The EVGA Z590 Dark Motherboard Review: For Extreme Enthusiasts
by Gavin Bonshor on October 15, 2021 9:00 AM ESTBoard Features
The EVGA Z590 Dark is an E-ATX motherboard that is primarily designed for pushing Intel's 11th generation Rocket Lake processors to the limit using sub-ambient cooling methods. It does have plenty of premium features including two full-length PCIe 4.0 slots operating at either x16/x0 or x8/x8, with a half-length PCIe 3.0 slot electronically locked down to x4. The Z590 Dark has a transposed LGA1200 socket with two memory slots horizontally mounted above it with support for DDR4-5333 with a maximum capacity of up to 64 GB.
For storage, the EVGA Z590 Dark includes three M.2 slots, with one PCIe 4.0 x4 M.2, one PCIe 3.0 x4 slot M.2, one PCIe 3.0 x4/SATA M.2, with a PCIe 3.0 x4 U.2 port, and a total of eight SATA ports. Six of the SATA ports are powered by the chipset and support RAID 0, 1, 5, and 10 arrays, while the other two are driven by an ASMedia ASM1061 SATA controller.
On the overclockers toolkit is a pair of Probelt voltage monitors with cables for these supplied in the accessories bundle, with dual two-digit LED debuggers, a power button, a reset button, a slow mode switch, a safe boot button, and a triple BIOS selector switch. Cooling options consist of eight 4-pin headers, with two designated for CPU fans, and six for chassis fans or water pumps.
| EVGA Z590 Dark E-ATX Motherboard | |||
| Warranty Period | 3 Years | ||
| Product Page | Link | ||
| Price | $600 | ||
| Size | E-ATX | ||
| CPU Interface | LGA1200 | ||
| Chipset | Intel Z590 | ||
| Memory Slots (DDR4) | Two DDR4 Supporting 64 GB Dual-Channel Up to DDR4-5333 |
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| Video Outputs | 1 x HDMI 2.0b 1 x DisplayPort 1.4 |
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| Network Connectivity | 2 x Intel I225-V 2.5 GbE Intel AX201 Wi-Fi 6 |
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| Onboard Audio | Realtek ALC1220 EVGA NU SV3H615 |
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| PCIe Slots for Graphics (from CPU) | 2 x PCIe 4.0 (x16, x8/x8) | ||
| PCIe Slots for Other (from PCH) | 1 x PCIe 3.0 x4 | ||
| Onboard SATA | Six, RAID 0/1/5/10 (Z590) Two (ASMedia) |
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| Onboard M.2 | 1 x PCIe 4.0 x4 1 x PCIe 3.0 x4 1 x PCIe 3.0 x4/SATA |
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| Onboard U.2 | 1 x PCIe 3.0 x4 | ||
| Thunderbolt 4 (40 Gbps) | N/A | ||
| USB 3.2 (20 Gbps) | 1 x USB Type-C (Rear panel) | ||
| USB 3.2 (10 Gbps) | 4 x USB Type-A (Rear panel) 1 x USB Type-C (One header) |
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| USB 3.1 (5 Gbps) | 2 x USB Type-A (Rear panel) 4 x USB Type-A (Two headers) |
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| USB 2.0 | 6 x USB Type-A (Three headers) | ||
| Power Connectors | 1 x 24-pin Motherboard 2 x 8-pin CPU 1 x 6-pin PCIe |
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| Fan Headers | 2 x 4-pin CPU 6 x 4-pin Chassis |
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| IO Panel | 2 x Antenna Ports (Intel) 1 x PS/2 Combo port 1 x USB 3.2 G2x2 Type-C 4 x USB 3.2 G2 Type-A 2 x USB 3.2 G1 Type-A 2 x RJ45 (Intel) 1 x HDMI 2.0b Output 1 x DisplayPort 1.4 Output 5 x 3.5 mm Audio jacks (Realtek) 1 x S/PDIF Optical output (Realtek) 1 x Clear CMOS button |
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There's plenty of connectivity on the rear panel including one USB 3.2 G2x2 Type-C, four USB 3.2 G2 Type-A, and two USB 3.2 G1 Type-A ports. If this isn't enough for users, EVGA includes one USB 3.2 G2 Type-C header (one port), and three USB 2.0 header (six ports) available to use. Other input and output on the rear panel include five 3.5 mm audio jacks and S/PDIF optical output powered by a Realtek ALC1220 HD codec and EVGA NU SV3H615 amplifier pairing, while EVGA also includes one HDMI 2.0b and one DisplayPort 1.4 video output.
Focusing on networking, there are two Ethernet ports, both controlled by individual Intel I225-V 2.5 GbE controllers, while an Intel AX201 Wi-Fi 6 CNVi offers both wireless and BT 5.2 connectivity.
Test Bed
With some of the nuances with Intel's Rocket Lake processors, our policy is to see if the system gives an automatic option to increase the power limits of the processor. If it does, we select the liquid cooling option. If it does not, we do not change the defaults. Adaptive Boost Technology is disabled by default.
| Test Setup | |||
| Processor | Intel Core i9-11900K, 125 W, $374 8 Cores, 16 Threads 3.5 GHz (5.3 GHz Turbo) |
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| Motherboard | EVGA Z590 Dark (BIOS 1.05) | ||
| Cooling | Corsair iCue H150i Elite Capellix 360 mm AIO | ||
| Power Supply | Corsair HX850 80Plus Platinum 850 W | ||
| Memory | G.Skill TridentZ DDR4-3200 CL 14-14-14-34 2T (2 x 8 GB) | ||
| Video Card | MSI GTX 1080 (1178/1279 Boost) | ||
| Hard Drive | Crucial MX300 1TB | ||
| Case | Corsair Crystal 680X | ||
| Operating System | Windows 10 Pro 64-bit: Build 20H2 | ||
We must also thank the following:
| Hardware Providers for CPU and Motherboard Reviews | |||
| Sapphire RX 460 Nitro | MSI GTX 1080 Gaming X OC | Crucial MX200 + MX500 SSDs |
Corsair AX860i + AX1200i PSUs |
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| G.Skill RipjawsV, SniperX, FlareX |
Crucial Ballistix DDR4 |
Silverstone Coolers |
Noctua Coolers |
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27 Comments
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Wrs - Monday, October 18, 2021 - link
AM4 isn't that bad. AMD has a ways to catch up to Intel in architecture & support, but the Zen 3 core is great, the CCD process node is world class, and PBO is effortlessly stable. As of April 2021 the USB issues are no longer. I specifically waited till then to buy a 5800x. That's 8C, 1 CCD, comparable to RKL but at half the power. You really don't need to upgrade BIOS/AGESA unless there are issues, or you're changing the CPU/OS. Haven't heard of AM4 specific PCIe issues (shoddy riser cables are a physical thing), and WHEA errors come from unstable all-core OCs or not taking a few hours to test and tune XMP RAM, seeing as XMP is tested on Intel platforms.That said, AM4 is nearing EOL as well, just 7 or 9 months later than Z590. I view performance as effectively a toss-up between the two, but that is a painful power delta over several years of ownership.
Silver5urfer - Monday, October 18, 2021 - link
Sorry you are wrong. I've seen people reporting USB issues on OCN, Reddit, NBR and other forums. All the issues are an inherent design flaw of Ryzen. This is AMD's specific first time come back so It's kinda expected. Nobody should push their IMC part 3600MHz of 1:1 FCLK.You are parroting April because that's the AGESA 1.2.0.2 fix which did not fix anything. I read already 70 pages of the thread on OCN about initial batch issues and the new thread as well regarding WHEA, as I said. Run Zen 3 on barebone stock or don't bother if you bother the CPU will glitch out with all the issues. Period. I'm a new buyer man what should I have even an incentive for looking for all these ? because I don't want to dabble in headaches on a DIY build.
Wrs - Tuesday, October 19, 2021 - link
Idk how else to tell ya this. I actually run a 5800x, it sits on a B550 board, there's 64 GB of RAM (4 sticks) at 3600 MHz, and Fclk is 1800 MHz aka 1:1 as listed on CPU-z. I do not get USB dropouts for my mouse, keyboard, external drive, or occasional printer or thumb drive. I don't get WHEA errors when I leave HWInfo running for a few days. My average uptime (wall clock time between reboots) is 8 days 14 hours. I haven't had a bluescreen since I gave up per-core undervolting.We're in agreement that people reported USB issues. That's why I waited before buying the 5800x. I do not know if it was a design flaw or configuration error or even if my specific system needed fixing, but with AGESA 1.2.0.1 Patch A back in April (my mobo maker listed USB connectivity among the release notes) I've never had the chance to experience USB dropouts.
danny11 - Monday, October 18, 2021 - link
Unfortunately TiN is retired from EVGA. He moved to US I guess due to family. Now those nice amazing articles on Xdevs are nowhere since Z490 series. <a href="www.abcd.com">abc</a>KennethHo - Saturday, February 19, 2022 - link
Is this not a weird MB?It's a massive E-ATX board, but only has 2 usable PCIe slots and 2 DIMM slots, for $600, with OK performance.
https://jaredspears.com/
ridnout - Monday, August 1, 2022 - link
That is to accommodate NVLink with 4-slot spacing because of the size of premium 30 Series Nvidia and 6000 series AMD offerings. Blower style fans are limited as per Nvidia, so adequate spacing for cards using NVLink (think SLI on steroids) is a must for cooling the hotter 3080/90 graphics cards. For machine learning, scientific computing, CAD, video editing, and host of other professional applications that can leverage NVLink, a linked pair of 3090 will markedly outperform on most tasks a an A6000 for a fraction of the cost. Remember, the consumer cards won't do high precision...limitations of the drivers.Just 2 cents.
haileynelson10 - Wednesday, April 13, 2022 - link
Appreciate detailed reviews for EVGA Z590 Dark Motherboard. I still have some doubts but this post solves it.https://findaword.co/