already acknowledged the target market, but to go with your (inevitably bad) car-computer analogy, my point was that EVGA is attempting to market this board not only to ricers, but also to those looking for a practical daily driver. That's what I'm calling out here.And FYI, if you're going to compare a car to an overclocking-friendly motherboard designed to set records, you might want to learn a little more about cars. The Miata is one of the slowest "sports cars" out there. Who is the clueless one here?
Oxford Guy - Saturday, October 2, 2021 - link
The second-gen Miata was the fastest in an urban speed test, making it the best get-away car in terms of quickness/nimbleness.meacupla - Friday, September 24, 2021 - link
It only has 2 DIMM slots to keep traces short. Short traces between CPU and RAM are a good feature when OC'ing RAM.The_Assimilator - Thursday, September 23, 2021 - link
A fanless chipset heatsink... with fans on the VRMs... facepalm.