The Intel Z490 Overview: 44+ Motherboards Examined
by Gavin Bonshor on April 30, 2020 10:00 AM ESTWorking directly with extreme overclocker Vince ‘K|NGP|N’ Lucido, EVGA has some of the most sought after graphics cards and motherboards in the industry by enthusiasts and gamers alike. Usually turning up later than other vendors to the launch party, EVGA plans to launch two new models designed for Z490. Typically aimed at enthusiasts and gamers with its models and assisted by its EVGA ELEET x1 overclocking utility, EVGA has found success in the components market with its Intel and NVIDIA based products.
EVGA Z490 Dark
Starting with EVGA’s premium Z490 model, the Z490 Dark, it has a lot of bells and whistles with some interesting design choices. The most notable of those is it has just two memory slots on its E-ATX sized 10-layer PCB. It follows a simplistic black and gunmetal grey theme, with a large rear panel cover which doubles up as part of the power delivery heatsink, which forms an L-shape around the LGA1200 socket. Included are two PCIe 3.0 x4 M.2 slots, a single U.2 port, with support for up to DDR4-4600 and up to 64 GB of capacity.
One of the most prominent aspects of the EVGA Z490 Dark is its unconventional desktop design. Typically the memory slots would sit along the right-hand side, but EVGA has placed them along with a transposed LGA1200 socket. This is designed and optimized for extreme overclockers. At the right-hand side are a pair of 8-pin 12 V ATX CPU and a 24-pin 12 V ATX motherboard power inputs with right-angled designs for easier installation. EVGA is advertising an 18-phase power delivery on the Z490 Dark, which looks to be impressive.
For storage is a pair of PCIe 3.0 x4 M.2 slots, with a single U.2 port and eight SATA ports with support for RAID 0, 1, 5, and 10 arrays. There are three full-length PCIe 3.0 slots which operate at x16, x8/x8, and x8/x8/+4, with a half-length PCIe 3.0 x4 slot. In the very top right-hand corner is two 2-digit LED panels which monitor CPU voltage and temperature, with a power and reset button also added.
On the rear panel are two USB 3.2 G1 Type-C, five USB 3.2 G2 Type-A, and two USB 2.0 ports. Offering support for integrated graphics is a single mini DisplayPort video output. In contrast, the boards five 3.5 mm audio jack and S/PDIF optical output is controlled by a Realtek ALC1220 HD audio codec, with an EVGA NU Audio SV3H615 headphone amplifier. Also featured on the rear panel is an Intel I225-V 2.5 G Ethernet controller which powers one port, while the other is provided from an Intel I219-V Gigabit controller. Also offering wireless support is an unspecified wireless interface, while the rear panel has a small red clear CMOS switch. Last but not least, there are a PS/2 keyboard and mouse combo port.
The EVGA Z490 Dark represents a small overclocking based market but has enough features onboard to cater to enthusiastic audiences too. With an Intel 2.5 G and Gigabit Ethernet combo, two PCIe 3.0 x4 M.2 slots and with single, yet rare U.2 port, it has plenty to divulge on. The two memory slots are designed to improve memory latencies when overclocking, something breaking overclocking records depend on these days. Living up to its Dark moniker, the EVGA Z490 Dark will be available at launch, but at present, there is no information on pricing.
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stevenfindley - Monday, June 8, 2020 - link
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Shinkiro - Friday, May 1, 2020 - link
A lot of people don't upgrade every consecutive generation. My 3570k and 980ti have been serving me well for half a decade, but now that it's time to get new gear I'm happy to see higher maximum speeds and lower temperatures than the previous generation. The fact that gen10 requires a different socket than Gen 9 is completely irrelevant to me, aside from choosing a compatible board.Orange_Swan - Friday, May 1, 2020 - link
Exactly, my i5-4690k has served me well for just under 6 years (brought Nov. 14), I tend to buy a new CPU and Mobo every 5ish years.althaz - Saturday, May 2, 2020 - link
The point is though, that you need to buy a new motherboard, which means you'll probably consider AMD's Ryzen 3000 line-up (generally, AMD will give you better productivity performance, upgradability and lower power, but worse gaming performance, which is why I went Intel last year). If Intel weren't such dicks in forcing people to buy new motherboards, maybe you would be able to just drop in a new CPU (actually in your case it really is irrelevant, a new motherboard was *actually* needed for 6th gen, everything since then would work on the same boards if Intel weren't dicks, but the point stands in general).Tabalan - Sunday, May 3, 2020 - link
Intel i5 3570k was released 8 years ago, while i5 4690k is 6 years old. Wanting to upgrade build after 6 years with 3 years of mobo backward compatibility (like with AMD, Ryzen 1000 to 4000) means that you either buy 3 years old CPU or buy new mobo + new CPU. In latter case, it doesn't matter if you go with Intel or AMD, because it's down to same thing.bronan - Saturday, May 16, 2020 - link
Indeed my point exactly every year new stuff gets launched and loads of people jump onto the newest toys just because the cpu is maybe 0.1 Ghz faster if your lucky.Because that boost does not work constant at all, i saw that with several friends who bought the 8700k which claims to boost to 4.7 Ghz. Reality is that only 3 out of 28 of these cpu did boost up to 4.7 the rest only gets between 4.4 and 4.6 at the highest and to be honest only in certain tasks.
So if you follow the baseline of the cpu usage you see during some tasks a few spikes but most of the time it hangs around the baseclock speed.
I actually still was using my 6700k till 2 months ago on a z170 motherboard then i saw somebody selling his 8700k for a nice price and i switch over.
The performance increase is close to 0 in almost every task besides when i am packing and unpacking rar and zip files. In the games i do i see hardly any performance gains as well.
The only thing i am planning to update now is my graphics card, so i am kinda waiting for a very cheap AMD VII or if AMD releases the new big navy.
But the people who own the AMD VII tend to want to keep them because there had not been one for sale in many months for a reasonable price. The only one i saw was sold at a price above the release price when they came to market.....
So those who bought the cards seem to be content enough to not sell them at all.
So i am still stuck at my gtx 1070 and have no plans to pay a premium price for a next gen GPU.
@Orange_Swan i tend to buy only when i see a huge improvement for the tasks i do, if its below 3% increase i will not buy anything at all. So i sometimes keep running the same stuff sometimes even up to 12 years.
I got a huge amount of people who i help with their pc hardware and problems and almost everyone of them relies on my expertise to give them proper advise when they want some kinda upgrade.
Often i can asure them that even though the bragging bonus can be fun, they often will see no improvement at all if they buy a new system. So they wait till i tell them their system can be upgraded or replaced. In almost any case its the gpu which gets replaced by a second hand one in very rare situations i have to ask them to order a new one.
What i am saying is that even though they keep releasing new stuff, most people do not have a need to upgrade/update anything.
Actually for now there is absolute no need to have something faster at all for any game at all in the near future, because all will run fine with your current stuff.
I actually have several who have at least a titan from recent generation and still can not run their games at highest settings in 4K.
RealBeast - Friday, May 1, 2020 - link
All of my builds since my Athlon have been Intel, but no way they'll suck me in on this Z490 1200 pin build, when their next decent CPUs will require something like a Z491 with 1201 pins. ;)Andrew LB - Saturday, May 9, 2020 - link
Intel has already said the next gen will still use LGA 1200 socket.WaltC - Friday, May 1, 2020 - link
Can't see much "exciting" about this...;)Oxford Guy - Tuesday, May 5, 2020 - link
It seems like a poster child for a Powerpoint on the inefficiencies of capitalism.Literally making another iteration of products "just because".