CONCLUSION

   Honestly the Z390 Dark was a great motherboard to begin with so i kind of understand why EVGA wouldn't change many things about the Z490 Dark, especially its design and heatsink cooling system. Still even having a single PCIe 4.0 slot would be nice, not so much because it would propel GPU performance to new heights (it wouldn’t) but rather for marketing purposes. Again, I understand that by using two RAM slots EVGA can ensure higher stability levels but again some people may see this as something negative since they can’t expand the amount of memory later on. Also, as you can see from the screenshots hitting 5GHz is extremely easy (pointing this out because I used to hear how hot these CPUs get), as long as you have a good cooling system mounted (for both the Z390/Z490 motherboard tests I’ve been using the Fractal Design Celsius+ S36 Prisma AIO). So, what about its other features? Well, the ALC1220 onboard audio card may not be something to get excited over (not worse than the Reckon3D of the Z390 model, not better either however) but if you have a 2.5G compatible modem/router/switch the difference in performance compared to regular Gigabit cards is significant (roughly 120% performance gain from a pair of network tests i performed). Unfortunately, I didn’t have a WiFi 6 modem/router to test the onboard Intel AX201 card but it should offer a good bump in performance (again, if you have a compatible device).

   The Z490 Dark Motherboard by EVGA already counts 4 months in the market and currently retails for USD419.99 inside the USA (Amazon.com) and for 431.42Euros inside the EU (Amazon.de) a price which I consider balanced for what you’re getting in return. Overall the sole downside right now is that the new Z590 Dark has already been announced (which is also why the price of the Z490 Dark dropped) but considering that the new 11^th Generation Intel CPUs are still at least 2 months away (and even though they will have higher performance per core they will have less cores compared to the previous generation) the Z490 Dark should still have quite a bit of life left in it. That being said however there’s no denying that the EVGA Z490 Dark motherboard is second to none (at least in terms of performance and OC features) and for that it gets the Platinum Award.

PROS

- Build Quality
- OC Potential (18 Phase Design)
- 3 Reinforced & EMI Shielded PCIe 3.0 slots
- OC Features (PCIe Disable Switches / Slow Mode / Safe Boot / Triple BIOS / Dual Clear CMOS Buttons / USB BIOS Update Port)
- Available BIOS Settings
- NU Audio Amplifier
- U2 Port
- Angled Connectors
- Bundle
- Price (Recent Price Cuts)
- 3 Year Limited Warranty

CONS

- Dual DIMM Design
- No M.2 Heat Spreaders
- PCIe 3.0