EVGA X79 Dark Motherboard Review

Clean power starts at the source, and with the power demands of extreme overclocking, the more power you have available, the better off you will be.  EVGA understands this and has offered an additional 8-pin 12v power connector to help with the extreme overclocking efforts.

Quad channel memory comes standard on the LGA 2011 platform and the X79 Dark supports DDR3 modules at 2400Mhz+ with a maximum of 64GB usable.  24pin ATX power is located in the traditional location near the upper edge of the motherboard and is oriented 90 degrees to help with cable routing and airflow.

Internal SATA connections number ten.  Normally this is where a vendor will also color code what connections follow what SATA spec.  We know from the manual that six follow SATA3 spec while the remaining are of the SATA6 connection standard.  However, there is no indication as to which ones are which.  Based on the surface components and a little logic we are going to say the top six are SATA6 while the bottom four are the slower SATA3.

The I/O panel is rather self explanatory.  On the panel you will find six USB 2.0 ports along with a single Bluetooth antenna, EVBot connector, four USB 3.0 ports, Dual Ethernet, dual e-SATA, Digital audio, CMOS reset and 8-channel analog audio.  Another surprise is the exclusion of a single PS/2 keyboard port, yep its not there.  We realize that this is '13 and PS/2 is older than most users looking to buy this motherboard but it is still damn convenient to have.