The EVGA Z590 Dark Motherboard Review: For Extreme Enthusiasts
by Gavin Bonshor on October 15, 2021 9:00 AM ESTGaming Performance
For Z590 we are running using Windows 10 64-bit with the 20H2 update.
Civilization 6
Originally penned by Sid Meier and his team, the Civilization series of turn-based strategy games are a cult classic, and many an excuse for an all-nighter trying to get Gandhi to declare war on you due to an integer underflow. Truth be told I never actually played the first version, but I have played every edition from the second to the sixth, including the fourth as voiced by the late Leonard Nimoy, and it is a game that is easy to pick up, but hard to master.
Benchmarking Civilization has always been somewhat of an oxymoron – for a turn based strategy game, the frame rate is not necessarily the important thing here and even in the right mood, something as low as 5 frames per second can be enough. With Civilization 6 however, Firaxis went hardcore on visual fidelity, trying to pull you into the game. As a result, Civilization can taxing on graphics and CPUs as we crank up the details, especially in DirectX 12.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider (DX12)
The latest installment of the Tomb Raider franchise does less rising and lurks more in the shadows with Shadow of the Tomb Raider. As expected this action-adventure follows Lara Croft which is the main protagonist of the franchise as she muscles through the Mesoamerican and South American regions looking to stop a Mayan apocalyptic she herself unleashed. Shadow of the Tomb Raider is the direct sequel to the previous Rise of the Tomb Raider and was developed by Eidos Montreal and Crystal Dynamics and was published by Square Enix which hit shelves across multiple platforms in September 2018. This title effectively closes the Lara Croft Origins story and has received critical acclaims upon its release.
The integrated Shadow of the Tomb Raider benchmark is similar to that of the previous game Rise of the Tomb Raider, which we have used in our previous benchmarking suite. The newer Shadow of the Tomb Raider uses DirectX 11 and 12, with this particular title being touted as having one of the best implementations of DirectX 12 of any game released so far.
Strange Brigade (DX12)
Strange Brigade is based in 1903’s Egypt and follows a story which is very similar to that of the Mummy film franchise. This particular third-person shooter is developed by Rebellion Developments which is more widely known for games such as the Sniper Elite and Alien vs Predator series. The game follows the hunt for Seteki the Witch Queen who has arisen once again and the only ‘troop’ who can ultimately stop her. Gameplay is cooperative-centric with a wide variety of different levels and many puzzles which need solving by the British colonial Secret Service agents sent to put an end to her reign of barbaric and brutality.
The game supports both the DirectX 12 and Vulkan APIs and houses its own built-in benchmark which offers various options up for customization including textures, anti-aliasing, reflections, draw distance and even allows users to enable or disable motion blur, ambient occlusion and tessellation among others. AMD has boasted previously that Strange Brigade is part of its Vulkan API implementation offering scalability for AMD multi-graphics card configurations. For our testing, we use the DirectX 12 benchmark.
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YB1064 - Friday, October 15, 2021 - link
If this board is built for LN2 overclocking, then a review without testing this capability is incomplete. Come on guys, you used to do this in the past. What gives?Ryan Smith - Friday, October 15, 2021 - link
Speaking pragmatically, when we do that kind of testing, we're at serious risk of burning out a $500 CPU. For a comprehensive overclocking-focused article that may make sense, but for single motherboard review that's not a very good use of our resources.To be sure, it would be fun to do - and ideally I'd like to make it happen. But there are some niche features/configurations that even we can't justify the cost of testing.
niva - Friday, October 15, 2021 - link
Do people actually run their systems with LN2 cooling? Or is it something that just exists to be used temporarily when doing extreme benchmarks?I've been building PCs since the 90s and never even bothered with liquid coolers, never mind LN2. Seems like a complete gimmick and as you stated, risky. Not just for the CPU resources, but potentially dangerous to the people setting up the system.
shabby - Friday, October 15, 2021 - link
If it's targeted for ln2 that means they can charge a pretty penny for it, that's all it means.Ryan Smith - Friday, October 15, 2021 - link
You're correct: no one is using LN2 on a day-to-day basis. It's mostly for short use periods for extreme overclocking.amnesia0287 - Friday, October 15, 2021 - link
The stuff they change to make it work with LN2 still benefit everyone else, just less. Cause basically what they do is swap in higher quality chips that are better hardened. They tighten up the tolerances (which is why it’s only got 2 ram slots, to make the traces shorter and more consistent).Same with the upgrade to the power delivery and pci traces.
Can a human tell the difference from any of these things? No way, but they will certainly help a cpu last longer and run more stable. It just doesn’t make sense to spend on any current pc hardware with all the changes about to pop off. Just pci5 and the addition of cxl are gonna be huge.
Oxford Guy - Saturday, October 16, 2021 - link
‘Extreme overclocking’ = extreme marketing techniquefrozen_water - Friday, October 15, 2021 - link
Meh, having owned the z490 dark kp edition I think these boards are way overrated. Does this one still have a silkscreen URL for a non-existent TiN guide? Does this still not support Intel’s cryo/TEC coolers? It’s literally the most expensive oc motherboard out there and it lacks features that other much cheaper ones have.Silver5urfer - Friday, October 15, 2021 - link
Unfortunately TiN is retired from EVGA. He moved to US I guess due to family. Now those nice amazing articles on Xdevs are nowhere since Z490 series. The only person now covering this extensively is Luumi. Check his content, he also makes Win7 installs just like TiN as well.I'm eying this board with 10900K or X570 DARK if the AMD board also drops USB then I'm skipping Ryzen.
amnesia0287 - Friday, October 15, 2021 - link
OC motherboards mostly all a waste of money for most people. But just looking at the vrms, power delivery, tight uniform ram traces and such. They are extremely focused on pure electrical stability/consistency/reliability. Though certainly not to the same degree, it is built similarly to military hardened pc gear in some ways.