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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 Okay|NGP|N Version. Designed in collaboration with legendary excessive overclocker Vince ‘Okay|NGP|N’ Lucido, the Z690 Darkish Okay|NGP|N Version boasts a powerful function set together with assist 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 intense.
Constructed across the Intel’s high-end Z690 chipset, the EVGA Z690 Darkish Okay|NGP|N Version is not a standard motherboard by any stretch of the creativeness. It’s primarily based on the E-ATX kind issue and has attention-grabbing design traits, together with a transposed LGA1700 socket that permits excessive overclockers to mount LN2 pots extra simply.
To make the board extra strong, EVGA contains a big black metallic backplate on the rear of the board to bolster 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 helpful cutout designed to make cable administration extra easy. It additionally contains a powerful equipment pack that options an EVGA flat take a look at bench plate that we noticed in our earlier assessment of the EVGA Z590 Darkish motherboard.
Trying on the function set, the Z690 Darkish Okay|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 standard storage and optical drives, six of that are from the chipset with RAID 0, 1, 5, and 10 assist, and two that come through an ASMedia ASM1061 SATA controller.
Regardless that the Z690 Darkish has a strong function set for lovers, the true focus by EVGA with this mannequin is on excessive overclocking. This contains a big 21-phase energy supply cooled by an lively heatsink with two followers. It additionally has a 10-layer PCB all through and accommodates 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 change. There’s additionally a probe-lt header the place customers can monitor voltages in real-time from numerous parts on the board, such because the CPU and energy inputs.
The big black metallic backplate on the rear of the EVGA Z690 Darkish Okay|NGP|N Version
When it comes to connectivity, there’s lots on the rear panel, together with one USB 3.2 G2x2 Kind-C, 4 USB 3.2 G2 Kind-A, and two USB 3.2 G1 Kind-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 Okay|NGP|N Version is at present accessible to buy on the EVGA web site for $830. Nevertheless, on the time of writing, purchases are restricted to at least one per family, and it appears as if it is solely accessible to EVGA Elite Members presently.
Supply: EVGA
