EVGA Z690 Dark KingPin Review: Overclocking-Focused Flagship

A well-rounded overclocking-focused flagship board for under $700

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EVGA Z690 Dark KingPin
(Image credit: © EVGA)

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Firmware

EVGA’s BIOS, like other board makers', hasn’t changed much compared to the Z590 generation. Once the system 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 can 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 much 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, I 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.

5 Comments Comment from the forums
  • Friesiansam
    At the time of writing this, Amazon UK list this board at £741.57. There are no circumstances under which I would remotely consider, paying so much for a motherboard.
    Reply
  • hotaru.hino
    RAM slots that go from front to back? Who is this? DFI? 🤪
    Reply
  • DookieDraws
    :pEVGA makes some of the most ugliest, yet, most expensive motherboards. They need to improve those looks!
    Reply
  • InvalidError
    "cons: only three NVMe slots"

    Seems to be a silly thing to complain about when that is just about the most NVMe slots one can possibly cram on an ATX board before either running out of PCIe lanes or space short of putting them on the back of the motherboard or standing them straight.

    If you are really that desperate for more NVMes, simply toss an NVMe card in the second x8 slot. If you are really REALLY desperate for tons of NVMes, I'm sure someone will eventually toss a PM50052A chip on a PCIe card with 8-10x 5.0x4 NVMes somewhere and must have done so with its PCIe 4.0 predecessor.
    Reply
  • escksu
    Don't like them using bennic caps.... At this price their should at least use something better like mundorf.
    Reply