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EVGA 680i SLI Black Pearl

Nearly a year ago NVIDIA and EVGA released their 680i SLI motherboards. The 680i SLI proved its worth and has become one of the premiere choices for enthusiasts and gamers. EVGA has re-released the same board with a slew of native water cooler features. Meet the Black Pearl.

Introduction

EVGA is somewhat new to the motherboard business, but over the last year or so they’ve come to earn the respect of the enthusiast community for a number of reasons. Despite initial problems with the first run of EVGA 680i SLI motherboards, EVGA managed to overcome and tune the EVGA 680i SLI into one of the best performing and most stable boards on the market. In addition to that, the EVGA 680i SLI was always a feature rich solution, but it still does suffer in one area and that’s the cooling. The wimpy heat pipe cooler and fan simply isn’t enough for some people and some configurations. Swapping the cooling out on the EVGA 680i SLI is common place and for good reason. The nForce 680i SLI MCP gets VERY hot. I’ve seen north bridges on some boards idle at 50c and get as hot as 70c while under load. This can be lead to reliability problems as well as diminished overclocking. Indeed the problems with the EVGA 680i SLI aren’t really just with the cooling system itself, but rather poor factory application of the thermal paste coupled with a relatively weak cooling system. Well for a price premium (a big price premium to be sure) EVGA now offers their classic EVGA 680i SLI as the “Black Pearl Edition.” At the time of this writing the EVGA Black Pearl costs a (hopefully you are sitting down for this) $499.99 USD. That’s right, $500 bucks. Quite expensive for a desktop board, enthusiast board, or hell it’s even up there as far as motherboard prices go for workstation boards. But with that price you get a lot more than just your normal mobo.

What is a Black Pearl Edition?

For those of you that have never heard of the Black Pearl Edition, I’ll keep things simple. The Black Pearl Edition is a factory, no-holds-barred everything water cooled edition of the standard EVGA 680i SLI motherboard. There is a VREG block, CPU block, SPP Block, and MCP Block. To sweeten the deal, EVGA has used compression fittings on all the blocks. Additionally, EVGA screens their boards and uses only the best boards as Black Pearl Editions. I am not sure what the bin rate is, but I doubt many of them make the cut considering their price and rarity. So when you buy a Black Pearl Edition 680i SLI, you are getting a cherry picked board that should allow you extremely high over clocks and of course, you get the water blocks along with it. It should also be noted that all Black Pearl Edition motherboards are based on the “A1” version of the 680i SLI. They can be referenced or identified by their part number 122-CK-NF69-A1 instead of 122-CK-NF68-A1.

The EVGA Black Pearl supports the latest Intel ® Core™2 Extreme Quad-Core / Core™2 Duo / Intel® Pentium® Extreme and Intel® Pentium® D processors. Following industry trends, the Black Pearl only requires a few components to create a fully functional machine. The required components are: LGA775 CPU, DDR 2 memory, power supply, drives and a video card. EVGA Integrated the following components into the Black Pearl: 1 ATA 133 port, 1 floppy port, 6 SATA ports, 10 USB ports (6 ports on the backplane, and 4 ports available via 3 headers supporting 2 ports each), 2 IEEE1394 ports (1 via header, 1 via backplane), 2 gigabit Ethernet supports, 6 mini-headphone jacks, and of course keyboard and mouse ports. Though because the Black Pearl has only water blocks and no fans or heat sinks on the major components of any kind, it requires a water pump, hoses and some form of coolant in order to cool down the system. Just to be sure, you MUST use water cooling with the EVGA Black Pearl. It is not able to be run on air cooling alone.

Main Specifications Overview:

Detailed Specifications Overview:

Packaging

The packaging is almost identical to that of the EVGA 680i SLI (122-CK-NF68-AR) used in our earlier EVGA 680i SLI review. The only difference being a Black Pearl Sticker slapped on the box. Newer 122-CK-NF68-A1 boards come in a cheaper and slightly smaller packaging with a plastic clamshell style packing inside. The Black Pearl uses the older style box that the original 122-CK-NF68-AR boards came in. The board is well protected, and comes with water blocks, plenty of SATA cables, a PATA cable, floppy cable, RAID driver diskette, CD containing drivers and the nTune application, and an I/O shield. The packaging ensures your board will arrive to you safely and is unremarkable otherwise.

Board Layout

The layout of the EVGA Black Pearl is identical to that of the standard EVGA 680i SLI boards. The layout is nearly flawless but it does share the shortcomings of the board it was based on. I personally do not like the front panel connectors being so close to the auxiliary power connector and really that’s about it. The board has an excellent layout otherwise. There is a new problem in regard to layout and it is due to the use of the SPP water block. Because of the distance the barbs stick out from the surface of the board, dual air cooled 8800GTX or Ultra cards will not likely be able to fit. You must use single slot liquid cooled 8800GTX or Ultra based cards in order to be able to utilize two such cards in SLI mode. If you are using only one card, this won’t be an issue as you can place the single card in a slot away from the SPP water block. The BFG 8800GTX water cooled Edition cards come to mind, or any video card equipped with the Danger Den or EK water blocks would be a good match for the Black Pearl as well.

The CPU area is free from obstructions, but like the standard EVGA 680i SLI, there are resistors on the back of the motherboard that would present a problem if certain types of water blocks or air coolers were used. Fortunately here we will be using the supplied EVGA water blocks for testing purposes.

The board has the usual 4 240-pin DDR2 DIMM slots in a standard two by two arrangement. They are color coded in order to denote proper dual channel operation. You can install and remove memory while a larger video card is installed.

The north bridge is located to the left of the CPU socket and it is cooled by EVGAs’ MCP water block. Like all the blocks on this board it uses compression fittings to ensure there are no leaks, and the block is already installed for you.

The south bridge is located in front of and between the first two PCIe x16 slots. This too is cooled by a water block and the block is oriented so that the barbs will allow the usage of a single slot cooled 8800GTX

The EVGA Black Pearl Edition has three PCIe x16 slots. The black ones operate at full x16 speeds and the blue one operates at x8 speeds. There are also two standard PCIe x1 slots and two legacy PCI v2.2 slots. The Black Pearl has 1 PS/2 keyboard port, 1 PS/2 mouse port, 2 RJ-45 ports, 1 IEEE1394 port, and SPDIF port, and six USB 2.0 ports on the rear I/O panel.

Water Blocks

The water blocks that are typically used by EVGA are made by Innovotek which is clearly stated on the GPU block. The CPU block is the Innovotek G-Flow. While I have had a hard time finding a lot of information out about these blocks, I have come up with some information based on handling these blocks, using them and of course looking them over very carefully. They are made of highly polished and very well made aluminum bodies. Inside these blocks there are aluminum fins. This design is very attractive, but I have concerns about how well they function compared to all copper blocks. In any case there are four included blocks. One CPU block, a SPP block, MCP block and VReg block. All of the major heat generating components is covered here and that’s a good thing. The blocks include both ½” and 5/8” barbs. Both the top and bottom of the water blocks are made from aluminum and the barbs are all metal as well. So I have no concerns about cracking anything while handling them. The hose clamps provided are of the metal screw variety that you can find at any hardware store. While not necessarily my preferred clamping mechanism, they get the job done nicely and allow for use when clearances between barbs are tight.

Here is an inside look at the CPU block. (WARNING do NOT attempt to disassemble these blocks yourself, doing so voids your warranty and you might damage the seal when doing so rendering the block useless until repaired.)