CONCLUSION

   It may have taken a lot longer than initially planned for me to get my hands on the EVGA Z790 DARK K|NGP|N (alongside several others) but it finally happened and as you can all tell from all the posted charts it was well worth the wait. Overclocking the P-Cores of the Intel Core i9-13900K at 5.8GHz with just 1.35V was a breeze (still since reported voltage is nowhere near to what i chose i really don’t suggest using such overclocks 24/7, not unless you have a very good cooler) and as for E-cores it took 1.28V for a stable 4.7GHz (RING was set at 4.9GHz). The good news is that even with a rather old tri-fan AIO like the Fractal Celsius+ S36 Prisma the i9-13900K never surpassed 92 degrees Celsius with the above settings, even under stress testing so you don’t need something out of this earth to keep its temperatures in check. The Z790 DARK K|NGP|N scored very high across the board however, not just in terms of CPU performance. Memory performance is pretty much on par with that of its predecessor and as for its network capabilities the 10GbE NIC by Marvel easily surpassed 830Mb/s when connected with the QNAP QSW-804-4C switch. Unfortunately, however once again EVGA chose to not add an HDMI/DP connector on their Z790 DARK K|NGP|N and even though i do understand where they are coming from the truth of the matter is that for troubleshooting purposes this can come very handy (which is why i do hope they add it in future models).

   With a current retail price set at around USD799 inside the USA and at around 840Euros inside the EU the Z790 DARK K|INGP|N motherboard by EVGA is clearly among the most expensive LGA1700 models in the market today. With such a specific target audience however the EVGA Z790 DARK K|NGP|N should have no issues becoming a hit (as far as I’m aware it already is) and since it delivers on everything that really matters the Platinum Award is in order.

PROS

- Excellent Build Quality
- OC Potential (Dual Fan Cooled 21 Phase Digital VRM)
- 2 Reinforced & EMI Shielded PCIe 5.0 slots
- OC Features (PCIe Disable Switches / Slow Mode / Safe Boot / Triple BIOS / Clear CMOS Buttons / USB BIOS Update Port)
- Three M.2 PCIe 4.0 Sockets
- Available BIOS Settings
- Angled Connectors
- 10GbE & 2.5GbE Ports
- Bundle
- 3 Year Limited Warranty

CONS

- Price (For Some)
- Dual DIMM Design
- No Display Outputs