EVGA Teases Upcoming X79 Dark

[Lil' ½ Dead]

EVGA’s tradition of releasing high end overclocker-friendly motherboards continues with the upcoming X79 Dark.

EVGA typically keeps their product development under lock and key until they’re ready to show something off. Motherboards may not be their primary focus these days but that doesn’t mean EVGA has forgotten about past successes. The X79 Dark is an effort to relive the glory days by offering overclockers a no-frills motherboard with enthusiast-oriented features and plenty of clock speed headroom.


According to our conversations with EVGA, customer feedback about past motherboard generations was compiled in an effort to improve aspects of the E-ATX-sized X79 Dark. As such, previous layouts were scrapped, the memory tracing layout was revised to improve RAM overclocks, the VRM has been bolstered to augment power distribution to critical components and the PCI-E layout was optimized for better compatibility. Essentially, the X79 Dark is a re-envisioning of EVGA’s motherboard ideals.


Based on Intel’s high end X79 chipset, the Dark has onboard reset and power switches, EVGA’s unique right angle 24-pin power connector and ten SATA ports (6 SATA 6bps and 4 3Gbps). EVGA has also (presumably) included support for their EVBot controller which allows for fine grain control over board functions without having to enter the BIOS.


Being a high end motherboard literally ensures plenty of graphics card expansion capabilities and it looks like EVGA has that part all figured out. The X79 Dark comes with support for quad SLI or 4-way Crossfire across a whooping five PCI-E x16 slots. Peripheral connectivity hasn’t been overlooked either with Bluetooth connectivity and enough USB ports to appease enthusiasts.

EVGA Teases Upcoming X79 Dark Motherboard | Hardware Canucks

[Doctor_Death]

Nice looking board ! I might have to think about buying one.

[Cyberburnout]

Nice looking board. One of the better looking high end boards I have seen in a while.

[Deton]

this one has to be around $550 - $600....me like, me want.....me can't afford

[Doctor_Death]

Tony, it might not be that expensive, I'm hoping not more than $450

[JamesLT3]

this one has to be around $550 - $600....me like, me want.....me can't afford

Same here brother, i would love an x79 system!

[TeeBlack]

that's a nice looking board but i know it's gonna cost an arm and a leg

[Lil' ½ Dead]

Unlike the more prominent motherboard makers like ASUS and Gigabyte, EVGA was late to the Intel Sandy Bridge-E HEDT platform with less than stellar offerings like the X79 FTW and Classified, which offered only four DDR3 DIMM slots (as opposed to eight on the other brands) and were plagued for months after launch with numerous BIOS quirks and underwhelming memory overclocking potential. The company's engineers went back to the drawing board to come out with the X79 Dark - which they claim is now able to compete with the likes of the Republic of Gamers boards from ASUS and challenge top overclocking records, thanks to a redesigned memory trace configuration (presumably T-toplogy) that can support eight-DIMM operation in quad channel.

The board is loaded with a plethora of enthusiast oriented features like a 12+1 phase VRM (presumably IR3550) and debug switches including an EVBot connector. A company spokesman said the X79 Dark should hit retail in around 2-3 months time, which is to be close to the upcoming 22nm Ivy Bridge-E refresh and GPU releases from Nvidia and AMD.

http://vr-zone.com/articles/ces-2013...ses/18629.html

[Doctor_Death]

Hey Kev, let me know if you happen to find a price, if I do move forward with this board, it looks like I'l have to buy the 3970X.