EVGA Z590 FTW Motherboard Review

1. Introduction, Specifications, and Pricing
2. Packaging, Accessories, and Overview
3. UEFI, Software and Test System
4. Cinebench, Realbench and AIDA64
5. PCMark10 and PugetSystems Benchmarks
6. System I/O Benchmarks
7. Power, Thermals and Final Thoughts

TweakTown's Rating: 91%

The Bottom Line

The Z590 FTW at its MSRP of $439 offers a fantastic premium entry-level motherboard for consumers on a budget.

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Introduction, Specifications, and Pricing

EVGA's FTW motherboard brand is one of the longest-running platforms, extending all the way back to its introduction in 2009 with the P55 chipset. Since then, the FTW has been the entry-level motherboard from EVGA alongside each CPU release from Intel. Now in its 12th Generation, the Z590 FTW takes in Intels 11th Gen Rocket Lake CPUs with a focus on quality and efficiency using a 17-phase digital power design, increased socket gold content, and reinforced PCIe slots.

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The EVGA Z590 FTW supports both 10th and 11th Gen CPUs and is based on the Intel Z590 chipset. This is a four-DIMM motherboard that supports DDR4-2133 through 5100MHz with an overclock alongside XMP, max capacity 128GB.

Expansion is handled with two PCIe x16 slots and one PCIe x4, while three M.2 slots handle storage in concert with six SATA 6GB/s ports. USB 3.2 is available both on the rear I/O with six ports and internal headers adding four additional.

Network connectivity is handled with Intel AX201 WiFi6 paired with the i225v Gigabit controller.

Pricing

The EVGA Z590 FTW Wi-Fi carries an MSRP of $439.99 with a three-year warranty.

EVGA GeForce RTX 3060 XC Gaming

	Today	Yesterday	7 days ago	30 days ago
	$385.71	$385.71	$374.22	-	Buy
* Prices last scanned on 12/27/2022 at 12:47 am CST - prices may not be accurate, click links above for the latest price. We may earn an affiliate commission.

Packaging, Accessories, and Overview

Packaging and Accessories

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Packaging is blacked out, Z590 FTW logo on the front.

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On the back, we have the board layout and features listed.

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Included with, we have SATA cables, a Wi-Fi antenna, and drivers on USB.

EVGA Z590 FTW Overview

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The board itself carries an industrial design, blacked out with legit metal heat sinks covering the VRM and chipset area.

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The back of the board is mostly blank; no doublers are used on this platform.

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Rear I/O is quite full, display outputs to the left followed by PS2, USB, and network connections.

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Working our way around the board, EVGA has set up this board perfectly for those that enjoy the challenge of hiding wires in their builds. All connections are angled 90 degrees, including front panel audio and fan headers in the image above.

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Further down, we have two USB 2.0 and another fan header.

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This wraps us around to the SATA connections and internal header for USB 3.2.

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24pin power too is knocked on its side; this reduces stress on the incoming power cable. To the right, you will find the power and reset buttons and the USB port for updating BIOS.

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Across the top, you will find the CPU fan connection sitting next to the four and eight-pin CPU power inputs.

PCB and Circuit Analysis

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EVGA uses all available real estate around the CPU for their power design. We have eight phases across the top, seven to the left, and two down below. The PMIC is top left.

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The Z590 chipset can be seen here, ITE Super I/O down below.

UEFI, Software and Test System

UEFI

EVGA has done a remarkable job on its Z590 BIOS. The initial screen gives you several options, including Gamer Mose that set our 11700K at 5.1GHz. You can also choose OC Robot to have the board automatically overclock your CPU. Then you have default and advanced modes for those wanting to tune themselves.

BIOS layout is fantastic, the main menu offering all the information needed about the installed CPU, memory, and storage. The OC menu wastes no time letting you tune your CPU with extensive clock and voltage controls, the memory having its own tab to the right.

The advanced menu offers all the platform controls we are used to seeing, including power controls for the CPU, graphics configuration, and onboard devices like SATA, USB, and NVMe.

Motherboard Software

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EVGA ELEET X1 is the software for the FTW; this includes overclocking controls for the CPU per core or per package.

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Further controls are available for real-time memory control.

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Monitoring is available for voltage, fan, and temperatures.

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Last, we have RGB controls for each of the four headers and I/O plate.

Motherboard Testing Supporters

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Sabrent supports our storage testing with the Rocket 4 Plus.

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Thermaltake has come onboard with their Toughram XG for all Z590 reviews.

TweakTown Intel Motherboard Test System

• CPU: Intel Core i7 11700K
• GPU: ASUS TUF RTX 3080 10GB
• RAM: Thermaltake Toughram XG 2x8G DDR4 4000 (buy from Amazon)
• OS Storage: Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus 1TB (buy from Amazon)
• Power Supply: Corsair RM1000X (buy from Amazon)
• OS: Microsoft Windows 10 (buy from Amazon)

Cinebench, Realbench and AIDA64

Cinebench R23

Cinebench is a long-standing render benchmark that has been heavily relied upon by both Intel and AMD to showcase their newest platforms during unveils. The benchmark has two tests, a single-core workload that will utilize one thread or 1T. There is also a multi-threaded test that uses all threads or nT of a tested CPU.

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Starting off testing, the Z590 FTW stuck with expectations, single-thread offering 1560. Multi-thread pulled out 14790.

Realbench

Realbench uses both video and photo workloads to benchmark your CPU. We use all three workloads in this scenario.

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Image editing came in at 22.8 seconds, followed by 25.1 seconds for encoding. Multi-tasking ended at 34.7 seconds.

AIDA64 Memory

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Memory bandwidth offered 54K read, 56K write, and 50K copy.

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Memory Latency came in at 66.1 seconds.

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In AES, results come in at 162833.

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SHA3 showed 5307.

PCMark10 and PugetSystems Benchmarks

PCMark 10

PCMark is a benchmark from UL and tests various workload types to represent typical workloads for a PC. Everything from video conferencing, image import, and editing, along with 3D rendering, are tested.

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PCMark testing gave us a score of 7959 overall.

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PCMark Applications allowed 12302 FTW.

PugetBench

PugetBench comes from the fantastic people over at Puget Systems that have done countless hours and years benchmarking hardware. For our testing, we will utilize their Davinci Resolve, Photoshop, and Lightroom benchmarks, you can look into them more here.

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Puget for Photoshop ended with a score of 926.

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Davinci Resolve gave us a score of 1109.

Microsoft Flight Simulator

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No surprise here, as the FTW handles MSFS at 63FPS.

System I/O Benchmarks

Storage with CrystalDiskMark

Storage tests are all handled by our Sabrent Rocket Plus NVMe 4.0 SSD. Secondary storage tests are conducted with our WD_Black P50 SSD.

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Storage testing showed 7018 MB/s reads and 5346 MB/s write.

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Q1 Random showed 72.6 MB/s reads and 277 MB/s write.

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In our external storage testing, we see 480 MB/s from Gen 1, 1061 MB/s from Gen 2, and 2009 MB/s from Gen 2x2.

Audio - Dynamic Range

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Testing audio, we set up RMAA with a 3.5mm cable from the line-in to speaker out (green to blue) and set both to 24Bit 192KHz. FTW offered up 98dBA.

Networking

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With networking, we have 1GBe and WiFi6. WiFi6 tested at 1287Mbps while the 1Gbe landed at 951Mbps.

Power, Thermals and Final Thoughts

Power Consumption

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Wrapping up testing, power consumption saw a low of 136w at idle and a peak of 496 watts during R23 testing.

Thermals

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Thermals were on par at 22c idle and peak of 61c during testing.

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Looking at the board through our thermal camera, we can see hotspots around the CPU socket peaking near 40c.

Final Thoughts

The Z590 FTW is a board for those that love simplicity and industrial design. It offers one of the largest VRM heat sink arrays we have seen and adds to that a large heat sink plate that pulls heat from the chipset and m.2. It offers triple slot spacing for throwing in multiple three-slot cards and an enthusiast-friendly board layout that angles board connections for a cleaner look.

In testing, the FTW was on par with our expectations and right in line with previous Z590 platforms. The software for this board is fantastic; ELEET X1 is simple yet handles all the functionality a gamer would want for tuning their machine in Windows.

If there were one downfall for the EVGA Z590 FTW, it would be using 1Gbe on a premium entry-level motherboard when the entire market has moved to 2.5Gbe.

What We Like

Compatibility: In-Socket upgrade for 10th Gen users.

Design: Industrial design with builder friendly connections.

I/O: Stacked I/O with plenty of USB including Gen 2x2.

What Could Be Better

LAN: 1Gbe, when the market has moved to 2.5Gbe.