EVGA Made an AMD X670E Classified Motherboard, Prototype Fetches $1300 in Auction

[btarunr]

EVGA designed an enthusiast segment AMD X670E chipset motherboard for the Socket AM5 platform, which never made it to the mass market. It had even planned to give the board its coveted Classified brand, and sell as the X670E Classified. Prototypes of this board fetched over $1,300 in auction. The board is built in the E-ATX form-factor like most of the EVGA Classified series motherboards; and packs a powerful CPU VRM, besides several overclocker-friendly features, such as top-oriented DDR5 memory slots, side-facing I/O (including power inputs), and in general, a decluttered layout that won't get in the way of extreme cooling solutions.

There were four such prototypes with Jiacheng Liu, a hardware enthusiast, each of which went under the hammer. The only trouble with these prototypes is that they're bare—they don't include heatsinks for the CPU VRM or the chipset, let alone heatsinks for the two M.2 Gen 5 NVMe slots that don't eat into the Gen 5 x16 PEG. Another problem with these boards is that they're not supported by EVGA, and only come with their initial BIOS that supports Ryzen 7000 "Zen 4" processors, but not the upcoming Ryzen 9000 "Zen 5." We doubt if these even support the Ryzen 7000X3D series, which is probably the main reason the boards didn't fetch way more than $1,300 a piece at the auctions. Enthusiasts might still figure out a way to BIOS-mod and encapsulate the latest AGESA.



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[oxrufiioxo]

Pretty cool, I know I'll miss them when they're gone.

 

[DemonicRyzen666]

I wonder if it supports S.L.I?
Seems like almost all EVGA boards supported S.L.I
(Don't troll my post about no one uses S.L.I!)

 

[Caring1]

The ES CPU is possibly a 9950

 

[ty_ger]

I wonder if it supports S.L.I?
Seems like almost all EVGA boards supported S.L.I
(Don't troll my post about no one uses S.L.I!)

W.T.F is S.L.I? Is that something E.V.G.A made up?

 

[TheinsanegamerN]

It's a real shame EVGA couldnt pull themselves back together and make good AMD hardware. There's certainly a market for it.

 

[AusWolf]

Somehow I don't think that a company would spend resources on creating one single item that sells for less than the development costs. More EVGA AMD stuff is coming, perhaps?

 

[oxrufiioxo]

Somehow I don't think that a company would spend resources on creating one single item that sells for less than the development costs. More EVGA AMD stuff is coming, perhaps?

Doubtful they had an X570 Dark and a X570 FTW3 and sorta abandoned AMD and now I believe Intel as well. Kingpin resigned as far as I know and he was really keeping that segment afloat.

 

[AusWolf]

Doubtful they had an X570 Dark and a X570 FTW3 and sorta abandoned AMD and now I believe Intel as well. Kingpin resigned as far as I know and he was really keeping that segment afloat.

Then why spend resources on creating one single motherboard? From a business perspective, it doesn't make any sense.

 

[Zunexxx]

Then why spend resources on creating one single motherboard? From a business perspective, it doesn't make any sense.

Was already in development before the whole fiasco

 

[oxrufiioxo]

Then why spend resources on creating one single motherboard? From a business perspective, it doesn't make any sense.

Just like their 4090 was already in development likely before the motherboard segmant of egva went down in flames.

 

[AusWolf]

Just like their 4090 was already in development likely before the motherboard segmant of egva went down in flames.

I don't recall their motherboard business going down. Did that happen recently? I mean, X670E isn't old by any means, so they couldn't have started development too long ago.

 

[oxrufiioxo]

I don't recall their motherboard business going down. Did that happen recently? I mean, X670E isn't old by any means, so they couldn't have started development too long ago.

Middle of last year I believe.

Their boards do release a bit late usually but at this point they have almost missed the whole generation. Keep in mind X670 launched in 09/22 lol.

 

[jiacheng_liu]

I wonder if it supports S.L.I?
Seems like almost all EVGA boards supported S.L.I
(Don't troll my post about no one uses S.L.I!)

Sadly it doesn’t. I tried both HB SLI 2X Titan Xp and NVLINK 2X TITAN RTX. No luck :-(

 

[AusWolf]

Middle of last year I believe.

Their boards do release a bit late usually but at this point they have almost missed the whole generation. Keep in mind X670 launched in 09/22 lol.

That still classes as "recently" in my books.

Thanks for the info, by the way.

 

[chrcoluk]

Whats the benefit of putting dimm slots at the top of board? Looks like they will be harder to access in a built PC.

 

[Chomiq]

Whats the benefit of putting dimm slots at the top of board? Looks like they will be harder to access in a built PC.

It's not just the DIMM slots, the whole socket is rotated. AFAIK it's for cleaner tracing for memory to allow for improved OC potential.

 

[Dr. Dro]

I don't recall their motherboard business going down. Did that happen recently? I mean, X670E isn't old by any means, so they couldn't have started development too long ago.

I think at this point practically every business within EVGA has "gone down". They seem to have no ongoing R&D nor product maintenance. Their Z690 and Z790 boards never got updated for 14th Gen, although BIOS mods are available on the side for them to do that.

 

[alphaLONE]

The ES CPU is possibly a 9950

Nah, look at the codename "Raphael", that's Zen 4

 

[Dr. Dro]

Nah, look at the codename "Raphael", that's Zen 4

"100-000000514-20_Y" is Ryzen 9 7950X ES

 

[Noyand]

I don't recall their motherboard business going down. Did that happen recently? I mean, X670E isn't old by any means, so they couldn't have started development too long ago.

Their Intel boards never received the update to support RPL refresh or APO. The latest bio are from last year

 

[wNotyarD]

I wonder how fast they could take the RAM if they had support for the 8000G APUs

 

[Dreadzone14]

The ES CPU is possibly a 9950

its a 7950X ES, it was tested using my chip.

 

[TheinsanegamerN]

Somehow I don't think that a company would spend resources on creating one single item that sells for less than the development costs. More EVGA AMD stuff is coming, perhaps?

Then why spend resources on creating one single motherboard? From a business perspective, it doesn't make any sense.

See, this was an issue with EVGA all around. For a company that "couldnt make money on the 3090", they spent the resources to make 7 different boards and BIOSes and coolers for the damn thing.

Towards the end, I feel that EVGA was horribly mismanaged.

I think at this point practically every business within EVGA has "gone down". They seem to have no ongoing R&D nor product maintenance. Their Z690 and Z790 boards never got updated for 14th Gen, although BIOS mods are available on the side for them to do that.

Agreed. Their NuAudio products are gone too. Shame, I really like mine. Their power supplies are mostly just superflower rebrands, and they have earned a reputation with their incompatible cable design. Outside of that, all they have is keyboards and mice.

EDIT: forgot, remember that EVGA made LAPTOPS? I totally forgot about those.

 

[Dr. Dro]

Agreed. Their NuAudio products are gone too. Shame, I really like mine. Their power supplies are mostly just superflower rebrands, and they have earned a reputation with their incompatible cable design. Outside of that, all they have is keyboards and mice.

You gotta pry my NU Audio from my cold dead hands, I hope it never dies and that the drivers don't break any time soon, that'd suck