Review: EVGA X570 DARK

By
CornerJack
-
0

The PCB and connectors:

The clocker tools :

Why is the EVGA X570 DARK one of the best motherboards in terms of overclocking ? First of all, because it has many tools inserted directly on its PCB that will make your life much easier.

  • The power button : allows to power up the motherboard.
  • The reset button : allows to restart the motherboard in case of failure.
  • CLR CMOS : allows to erase the BIOS settings in case of a boot failure.
  • Two Debug LEDs : to identify the component responsible for the boot error, but also to display the CPU temperature and voltages.
  • Status LED : which, depending on their color, allow you to identify a problem or to know at what level the component voltage is.
  • ProbeIT : via the cables included in the bundle, you can easily read the different voltages with a multimeter.
  • BIOS switch : in order to switch from one bios to another, there are three of them !
  • PCI-e 16x Switch : allows you to activate or deactivate the PCI Express 16x ports. This allows you to test several configurations without having to remove the graphics card each time.
  • Slow mode : allows you to boot with a 16x coefficient and once in the OS to put back the one chosen in the bios. In cold mode, if you want to reach 6GHz in 60x100MHz, by activating the Slow Mode, you boot in 16×100 and in the OS, hop back to 60×100. It’s mostly for max screens.
  • Safe Boot : allows the motherboard to be rebooted even if the parameters chosen in the bios do not allow booting. This prevents having to clear CMOS which would imply losing your settings.
  • USB BIOS Update port : as the name suggests, this can be used to flash your BIOS.

If you have the opportunity to purchase a multimeter, it is an essential tool to accurately measure the voltage of your processor. Personally, I can’t do without it anymore and it also allows me to see the impact of the « LoadLine calibration » which I’ll tell you about during our overclocking tests. With this X570 DARK and the ProbeIt tool, it’s child’s play to make readings.

The PCB :

Regarding the power supply stage, it has been further strengthened and is based on a 14+2+1 power supply (CPU + SOC + MEM). The CPU part consists of 14 phases and on this model there is no doubler. But beware, the phases are placed in parallel : therefor there are really seven of them.

The digital controller is a Renesas RAA 229004. The mosfets are 90A Intersil ISL99390s, so there is plenty of room for overclocking the 5950X.

An really complete I/O panel :

The EVGA X570 DARK has a full range of connectors, which is more than enough for overclocking. One of the particularities of the card is that it has two PS/2 slots for plugging a keyboard and a mouse. You maybe asking why do we still use this type of connector in 2021 ? The answer is simply because some benchmarks perform better under Windows XP (Super Pi) and the use of non-USB peripherals greatly facilitates the installation of the OS.

There are also two 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet controllers. As for USB, we have two USB 3.2, four USB 3.2 Gen2 and one Type-C. Finally, there are antenna mounts for dual band Wi-Fi and audio outputs.