EVGA Z490 DARK BIOS Overview PART 1 & Manual Intel Core i9 10900K Overclocking Guide to 5.3GHz+

Part 2 out as well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W55hNuCimj4

So time to take a look at the overall functionality of the new Z490 Dark from EVGA. So on this video we take a look at the BIOS overall, go through the different options and see how to manually overclock the CPU Core, Cache and Memory on this motherboard. I will make a second video later about the integrated BIOS profiles and heavy memory overclocking on air/water cooling next week. This video is truly an in-depth look to overclocking this new platform on one of the best motherboards on the market, so follow the steps carefully and you will have a good end result. You will not find similar footage from the biggest mainstream YT Gurus.

So the BIOS is pretty much identical to the Z390 Dark BIOS. Most of the settings are the same. Now one very important thing is that you can use much higher range on the System Agent voltage safely, so pretty much up to 1.4v safely on the VSA and VCCIO. For just testing purposes you can even use up to 1.65V on the System Agent even on air or water cooling which is significantly higher than before. And you do have to use relatively high values on those even for daily use if you wish to run very high memory frequencies like 4800MHz+ with CL18 timings and so on. There will be multiple easy-to-use profiles integrated to the release BIOS that make overclocking easier, so they tuned for them. Other important point is that now you can easily get Command Rate 1 to work even with the newer A2 PCB standard on the Samsung B-die based DDR4 memory. So if you aim for 4000-4300MHz frequency range, or even under 4GHz you should try to aim for Command Rate 1 as it has better performance at the same settings compared to CR2. Generally you can achieve higher frequencies with Command Rate 2 so if your memory kit can go much higher on frequency with Command Rate 2 then it is best to keep it at 2.

One fancy feature in the CPU section of the Advanced tab is the Per Core Hyper Threading, which allows you to disable HT from individual cores, like run the CPU in 10c/16t mode which is the most suitable configuration for 3DMark Vantage for example, as it can only utilize 16 threads and not more. When you disable HT from the worst 4 CPU cores you might be able to get a bit higher CPU frequency overall.

All in all overclocking the CPU is very simple. I recommend you use -25% small vdroop option for the most accurate voltage values both at idle and under load. Voltage and frequency to start with all depends on your cooling solution, but in any case you should start with less than 1.3V. Once you find the rough max in simple test like Cinebench R15, you can test daily stability with Prime95. You should test the non-AVX stability for a few hours at least and you can then compensate the higher loads of AVX based workloads by using a value of 1-3 in the AVX Ratio Offset. When it comes to memory overclocking the entire capacity of the memory you have installed has to be tested to be fully stable in every situation.

BIOS Overview part of the video: 00:00
CPU and Memory Overclocking tests in the OS: 41:15

Z490 Dark Unboxing & Overview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WeFFoG85rWM

Recommended software mentioned on the video:

CPU-Z: https://www.cpuid.com/softwares/cpu-z.html

Core Temp: https://www.alcpu.com/CoreTemp/

EVGA ELEET X1: https://www.evga.com/eleetx1/

Prime95: https://www.mersenne.org/download/

HCI Memtest: https://hcidesign.com/memtest/

Aida64: https://www.aida64.com/downloads

Benchmate: https://benchmate.org/

Asrock Timing Configurator 4.0.3: https://download.asrock.com/Utility/Formula/TimingConfigurator(v4.0.3).zip

HyperPI: http://virgilioborges.com.br/hyperpi/

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Видео EVGA Z490 DARK BIOS Overview PART 1 & Manual Intel Core i9 10900K Overclocking Guide to 5.3GHz+ канала Luumi