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