THE Z490 DARK

At first glance the Z490 Dark looks identical to the Z390 Dark and it actually is (almost) since EVGA has followed the same successful design.

Once again what really stands out are the two thick black aluminum heatsinks (linked via heat pipes) placed on the top left (18-phase VRM) and on the lower right (Z490 chipset).

With room for only 2 RAM modules the Dark once again "limits" all those who may want to grab 16/32GB (2x8/16GB) right now and 16/32GB more later on.

On the top left corner, we find two LED post indicators (these can be configured via the BIOS to display either temperatures or voltages in real time - or both), safe boot (black) button, clear CMOS (red button), two CPU PWM fan headers, dedicated USB port for BIOS flashing, and the power on/off and reset buttons.

Further down we see the PCIe disable switches, slow-mode switch and the BIOS selection switch.

As mentioned already the Z490 Dark has three full-length EMI shielded (and reinforced) PCIe 3.0 slots (x16/x8-4/x4) and a single PCIe 3.0 x4 slot which shares bandwidth with the 2nd (bottom) M.2 slot (meaning you can only use one of the two).

The Realtek ALC1220 onboard audio card is located just next to the rear I/O right next to the NU Audio amps.

A 6pin angled power connector is also located on the far lower left (according to EVGA this connector actually provides dedicated power to the PCIe x16 slots, augmenting the +12V power provided by the 24-pin and the GPU directly).

One of the features that the Z390 Dark lacked was support for RGB peripherals (fans/LED strips/cases) which we clearly see here (via two RGB/ARGB headers).

All three internal USB headers are also angled for easier access (and zero interference with cards).

Taking a look on the other side we find the 8 SATA 6Gb/s ports, U2 NVMe port and an USB 3.1 Gen2 port.

Further up we find two 8pin mainboard power connectors, the 24pin ATX mainboard power connector and a USB 3.1 Gen1 front panel connector (all are angled).

The rear I/O hasn’t changed at all compared to the Z390 Dark so once again we find a PS/2 connector, two USB 3.2 Gen1 ports, two Antenna connectors, clear CMOS button, five USB 3.2 Gen2 ports, single USB 3.1 Gen2 Type-C port, two Ethernet ports (2.5GbE/1GbE), mini DisplayPort output, and the 5.1 analog/digital audio output (the rear I/O shield is not pre-mounted).

For Z490 reviews I’ll be using the Intel Core i9-10900K CPU along with a Kingston KC2500 1TB M.2 NVMe SSD and 16GB (2x8GB) of DDR4 4GHZ RAM.