To expose the board, the heatsinks of M.2 slots and VRM/PCH must be removed. The former is a quick job with 5 screws and reveals the massive 9mm thick anodized aluminum plate with thermal pads already attached. Thus, proper M.2 cooling is definitely provided for. The disassembly of the huge copper cooler for power supply and chipset is a bit more difficult and time-consuming. The many interconnected layers of copper, aluminum and plastic and six different types of screws are somewhat reminiscent of early Nvidia Founders Edition designs.
The heatsink itself, which connects power supply and chipset with a heatpipe and is applied there with 1 mm thermal pads each, consists of 100% copper and is complete overkill, especially when you consider the efficiency of the voltage converters used. In addition to that, EVGA has also integrated two small 40 mm fans into the cooler that blow from the IO towards the CPU, which is exactly opposite of most CPU air coolers. Of course, this is complaining on a high level, but is a heatsink made of full copper with its corresponding costs really necessary, even more so with two small fans?
Now that the board itself is exposed, we can take a closer look at the installed components and the PCB, which is significantly wider than normal ATX with 276.6 mm. Also because of the right-angled connectors, which take up a bit more width for cabling, EATX compatibility with cases and testbenches should be considered here.
The VRM is powered by an ISL69269 12-phase PWM controller together with 17 ISL99390 90 Amp Smart Power Stages (SPS) from Renesas. 16 of these are used for the CPU voltage vCore, doubled by ISL6617AF doublers, and a single one for the iGPU vGT. So in fact, as far as CPU core voltage is concerned, it’s not a “21” phase as advertised by EVGA, but 8 doubled phases.
But how do you get to the advertised 21 then? Well, 8 x 2 for vCore + 1 for vGT is already 17, and then just add the VSA, VCCIO, VCCIO2 and VDIMM phases. Of course, this only serves to be able to market as large a number as possible, but has no real information content and instead has a slightly bland marketing aftertaste.
Actually a pity, because the component selection could not be of higher quality, “8 x 2 + 1 phases with 90 A SPS each” sounds anything but bad and would probably even be a better purchase argument for many potential customers. And on top of that, the CPU power supply is also equipped with a lot of 470 mF SPCaps from Panasonic, even on the backside of the socket and in addition to the usual MLCCs, to provide a smooth and constant voltage.
The VSA and VDIMM voltages are each supplied by a single ISL99360 60 Amp SPS, controlled together by an ISL69133 4-phase PWM controller, again from Renesas. The remaining low voltages, such as VCCIO and VCCIO2, each have dedicated high- and low-side mosfets in the form of ON Semiconductor’s NTMFS4C05N and NTMFS4C10N, respectively, each controlled by a UP1537P buck controller from UPI Semi.
Incidentally, the ProbeIt legend on the board describes the VCCIO2 voltage as “VCCIO12”, as Intel’s official specification actually states. In the BIOS the voltage is then again called “VCCIO Aux”. Other manufacturers also like to refer to the voltage as “VCCIO Mem” or “VCCIO 2”. So the confusion is complete, but in the end all terms mean the same voltage, which is especially important for the RAM-OC.
Apart from the vagueness in the designation and marketing, the PCB layout and the component selection make an extremely high-quality impression, so that nothing should stand in the way of new benchmark high scores, at least in this respect. If you want to know more details about the voltage regulation and e.g. its efficiency, I can highly recommend the video of the Youtuber buildzoid on his channel Actually Hardcore Overclocking.
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