You have nearly actually heard the bombshell information that EVGA is leaving the graphics card enterprise fully over a purported private dispute with NVIDIA. The corporate insists that it’s not going wherever regardless of graphics playing cards comprising some 78% of EVGA’s income, at the least for now. Virtually as if to show that time, EVGA is among the many distributors exhibiting off motherboards for Intel’s brand-new Z790 Raptor Lake platform.
There are two boards as a part of the announcement: the EVGA Z790 DARK Okay|NGP|N, and the EVGA Z790 Labeled. They differ within the particulars, however each boards are radically totally different from most motherboards available on the market: they function CPU sockets rotated 90 levels, repositioned reminiscence slots to accommodate, and just about all the connectors are edge-mounted—together with not solely SATA and USB plugs but additionally ATX energy, a pair of EPS12V connectors, and even at the least one fan connector.
Whereas each boards are very strictly high-end merchandise aimed toward overclockers, the Labeled board might be the one most customers can be extra excited about. That is largely due to having a full 4 DDR5 DIMM slots, because the Okay|NGP|N board is proscribed to simply two slots, owing to that mannequin’s concentrate on excessive overclocking. Granted, filling out all 4 DIMM slots will lead to decrease reminiscence speeds. Whichever board you select, you get a pair of PCIe 5.0 x16 slots, though the Okay|NGP|N board helps auto-switching with the intention to use a GPU put in within the backside slot on the full x16 velocity if wanted.
Different shared connectivity contains eight SATA ports, 2.5-Gigabit Ethernet, Wi-Fi 6E, Bluetooth 5.2, and seven.1 analog audio outputs. The Okay|NGP|N board will get a further 10 GbE jack and three M.2 SSD slots, whereas the Labeled mannequin has a pair of USB Kind-C ports onboard that help DisplayPort connectivity along with 20 Gbps USB4. “This board is unbelievable,” says its namesake, Vince “Okay|NGP|N” Lucido.
In fact, these overclocking oriented boards have onboard diagnostic readouts, energy and reset buttons, in addition to ridiculously overbuilt energy supply {hardware}. The extra modest Labeled mannequin comes with a 19-phase VRM and a 12-layer PCB, whereas the top-end DARK Okay|NGP|N will get a 14-layer PCB and a 21-phase VRM that give the board what EVGA describes as “extreme overclocking help.”
This launch is fascinating, as a result of EVGA is never among the many first distributors to supply motherboards for brand spanking new platforms. Sadly, EVGA uncared for to supply pricing or availability data for its upcoming system platters, however you’ll be able to join updates in case you completely need one as quickly as they’re out there. Primarily based on the function set of those boards and the pre-order pricing of Z790 fashions that went up on Newegg at the moment, we would not anticipate them to be low cost.
