The EVGA X570 Dark Motherboard Review: A Dark Beast For Ryzen

Conclusion: AMD Ryzen Goes Dark

It was clear from the reveal by legendary overclocker Vince "KINGPIN" Lucido back in July that the EVGA X570 Dark would eventually leave its mark on the X570 chipset. Still, primarily, this is a motherboard for extreme overclockers. The X570 Dark is designed from the ground up for maximum performance when used with sub-ambient cooling methods, and the X570 Dark is well equipped. This includes its 10-layer PCB, specialist design characteristics such as a transposed AM4 socket to allow for easier mounting for CPU pots, as well as a large actively cooled 17-phase power delivery, all playing their roles to help achieve this.

The EVGA X570 Dark isn't just for enthusiasts as it has plenty of features for everyday users, too, including dual PCIe 4.0 x4 NVMe and eight SATA ports, six of which include support for AMD RAID 0, 1, and 10 arrays. Some users may argue a board at this price should feature more NVMe M.2 slots, but users could add more with a PCIe expansion card if they wished to do so. For onboard audio, EVGA is using a Realtek ALC1220 HD audio codec, with one of its NU SV3H615 headphone amplifiers to help boost the performance and quality of its overall audio output. For networking, the EVGA uses dual Intel I225-V 2.5 GbE controllers and an Intel AX200 Wi-Fi 6 wireless interface.

Unlike some of the new and current X570S models, the X570 Dark doesn't include USB 3.2 G2x2 Type-C, but it does have two USB 3.2 G2 Type-C connectors, one on the rear and one available through an internal header. It's not the most packed USB array we've seen on X570 with four USB 3.2 G2 Type-A, two USB 3.2 G2 Type-A on the rear panel, with headers allowing for an additional four 3.2 G1 Type-A and two USB 2.0 ports through the use of internal headers. The selection of input goes hand in hand with the board's pedigree; overclockers don't want or need fancy input and output. They want performance.

Touching on the size aspect, I've seen many users turn their noses up at large E-ATX motherboards with just two memory slots online, and I wanted to address this from a personal perspective. Having 64 GB of memory is way more than anything gaming and conventional applications will eat through, with perhaps some tasks such as video editing and other creative design tasks being an exception here. The differential here is that the memory slots are better positioned to enhance performance in benchmarking and with any percentage of performance desirable when trying to break world records under extreme cooling methods such as liquid nitrogen. Even for high-end workflows, 64 GB caters to most of the market, and if you really need more, isn't dual-channel just as limiting? It always depends on your scenario of course, but from my perspective, only having two memory slots isn't as big a crutch as the criticism I see of it online might suggest.

Looking at performance, the EVGA X570 Dark performed brilliantly in all of our testing, with some of the fastest POST times on X570 and decent power consumption, and consistently good compute and gaming performance. The only thing it didn't do well in was DPC latency, which can be forgiven as no one will use a $690 overclocking focused motherboard in a digital and audio workstation (DAW) system.

The EVGA X570 Dark bares all without its heatsinks.

In our overclock testing, this is where the EVGA X570 Dark showed its true colors with an impressive display, as we achieved a maximum all-core overclock on our CPU higher than any other AM4 motherboard we have tested. Add that in with some of the best power delivery thermals that we've seen from an X570 model, including on par performance with the water-cooled setup on the ASRock X570 Aqua; the EVGA X570 Dark excels. We feel it will be superb for pushing Ryzen 3000 and 5000 to their limits on sub-zero cooling methods such as liquid nitrogen.  The X570 Dark does use an active cooled VRM with two cooling fans, and they certainly do their job well.

Final Thoughts: A True Beast on X570, But Not For Everyone

While it is hard to judge any motherboard primarily designed for extreme overclocking, such as the EVGA X570 Dark against 'normal' motherboards for everyday use, the Dark does well. The most significant caveat for users will be the hefty $690 price tag, which, compared with other flagship models on X570, will lose out every day in terms of core features such as M.2 real estate and premium networking. By comparison, a good $300 board will come with just as many user-relatable features (if not more) for everyday use at stock levels.

We look forward to seeing more from EVGA on AMD's platforms in due course, perhaps a range of boards for AM5 would be nice.