Gadgetory

one of our last meetings of Computex was stopping by the EVGA booth at the Grand Hyatt in Taipei so let's check out some of their cool motherboards right after this our complex trip is brought to you by fan tech schoolmaster and MSI all right so let's kick things off with the X 299 dark which is meant to be EVGA flagship but it's also very narrowly targeted towards extreme overclockers it actually uses what ebj calls an optimized EAD X form factor which we sense is certain onboard connectors with cut out areas on the PCB the end result is unique looking layout that is supposed to optimize cable routing with that taken into account you can actually see a lot in common between this Lord and the asus apex series including that unique PCB there's a pair of eight pin connectors to ensure the CPU gets sufficient power during extreme overclocking adventures and a single bank of quad-channel memory that's been wired to the CPU socket with reinforced traces to promote extreme speeds to back that up there's a fourteen phase digital vrm layout EVGA expects this to be the best overclocking x 299 board on the planet and it shows what you won't see with the dark series this fabulous add-ons that overclockers and gamers won't use for example reinforced PCI slots extensive RGB lighting back plates and the overuse of metal are completely pointless for a motherboard of this caliber in EB J's eyes instead of spending money for those things that instead invested in key locations that actually lead to meaningful benefits for the end users overclockers receive a few other interesting things too there's the usual onboard power reset and clear CMOS buttons support for triple biases and an advanced ten zone temperature monitoring design one thing that caught our eye was actually the onboard voltage display which will definitely come in handy for overclockers who are used to needing a multimeter to accurately log voltage in terms of connectivity the x-29 and arc has everything an overclocker could possibly want and most of what gamers need there's dual you two connectors support for quad graphics cards and three m2 PCI and eme slots two of those slots are actively cooled with onboard fan and heatsink design while the other one is vertically mounted meanwhile the board's bottom edge has a dedicated six pin power connector that's used to push additional current towards the PCI slots basically this board looks like an absolute beast and it will surely be competing with the ravage six apex as the best public locking motherboard around now if you don't need the overclocking might of EVGA is dark then the x2 99f dwk might be a perfect fit it actually has many of the darks basic features but eliminates the ones which are later focused on extreme speeds and replaces them with sensible mainstream items for example even though the color scheme remains very neutral EVGA has added a cool LED lighting scheme but despite those mainstream features the FTW case still targets enthusiasts with a large e ATX form factor in many ways we think that this motherboard is ready to go head-to-head with the likes of Asus Rampage and gigabytes a gaming 9 Series it has an advanced a channel audio design and an ultra efficient 14 phase digital vrm layout it also supports memory speeds up to 40 133 megahertz and higher through the use of a new dedicated 4 layer key routing design now oddly it does feel like the FTW falls behind a bit when compared to some other designs even though it has a killer networks a 2500 chipset for Ethernet connection there's no Intel LAN or Wi-Fi capabilities also even though there are single rear connectors for the USB 3.1 gen2 type a and type C there are no fun panel hookups for those next-generation formats with that being said in other areas this motherboard has it all through there are 6 SATA 6 gigabits per second headers 2 u 2 connectors and 3 m dot 2 slots for running rate setups through Intel's vrock technology EVGA has included an onboard CP temperature monitor as well so that's awesome and now let's talk about the last motherboard that EVGA was showcasing in the both this one's actually quite unique while many manufacturers are either sticking to an ATX or ultra compact ITX form factors the X 299 micro is actually one of a handful of micro ATX x-29 boards we've seen not many windows will be supporting this form factor going forward so it's great to see EVGA sticking in the game since n8x boards are still compact but they support a ton more features than ITX does let's start off with the most important thing about this particular motherboard it supports a dual card configuration at full 16 X by 16 X speeds now there are only four dimm slots and they support up to 64 gigabytes of memory in total and EVGA has managed to cram a very capable 8 channel audio solution onto the board there's also six SATA 6 gigabits per second ports 2 m dot 2 slots of which one is vertical and even a Utah two connector for good measure honestly for the space savings it is hard to recommend an ITX motherboard over this one but we will have to see how many cases end up with only M ATX configurations in the near future so there you have it all of EVGA x2 99 motherboards that will be available at launch what do you guys think would you buy one of these or a competing Asus gigabyte as rock or MSI alternative let us know in the comments down below I'm Eva with Haruka knacks thank you so much for watching stay tuned for more complex coverage and we'll see you in the next one