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EVGA Intros X299 Dark–Has 12 World Records, No RGB LEDs

EVGA is announcing a new motherbaord for Intel’s X299 HEDT line. This one features top tier performance and features EVGA’s best. However, unlike other high-end motherboards, the EVGA X299 Dark has no RGB LEDs. Instead of fancy aesthetics, the X299 Dark is built from the ground up to be the “best overclocking motherboard on the planet”. At least according to EVGA’s resident overclocker Vince “K|NGP|N” Lucido, who helped design the board

EVGA X299 Dark Features

With 12 world overclocking records and counting, Mr. Lucido does have a point. The VRM uses a 12-phase digital design for the Vcore, and has extra 8-pin power to feed Skylake-X CPUs for overclocking. The PCIe slots have an extra 6-pin power connector at the bottom as well, with convenient disable switches for quick troubleshooting.

Performance is top priority on this board and everything else is secondary. Not that it lacks features for use as a regular motherboard. In fact, it has two U.2 ports, has two M.2 Key-M slots for NVMe PCIe x4 or SATA SSDs, and one M.2 Key-E slot for WLAN cards.

The connectivity options do not stop there as there are actually two Intel Gigabit LAN ports with teaming support. There are also USB 3.1 Type-C built-in at the rear IO. 8x SATA ports are available in total, two of which are from an ASM1061 chip and six from the Intel PCH.

There are only four DDR4 DIMM slots available. However, that is because this board is for setting high frequencies. It supports up to 4000MHz and 64GB quad-channel with Skylake-X via XMP. Obviously, it can be pushed much further at the hands of a capable overclocker. It also has a legacy LGA20XX socket backplate for custom cooling solution mounts. There are ProbeIT connectors for multimeters, triple BIOS switching for easy benching, and more.