THE Z590 DARK

The brand new Z590 DARK just might be the best looking motherboard I’ve seen for a very long time.

Thanks to both its 21-phase digital VRM design and its 100% copper heatsink with the two fans inside (40mm ones?) it should be very easy to hit 5GHz+ with the 11900K which I’ll be using for this review.

The dual DIMM design may not make everyone happy (64GB total) but it also helps with overclocking and system stability.

Once again on the top left corner we find two LED post indicators safeboot (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 find the PCIe disable switches, slow-mode switch and the BIOS selection switch right next to the angled power ports.

The G2, U2 and SATA data connectors are all placed right next to each other on the lower right of the motherboard.

The internal USB headers are located on the lower end of the motherboard right next to the onboard speaker and the extra 6-pin PCIe power connector (according to EVGA this connector provides dedicated power to the PCIe x16 slots, augmenting the +12V power provided by the 24-pin and the GPU directly).

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

Unfortunately, the Z590 DARK has just two full-length EMI shielded (and reinforced) PCIe 4.0 slots (x16/x8-8) and a single PCIe 3.0 x4 slot which shares bandwidth with the 3^rd M.2 slot (meaning you can only use one of the two).

Moving at the rear I/O we find a PS/2 connector, two USB 3.2 Gen1 ports, two Antenna connectors, reset CMOS button, four USB 3.2 Gen2 ports, single USB 3.2 Gen2 Type-C port, two 2.5GbE Ethernet ports, DisplayPort v1.4, HDMI v2.0 and the 5.1 analog/digital audio output.

The model name is printed on the other side of the PCB (i was hoping for a backplate).

The full size plastic guide is something only EVGA offers (to my knowledge) and it's extremely useful when building or tweaking your system.

Also worth pointing out is that the Z590 DARK is the very first motherboard by EVGA (haven't checked the FTW model which was released a few months earlier) to feature onboard ARGB lighting (alas somewhat limited).

With the Intel I9-11900K, ACER PREDATOR APOLLO 32GB 4GHz CL17 modules and Sabrent Rocket 4.0 Plus 4TB SSD now mounted (among other things) the Z590 DARK is ready to boot.