EVGA Z690 Classified Review: Declassified Class

Robust power delivery, horizontal connectors, three M.2 slots, and eight SATA ports for $629.99.

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EVGA Z690 Classified
(Image credit: © EVGA)

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Firmware

EVGA’s BIOS, like the other board partners, didn’t change much compared to Z590. Once the systems POSTs, you’re still presented with four options (Setup, Default, Gamer Mode, and EVGA OC Robot) to access different functionality. After entering the Setup portion of the BIOS where you have access to tweak settings, there’s an informative system summary up top. There are headings for different sections below that, with the rest of the screen taken up by options for each header. For the most part, there isn’t a lot of digging around in the sub-menus to find the most frequently accessed items, but CPU and memory overclocking are in different sections. Gamer Mode provides a slight boost to the CPU, while the EVGA OC Robot finds a faster clock speed by raising clocks and playing with voltage while stress testing. Overall, we like EVGA’s BIOS implementation for Z690.

Joe Shields
Joe Shields
Staff Writer, Components

Joe Shields is a staff writer at Tom’s Hardware. He reviews motherboards and PC components.

1 Comment Comment from the forums
  • Alvar "Miles" Udell
    Along the right edge, we run into eight SATA ports, which is one area where this board has more than most of the competition. The Classified supports RAID0/1/5/10 modes for SATA if you’re looking for redundancy or striping (or both). In all, you can run all eight SATA ports and all three M.2 sockets concurrently (you just lose the bottom PCIe slot).

    Am I the only one who just doesn't understand why 8 or even 6 SATA ports are included on motherboards, especially higher end motherboards, in 2022? If you're going to buy a $600+ motherboard, you likely have a pair or triplet, or even a quartet, of high capacity NVMe drives and probably don't have any SATA drives. Seems to me that bandwidth could be put to better use...
    Reply