EVGA Announces Z490 DARK and Z490 FTW Motherboards

[btarunr]

EVGA today announced its flagship socket LGA1200 motherboard, the Z490 DARK, aimed at PC enthusiasts and professional overclockers. The company also announced its Z490 FTW and Z490 FTW WiFi motherboards targeted at high-end gaming PC builds. The Z490 DARK leads the pack with a 90° CCW rotated compute stage, which sees its memory area moved to the northern side of the PCB; and the CPU VRM to its west and south, cooled by elaborate heatsinks. There is only one DIMM slot per memory channel, so you don't bother about memory slot topology affecting your memory overclock.

The LGA1200 package is wired to two reinforced PCI-Express 3.0 x16 slots (x8/x8 with both populated). Storage connectivity includes two M.2 NVMe slots, and one U.2 port (some lane sharing involved). The board draws power from a combination of 24-pin ATX, two 8-pin EPS, and a 6-pin PCIe power connectors. The EVGA Z490 FTW (and its WiFi) variant feature a more conventional ATX layout, and targeted at conventional gaming PC builds. A premium 11-phase VRM powers the processor, which is wired to four DDR4 DIMM slots, and a pair of PCI-Express 3.0 x16 slots. Both boards offer dual-BIOS, and elaborate onboard diagnostics.



View at TechPowerUp Main Site

 

[E-curbi]

Verses the Z390 Dark:

Two additional audio capacitors.
Some gold tracers moved to silver.
Graphite gray PCB moved to black.
Post code moved forward adjacent to pwr reset.

Astonishing!

 

[nickbaldwin86]

Love to upgrade my Z370 Classy board to this Z490 Dark and one of them new i9 10k CPUs will all them cores to chew through games.

Z490 Dark will be? $499 :|

 

[E-curbi]

Love to upgrade my Z370 Classy board to this Z490 Dark and one of them new i9 10k CPUs will all them cores to chew through games.

Z490 Dark will be? $499 :|

$1000 dollars later - both components are yours.

The really great gear is always priced at an exponentially unfair premium.

If you ask me.

 

[nickbaldwin86]

$1000 dollars later - both components are yours.

The really great gear is always priced at an exponentially unfair premium.

If you ask me.

Right... and with proper RAM you are looking at a trio of $1400ish. but my current setup has lasted over 2 years so I am looking hard at a refresh I just don't want to refresh until RTX/GTX3XXX comes out and hoping for a little better CPU.

 

[E-curbi]

Right... and with proper RAM you are looking at a trio of $1400ish. but my current setup has lasted over 2 years so I am looking hard at a refresh I just don't want to refresh until RTX/GTX3XXX comes out and hoping for a little better CPU.

That's exactly what I do man. Buy the super-awesome efficiency and speed parts and keep them an extremely long time, at least 2-3gens as primary.

Then from primary rig passed down to 2ndary and tertiary and so forth.

Also, sometimes (although not often enough) Newegg Seasonic Fujitsu etc. will have introductory prices 1st 1000units sold for $40 or $50 off.

And I NEVER buy from those darn 3rd party sharks. I don't know how they actually stay in business, who buys from them?

Example: grabbed a new Seasonic TX-700 fanless titanium PSU for $209 ($50 off) from Newegg recently, they offered as a pre-order for 1st 5days as the shipping container was still at sea. lol

Normal-standard Newegg price is $259.99. ouch.

 

[Paganstomp]

wait till EVGA drops the price to $99. It is how I got my hands on a Z370 Classified K.

 

[Animalpak]

I would buy this motherboard only if i want to go very very hard on overclocking and well if i were an aged overclocker. This is wasted for gamers... Benchmarkheads tho yes, perfect !

 

[Arrakis9]

really wish EVGA would get off their high horse and make AMD boards like this as well....

 

[ZentiX]

Like how they position most of the pins, could posible be my next motherboard. If I'm not continuing with the Z490 Ace from MSI. Got Z390 Ace now.

 

[Arctucas]

$1000 dollars later - both components are yours.

The really great gear is always priced at an exponentially unfair premium.

If you ask me.

My current rig was $985 for MB and CPU, I would be surprised if a 10900K and the Dark were less than $1200.

IIRC, my RAM was $385.

 

[oxrufiioxo]

My guess is $1200 as well maybe more just for the board and cpu especially around launch. Just looking at how much the Master and Hero prices have increased by 100-150 usd going by leaks.

 

[Caring1]

Only fault I can see with the board is the right angle connectors on the bottom edge, where a shroud can interfere with them.

 

[E-curbi]

Only fault I can see with the board is the right angle connectors on the bottom edge, where a shroud can interfere with them.

Oh really? Shrouded you say. Is your position on the subject so overwhelmingly immovable that you yourself are not also shrouded in fantasy or darkness or uncertainty?

It's been a LONG day for me, please excuse ... I need a nap.

 

[Caring1]

Oh really? Shrouded you say. Is your position on the subject so overwhelmingly immovable that you yourself are not also shrouded in fantasy or darkness or uncertainty?

It's been a LONG day for me, please excuse ... I need a nap.

Apart from that I love it, but where I live it will be it will be around $1,000 just for the board.

 

[Ashtr1x]

ASUS Z490 Maximus XII Extreme is $750, this is not going to be a 1000USD product. The bad part is none of have PLX chip, even with AMD chipsets very few SKUs have that PLX. I wish these all companies make at-least top one with PLX chip. Only Supermicro has them again, shame. And the retail is ~$400, ASUS Formula is $500. That's the price for this EVGA Z490 Dark.

Anyways this is a beast of a Chipset from top company for US market tbh, esp the flawless BIOS. I'm going to wait for the X670 Ryzen chipset prices and the Ryzen 4000 1080P performance if it beats then it's decided else Z490 Dark. Now Ngreedia should also announce their Ampere consumer GPUs too.

Coming from a Haswell era machine and a Maxwell machine, ofc my machine is an MXM socket and rPGA which grants it a 1070 upgrade for portable needs and retro machine.

Exciting stuff !

 

[E-curbi]

Apart from that I love it, but where I live it will be it will be around $1,000 just for the board.

Yea, prices per your region will always vary, but the US sold and shipped by Newegg Amazon or buying direct from EVGA will be $499 for the Z490 Dark. Maybe EVGA moves it up to $549USD an increase - following the Asus boards, maybe.

I REALLY love the subtle aesthetic and functional changes of this Z490 Dark board especially less gold/copper accents more silver traces and the ultra-black PCB, too bad Comet Lake offers no improved single and slightly threaded performance over what I'm already running, it's the same darn architecture.

Hoping by October we'll see Rocket Lake and the EVGA Z590 Dark in all it's magnificent glory.

For me, my daily mem and processor OC play so nicely with the Intel Optane 900P super-low latency SSD drive (like a match made in low-latency heaven), getting work completed quickly is so easy and simple right now, I cannot find any prudent rationale or just cause to purchase a new platform. Looking ahead to Alder Lake 8+8 in 2021 and the EVGA Z690 Dark - hope EVGA adds some of that SR-3 Dark passive heatsink aesthetic-love to the board and hey might as well go with a Thunderbolt 3 header, some will use it and some will not, but if Asus has already added the option to the Maximus 12 Apex 2-dimm board, EVGA should at least offer the same, some of us REALLY DO use 2-dimm performance boards in our work computers, although most likely the extreme minority - I have no problem with that.

 

[Ashtr1x]

-snip-

For me, my daily mem and processor OC play so nicely with the Intel Optane 900P super-low latency SSD drive (like a match made in low-latency heaven), getting work completed quickly is so easy and simple right now, I cannot find any prudent rationale or just cause to purchase a new platform. Looking ahead to Alder Lake 8+8 in 2021 and the EVGA Z690 Dark - hope EVGA adds some of that SR-3 Dark passive heatsink aesthetic-love to the board and hey might as well go with a Thunderbolt 3 header, some will use it and some will not, but if Asus has already added the option to the Maximus 12 Apex 2-dimm board, EVGA should at least offer the same, some of us REALLY DO use 2-dimm performance boards in our work computers, although most likely the extreme minority - I have no problem with that.

Man, no offense but Big.Little is super horrible, considering how many tweaks the Android governors must do to optimize them (Exynos 9810 comes to my mind...), the EAS scheduler came out as a part of tons of work and yet they cannot do anything like an x86 machine.

I really don't get that x86 ARM style concept, what's the purpose of that in Desktop systems ? There's no thermal restrictions or battery / power consumption unless we call that ridiculous California's stupid power regulations causing ATX12VO to make mobos ship with power delivery bs. I hope this is only for the stupid Project Athena BGA trash and not the desktop LGA arena, fingers crossed that AMD also doesn't jump into this ridiculous engineering, it makes every single software that we run like crap due to the core affinity, flatout due to how the low IPC x86 cores can be utilized due to Windows Scheduler again begging for more Windows10 updates to fix it, it would be a nightmare. I would even say that insane SMT4 rumor for Zen 3 (many were creaming over that), I'd rather have Ryzen 5000 implement that and push the personal computing to next level, much much better given on how it's done on TSMC 5nm (from rumors) maybe AMD will go super wide and lose the clockspeed and add SMT4 even then software scaling will be a difficult task.

 

[E-curbi]

Man, no offense but Big.Little is super horrible, considering how many tweaks the Android governors must do to optimize them (Exynos 9810 comes to my mind...), the EAS scheduler came out as a part of tons of work and yet they cannot do anything like an x86 machine.

I really don't get that x86 ARM style concept, what's the purpose of that in Desktop systems ? There's no thermal restrictions or battery / power consumption unless we call that ridiculous California's stupid power regulations causing ATX12VO to make mobos ship with power delivery bs. I hope this is only for the stupid Project Athena BGA trash and not the desktop LGA arena, fingers crossed that AMD also doesn't jump into this ridiculous engineering, it makes every single software that we run like crap due to the core affinity, flatout due to how the low IPC x86 cores can be utilized due to Windows Scheduler again begging for more Windows10 updates to fix it, it would be a nightmare. I would even say that insane SMT4 rumor for Zen 3 (many were creaming over that), I'd rather have Ryzen 5000 implement that and push the personal computing to next level, much much better given on how it's done on TSMC 5nm (from rumors) maybe AMD will go super wide and lose the clockspeed and add SMT4 even then software scaling will be a difficult task.

I gotta have some TECH to look forward to.

Was thinking Alder Lake might be the last and most mature implementation of ddr4, was hoping for speeds like 5200Mhz with an IMC advancement, then skip the first gen ddr5, but maybe that strategy is not so sound.

 

[phill]

Loving the board but won't be buying one, last one I will attempt to buy is the Z390 and that I think is my last Intel for the foreseeable future.... Partner it with a decent 9900K or even a KS if the board and CPU come together, that will complete the collection nicely

Which reminds me, still need to try and find a 8086k for my Z170M OCF.......... But I digress....

I bet Mr @E-curbi will have one in his basket shortly.....

 

[E-curbi]

Loving the board but won't be buying one, last one I will attempt to buy is the Z390 and that I think is my last Intel for the foreseeable future.... Partner it with a decent 9900K or even a KS if the board and CPU come together, that will complete the collection nicely

Which reminds me, still need to try and find a 8086k for my Z170M OCF.......... But I digress....

I bet Mr @E-curbi will have one in his basket shortly.....

Hey Mr phill, how you been superbro?

Oh my, a moderator nowadays. Wait a minute, do I get along with moderators?

When they're named phill - I certainly do.

Wait another minute, an 8086K won't power up mounted in a Z170M OC Formula, that's two gens back.

Was that a test combining circular and transient logic to measure my knowledge base and slip me up?