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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Silver5urfer - Thursday, September 23, 2021 - link
Those VRM fans are overkill for this motherboard. It should be able to handle if we turn off the VRM HS fans.Dromic - Thursday, September 23, 2021 - link
Given the purpose of this board is to run an absurd amount of power to your CPU for XOC not running complex rendering work loads that hammer the chipset transmitting data it makes sense .FreckledTrout - Friday, September 24, 2021 - link
Yeah the choices they made are spot on for trying to hit world record OC's. Those same choices are terrible for pretty much any other use case.Samus - Tuesday, September 28, 2021 - link
The chipset is likely going to get plenty of cooling from case airflow, especially considering the surface area of the heatsink. If a video card is installed, it will also blow down onto the chipset heatsink as well, assuming it isn't a blower style card - which I might as well point out are no longer made.Silver5urfer - Thursday, September 23, 2021 - link
The major issue is price increase vs Z590 DARK. Which has bigger and beefier heatsink and extra phases with one more M.2 SSD slot. However this one has full PCIe 4.0 for the whole PCIe buses vs Z590's M.2 limitation. That said, this is $700 board, too much for the bare minimum I/O on the rear - USB, no 10G LAN. Finally will this have X570S chipset ? I suppose not. Unfortunate since X570s still have issues with USB.Still will be interested in this board as a top end AM4 which can run Windows 7 and do solid OC.
timecop1818 - Thursday, September 23, 2021 - link
Windows.... 7? why?Silver5urfer - Thursday, September 23, 2021 - link
Because I like that OS a lot and it works on almost all games that I have on my HDDs. Plus it doesn't have annoying updates or borked issues. And It looks much better than Win10, 11. Only will use Win10 LTSC as a dual boot option.Dromic - Thursday, September 23, 2021 - link
Why ???? Why would you have 10G on an HCO board lolSilver5urfer - Thursday, September 23, 2021 - link
Because the cash they are asking, this board doesn't compete with Crosshair VIII Dark Hero but Extreme, which is just $100 extra and you get 2x TB4, 10GLAN and better VRMs. X570 Xtreme is literally same cost and it has 4 DIMM Slots, 10G LAN and not a buggy trash ALC4082 like ASUS or newer mobos and has a ton of I/O ports as well and extra M.2 SSD option too.Eliadbu - Friday, September 24, 2021 - link
This is not the board for you, if you want tb4 and other connectivity stuff go for asrock or asus. This board is for people that want to put LN2 pots on and break world records the board is designed for Xtreme OC in every way possible.