We have reached the end of the review, and it is once again time to consolidate everything into a few talking points. As with previous reviews, we will start with what EVGA could improve upon the Z790 CLASSIFIED to make this an even better product, before finishing the review on a positive note.

First let's put this product in prospective as to what can it be directly compared to in the same market space. The price point is generally only looked at as a reference point to where the motherboard places on the product ladder. The direct competitors are ASRock, ASUS, Gigabyte and MSI. With BIOSTAR and Supermicro sometimes in the mix as well. While looking into what sets the Classified and Dark series apart, I came across this EVGA forum post that has the most elegant way to explain this. "The Dark Kingpin is not meant to be a better version of the Classified. The Kingpin is purposely designed for extreme overclockers.... " -frankd3d. While the EVGA Z790 Dark, ASUS Z790 Apex and Gigabyte Z790 Tachyon is designed just for overclocking enthusiasts, the Z790 Classified is more like a flagship product to showcase the best of EVGA. Thus, still accommodating normal users and not alienating them completely. This puts the Z790 Classified in the same category as the ASRock Z790 Taichi, MSI MAG Z790 ACE, Gigabyte Z790 Master and ASUS Z790 Hero. These all have different price points and overlapping features. However it should be said, those who are expecting the same overclocking prowess as the EVGA Z790 Dark will be disappointed to hear that is not the case.

Now we can place the EVGA Z790 CLASSIFIED, it is time to go over the review and point out the best and worst. When it comes to memory support, the Z790 Classified has some challenges to overcome. It has a very aggressive stance on the timings auto configured when any the memory XMP profiles are enabled. This does have the advantage of producing higher performance, but at the higher chance of compatibility issues and overall system instability. It is absolutely an impressive feat of engineering for any 4-Slot motherboard to boot into the BIOS at DDR5-8200. The motherboard clearly has a lot of potential, but the highest stable memory speed just using XMP and auto voltages setup by the motherboard is DDR5-6800. That is quite low for a flagship product. A recommendation for future BIOS revisions is to add a secondary option like ASUS has with XMP I+Tweak, ASRock "aggressive" timings mode and Gigabyte High-Frequency support mode. These are all options to increase performance at the user's discretion, instead of being enabled by default.

EVGA is a lagging behind other Z790 motherboards for highest memory support. To use real world example; the Gigabyte Z790 Aorus Elite AX is able to run DDR5-7800 and it's priced much lower. The MSI MEG Z790 ACE, is priced the same as the Z790 CLASSIFIED and has been tested working (stable) with DDR5-7600. The Gigabyte Z790 Master reached DDR5-7800 as well in testing. If this was last years Z690 CLASSIFIED, this conversation wouldn't be a needed. That was because it was well understood that these extreme memory speeds are outside what is possible with Intel's 12th Gen CPU. Now the 13th Gen has been released, the ceiling is much higher. While most users will not buy memory anywhere close to these speeds, those who are looking for the push the envelope will have to look elsewhere.

For those who like to use pre-defined overclocking profiles, the recommendation is never to use them because the voltages are always set far too high. Here is no different for the EVGA Z790 Classified. EVGA Robot OC is neat feature, but now after being enabled the Intel i9 13900K draws 430 watts under heavy load. Its not practical for daily use (see overclocking section).

This last issue is something EVGA cannot fix with a BIOS update and that is the lack of any 12 V RGB headers. For a while, every LED strip used it, than more switched over to ARGB 5 V. The use-case today is low, but a good number of products being produced today still use the 12 V RGB header. This is an oversight of EVGA engineering team and the board should have never been approved for production without at least one.

Now that we have passed the rough patch, it's time to switch gears and highlight some of the features that make this motherboard stand out. It is not often that the products installation disk gets recognition for being good. The physical disk part is getting replaced with a QR code or a USB flash drive. The latter is preferred of course. When it comes to the installation process, EVGA is the standard every company should be copying. The driver installation is just that; drivers. Nothing more, no extra bloatware of software to uncheck from being installed. The digital manual is included as well, which is a bit strange to think that now its something to be praised for doing. Nonetheless, EVGA is doing it the correct way and should be recognized.

EVGA has created something unique with the Z790 CLASSIFIED. It is still a flagship product, but isn't exactly heavy on the extra features people come to expect with add-on cards, tons of USB ports and additional M.2 sockets. Rather EVGA isn't following suit by adding features that require something else to be disabled on the motherboard for the function in question to work. Instead, all PCIe lanes are accounted for and this motherboard can be fully populated without sacrificing any internal or external connectivity. In a way, most flagship products offer everything, but with an asterisk pinned to every feature. It may seem like the EVGA Z790 CLASSIFIED has less of everything from a glance, but it ultimately is fairly similar in terms of things that can be simultaneously used.

It should be pointed out that EVGA has chosen not to include a M.2 Gen 5 socket, even though this is a flagship tier product. By doing so, the unavoidable happens, and that has to do with just how the PCIe lanes are configured from the CPU. If implemented, half the bandwidth from the first PCIe is taken away, while the second x16 slot would be disabled completely. There is no workaround for any motherboard vendor if an M.2 Gen 5 socket is used on the Intel Z790 platform. There are limited benefits that a Gen 5 NVMe could provide at this time, but once again it should be pointed out the Z790 CLASSIFIED is a flagship product. This is a missing feature that other motherboards offer at this price point.

The EVGA Z790 CLASSIFIED falls into a niche market in of itself that is completely dependent on brand awareness. It offers overclocking features not found on any other motherboards, such as the Probelt voltage readout, which caters towards those power users, but also fails to educate the user on that exact feature. It has a robust toolset in software and in the BIOS, but also fails to provide tutorials on how to use them. This alienates novice users who are interested in participating, but may be in need of some assistance. With the point being here is that those who really are looking to do serious overclocking will either buy the Z790 Dark or another XOC oriented motherboard. Consider the EVGA Z790 CLASSIFIED as a bridge between the overclocking enthusiast realm and the set and forget type user-base. It is truly a one of a kind product that would benefit from reflecting on who is the actual targeted consumer and what they desire most. EVGA has room to expand out again with FTW, Ultra and Stinger motherboard series. Hopefully we will see those in the future. For now though, the EVGA Z790 CLASSIFIED is a motherboard worth considering for that next epic system build, but it does have a few things that need to be resolved and are hopefully ironed out in near future BIOS updates.