EVGA has announced the release of its flagship Alder Lake motherboard, the Z690 Dark Kingpin. And with motherboards like the $2,100 MSI MEG Z690 Godlike and the $1,300 ASRock Z690 Aqua, the $830 EVGA Z690 Dark Kingpin looks like a pretty good deal in this segment.
Image source: EVGA
The novelty is aimed primarily at enthusiasts of overclocking computer components. It is based on a 10-layer PCB and has 21 power phases. An interesting feature of the Z690 Dark Kingpin is the two compact fans that are installed under the external connection panel housing and direct fresh air from the outside of the housing towards the processor socket LGA 1700. The fans provide additional cooling of the VRM subsystem , what which will surely come in handy with extreme overclocking of the CPU.
The manufacturer has equipped the board with two DIMM slots that support up to 64 GB of DDR5-6600+ RAM. They are in an unusual place – above the processor socket. The board also has two PCIe 5.0 x16 slots, three M.2 PCIe 4.0 slots for NVMe SSDs, two 2.5 Gigabit network ports (Intel I225 V controller), four USB 3.2 Type-A ports, a USB 3.2 Type-C, and eight SATA III ports. The Intel Z690 chipset takes over the work of six SATA, the independent ASMedia ASM1061 controller is responsible for the other two.
The board is equipped with a Realtek ALC1220 7.1 audio codec, two connectors for connecting ARGB tapes, a Intel AX211 with support WiFi 6E and Bluetooth 5.2.
Two indicators of POST codes in the novelty are located in the upper right corner. There are also additional buttons for starting, rebooting the system and safe boot. The board also features an additional USB port for quick BIOS updates. By the way, the Z690 Dark Kingpin has a triple BIOS system with a physical switch.
The novelty is already available on the official EVGA website. The cost is $829.99. The first 24 hours the fee is available EVGA elite club members only. Then everyone can buy it.
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