Barring it being a cruel joke on enthusiasts, a short 9-second video clip uploaded by EVGA to YouTube pretty much confirms the company is getting ready to announce a motherboard for AMD's Ryzen processors. There's really nothing else it could be, and it's about time EVGA embraced AMD's moment of Zen.
AMD introduced its AM4 socket in September 2016, and not long after, the Ryzen 1000 series arrived. Now almost five years later, AMD has hit its stride with Zen 3, the latest generation of the architecture that changed the landscape, and which underpins some of the best CPUs for gaming.
Curiously enough, EVGA has avoided making a motherboard for Ryzen processors all this time, though that's about to change.
The teaser video is titled "A new Darkness is coming..." and through a plume of smoke, a Ryzen logo appears, encircling EVGA's "Dark" branding. While no product name is mentioned, I'd wager EVGA is getting ready to announce an X570 Dark motherboard.
It wouldn't make a whole lot of sense to go with anything other than AMD's top chipset for Ryzen (X570). EVGA goes all-out on its Dark lineup. The Z590 Dark for Intel processors, for example, features a 10-layer printed circuit board (PCB) and a 22-phase voltage regulator module (VRM), and is built for overclockers and "everyone else demanding the ultimate in performance."
"As a wise overclocker once said, 'Once you start down the Dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny', and with the EVGA Z590 Dark, that destiny is sure to be filled with shattered records and countless victories on the battlefield," EVGA says.
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That kind of over-the-top hyperbole would be a bit much for the B550 chipset, and we can safely assume EVGA won't build a board around the previous generation X470 chipset. The timing is just too odd for something like that.
As our friends at Tom's Hardware point out, this won't actually be the first motherboard to support an AMD processor, just the first one for Ryzen. Some of you may recall the EVGA nForce 730a, back in the Athlon 64 era. That board was built for AMD hardware as well, though was based on an Nvidia chipset.
To my knowledge, the upcoming Dark SKU will be the first to feature an actual AMD chipset. I expect EVGA to give AMD the proper Dark treatment with a robust VRM, oodles of connectivity options (including USB 3.2 Gen 2x2, 2.5GbE LAN ports, and Wi-Fi 6), onboard diagnostic LEDs, and addressable RGB lighting. But, we'll have to wait and see.
