Connectors and I/O
Totally EVGA equipped the X79 Dark with ten angled SATA ports,
which is enough for every office PC, gaming rig or overclocking setup. Six of
them are SATA 6Gbps (two via the Intel X79 PCH and four other via a Marvell 88SE9230 controller).
Furthermore there are
practical onboard power- and reset-buttons as well as a debug LED. If you need
to reset the BIOS there are actually two BIOS reset switches. One can be found
onboard and the other at the I/O Panel. It is common with multi-GPU boards these days,
that there are Molex plug at the bottom of the board to
provide additional power and therefore better stability for Multi-GPU-Setups. In
case of this motherboard there is 6-pin connector to take care of this job. EVGA also added some OC features to their top range motherboard like the
EVBot connector.
As for the PCIe connectors with this motherboard you get
five PCIe 16x Gen 3.0 and one PCIe x4. From top to bottom for the PCIe 16x you
have: 16 lanes, 8 lanes, 8 lanes, 16 lanes and 8 lanes.
Totally you'll find six fan headers on the EVGA X79
Dark which is more than enough to provide even an overclocking rig or even a
high-end gaming machine with plenty of fresh air.
Looking at the external connectors directly at the
back-panel EVGA equipped the X79 Dark with four USB 3.0 ports, six USB 2.0 port
and two Gigabit ethernet ports. Furthermore there is a CLR CMOS button, two
eSATA ports, an analogue audio panel as well as a digital audio out.
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