INTRODUCTION

   The 14th generation of CPUs by Intel may not be that far away but their 13th generation is still one of their most popular to date something which became abundantly clear in my recent giveaway. Yes, Intel's Z790 chipset does lack PCIe 5.0 support for storage media (Gen5 M.2 NVMe SSDs) which is why many people i know are holding out until the unveiling of their next motherboard chipset but that aside the Z790 is still a very powerful and feature-rich platform. Colorful may not be one of the most well-established motherboard manufacturers in the market today and so chances are they will not be the first name to come to mind when talking about the Z790 chipset but their CVN Z790D5 Gaming Frozen V20 looks like it can hold its own and that's what today's review is all about.

   Established in 1995, Colorful is a brand with a 20+ year history. It is a comprehensive company that holds the largest share in the Chinese graphics card market, integrating independent development, production, and sales. Also, it is a strategic partner of NVIDIA, AMD, and INTEL in China. By now, Colorful covers product line of motherboards, graphics cards, all-in-one PC, memory & SSD, industrial server, computer case, power supply, Hi-Fi player, industrial integration solution and services with over 24 years of experience delivering quality products garnering a brilliant reputation amongst its customers.

   Just like the BIOSTAR Z790A-Silver motherboard i reviewed roughly a week ago the CVN Z790D5 Gaming Frozen V20 by Colorful is also a rather affordable model based on the Intel Z790 chipset (compatible with Intel's 12/13th generation LGA1700 CPUs) and available in a white, gray and copper color theme (black and copper color also seems to be available in some areas). Still, it does feature an 18-phase (16+1+1 55A) digital VRM, fully supports DDR5 RAM (up to 192GB clocked at 7000MHz and above) and comes with a single PCIe 5.0 x16 slot (EMI shielded and reinforced). It also packs a total of four PCIe 4.0 Gen4 M.2 sockets, 6 native SATA 6Gb/s ports (support RAID 0/1/5/10), moisture proof PCB, single PCIe 4.0 x16 slot (EMI shielded and reinforced), two PCIe 3.0 x1 slots, two 5V ARGB ports, two 12VB RGB ports, BIOS update button, Realtek RTL8125 2.5GbE Ethernet port (0/100/1000/2500 Mb/s), Intel AX201 Dual-Band WiFi 6/BT 5.2 wireless adapter and the Realtek ALC1220 7.1 onboard sound card. Finally in terms of available connectivity the Colorful CVN Z790D5 Gaming Frozen V20 comes ready with a single DP v1.2 port, single HDMI v2.0 port, 4 USB 3.2 Gen1 ports (1 extra via internal header), USB 3.2 Gen2 port, USB 3.2 Gen2 Type-C port (1 extra via internal header), 2.5GbE RJ45 port, 2 USB 2.0 ports (2 extra available via internal headers) and the Realtek ALC1220 High Definition Audio onboard audio ports. So, is the Colorful CVN Z790D5 Gaming Frozen V20 good enough to be your next motherboard? Let's find out.

SPECIFICATIONS AND FEATURES

PACKAGING AND CONTENTS

The CVN Z790D5 Gaming Frozen V20 arrived inside a white box that has a large product picture at the front, the model’s name, CPU support and the company logo.

Another product picture is located at the rear of the box and is surrounded by the product features and specifications.

Typically, the motherboard is wrapped inside a static-free bag and placed in a formed piece of cardboard.

Along with the CVN Z790D5 Gaming Frozen V20 motherboard inside the box you'll also find two high-gain Antennas, 3 SATA cables, 4 standoffs, two M-connectors, software CD and the operation guide.

THE CVN Z790D5 GAMING FROZEN V20

Colorful has used a white, gray and copper color combination for their CVN Z790D5 Gaming Frozen V20.

The heatsink used to cool the 18-phase digital VRM may not be the largest of the most robust I’ve seen but it's also larger than what's used with other affordable models.

Two motherboard power connectors are located just over the VRM heatsink.

You can equip the CVN Z790D5 Gaming Frozen V20 with a total of 192GB or DDR5 RAM (4x48GB) with speeds of up to 7000MHz and above.

At the center of the motherboard we find the 2 full sized PCIe slots (5.0/4.0), 2 PCIe 3.0 x1 slots and three heatspreaders.

Removing the heatspreaders reveals the 4 M.2 PCIe 4.0 ports.

Colorful uses the Realtek ALC1220 7.1 onboard sound card which is located on the lower left of the motherboard.

At the rear I/O we find the DP v1.2 port, HDMI v2.0 port, 4 USB 3.2 Gen1 ports, USB 3.2 Gen2 port, USB 3.2 Gen2 Type-C port, 2.5GbE RJ45 port, 2 USB 2.0 ports, 2 Antenna ports and the Realtek ALC1220 High Definition Audio onboard audio ports.

There's no backplate at the rear of the PCB and that's always expected from mid-range motherboard models (at least 3 ARGB LEDs are visible on the lower left side).

As with other Z790 based motherboard reviews I’ll be using the Intel Core i9-13900k with the T-Force RGB 32GB 6400MHz CL40 DDR5 kit by Team Group and the Neo Forza NFP425 SSD.

CVN Z790D5 GAMING FROZEN V20 V1007 BIOS

Colorful uses a dark gray with red color combination for their BIOS and it does look nice.

As with most models out there the initial tab is part of the EZ mode and from here you can check the status of the motherboard, CPU and connected devices, set the fan speed and even OC the CPU via the EZ OC selection on the lower right corner.

Obviously from inside the OC tab found in the advanced section of the BIOS you can adjust CPU clocks, enable/disable CPU features, adjust RAM clocks and timings and of course set voltages for both.

Inside the advanced tab Colorful has placed everything else from the various connectivity options, CPU details, hardware monitor and all the motherboard features and included peripherals such as thunderbolt, USB, LAN and SATA.

You can perform BIOS updates from within the BIOS Setting tab.

Colorful also gives you the ability to change the language of the BIOS.

Once again from the exit tab you can load optimized defaults, save settings and exit or discard settings and exit.

TESTING METHODOLOGY

   Exactly like used to do in the past each mainboard to arrive in the lab will get mounted on an open-air test bench and will be used for no less than two full weeks (daily tasks and gaming) with a fresh Windows 10 Pro installation. All motherboards arriving here will be tested with the top CPU of that line available to me at the time of each review (I9-9900K for Z390/I9-10900K for Z490/I9-11900K for Z590/I9-12900K for the Z690/Ryzen 9 5900X for X570 and B550/7900X for X670E and B650E/13900K for Z790) together with 16GB (2x8GB) DDR4 4GHz RAM for the Z390/Z490 motherboards, 32GB (2x16GB) DDR4 4GHz RAM for the Z590 and X570S/B550, 32GB (2x16GB) DDR5 6GHz for X670E and 32GB (2x16GB) DDR5 6.4GHz RAM for Z690/Z790 motherboards. Now I don’t know if I will need to change this anytime soon but for now the Intel I9-9900K, I9-10900K and I9-11900K CPUs in each review will be set at 5000MHZ (CPU ratio set to 50 - of course voltages may vary slightly from motherboard to motherboard - RING/Cache frequency at 4700MHZ), the Intel I9-12900K CPU at 5.2GHz (3.7GHz for the E-Cores / RING ratio set at 43), the AMD Ryzen 9 5900X CPU at 4500MHz, the AMD Ryzen 9 7900X CPU at 5.4GHz and the Intel Core I9-13900K CPU at 5.8GHz (4.7GHz E-Cores / RING ratio set at 49).

   I did think about pushing each motherboard to the max to see which is the better overclocker but 5.2/5/4.5/5.4/5.8GHZ 24/7 is more than plenty today, not only in terms of performance but also temperatures (not to mention there are colleagues of mine who have been focusing on maximum overclock potential so that’s also out there). Instead i decided that it'd be far more interesting (not to mention accurate) to see which motherboard is the fastest when using the same exact hardware components/configuration (CPU/RAM/COOLER) with the same exact overclocking frequencies */**. To figure that out I’ll be using several benchmarking programs (6 repeats after which the average numbers will get recorded in the charts) like AIDA64, CINEBENCH R20, CPUZ, Passmark Performance Test, RealBench and the Sisoftware Sandra Titanium 2020 version. Needless to say, that between different system configurations these charts also do a great job pointing out the difference in CPU performance.

* Charts will contain other system configurations as well in order to better showcase the performance of each reviewed system.
** Surpassing 4.7GHz with the Ryzen 9 5900X on all cores proved impossible so I chose 4.5GHz as the most balanced choice for all my tests (besides, the latest Intel CPUs in the charts could also climb higher than 5GHz on all cores).

TEST RESULTS - AIDA64 / CINEBENCH R20

TEST RESULTS - CPUZ / PASSMARK PERFORMANCE TEST

TEST RESULTS - REALBENCH / SISOFTWARE SANDRA TITANIUM 2020

CONCLUSION

   Before i go into my opinion in regards to the CVN Z790D5 Gaming Frozen V20 i need to point out that all my tests were done with BIOS v1008 since i wasn’t quite satisfied with how the v1007 behaved (still no performance changes between versions). Of course, this relates to manual overclock which as you can see from the CPUZ screenshots a few pages back i was simply unable to climb over 5.7GHz (even at 1.45v – again just like all Z790 boards CPUZ indicates a higher number than the one i used). I don’t really expect this to be an issue for like 99% of the potential buyers out there (and the 1% will probably opt for a higher-tier motherboard regardless) but this did result in not as good performance numbers in my charts as other models. Overclocking aside the CVN Z790D5 Gaming Frozen V20 by Colorful did very well overall. The four M.2 PCIe 4.0 ports are really nice to have, the two full sized PCIe 5.0 and 4.0 slots are reinforced and both the 2.5GbE LAN by Realtek along with the Intel AX201 Wi-Fi 6 all worked as they should.

   Extremely limited availability seems to be the sole serious issue the Colorful CVN Z790D5 Gaming Frozen V20 faces right now and that in turn affects its price tag. As a matter of fact, pricing is all over the place and so the handful of stores that do carry the CVN Z790D5 Gaming Frozen V20 inside the USA and the EU have it priced from USD350/350Euros and all the way up to USD450/450Euros (and most don’t even have it in stock). Bottom line the CVN Z790D5 Gaming Frozen V20 by Colorful may not be the best when it comes to overclocking headroom (so it’s a no from me for people who intend to do just that – the lack of even a debug LED is showing) but it’s still a solid, feature-rich choice for casual users and gamers (even more so if one manages to find it on the lower end of its current pricing) and for that it gets the Golden Award.

PROS

- Build Quality (Multi Layer PCB / 18 Phase Digital VRM)
- Reinforced & EMI Shielded PCIe 5.0/4.0 Slots
- Four M.2 PCIe 4.0 Sockets With Heatspreaders
- DP v1.2 & HDMI v2.0 Video Outputs
- 2.5GbE Port & WiFi 6/Bluetooth v5.2
- Available In White/Copper & Black/Copper Color Themes
- Bottom ARGB LEDs
- BIOS Settings

CONS

- Current Availability & Pricing
- Overclocking Potential
- No Debug LED