14 DAY TRIAL // It certainly took EVGA long enough to come out with its first motherboards based on the Intel Z68 chipset, but now that the boards have been announced they started to arrive in stock at various retailers throughout the US, including Newegg which just listed the EVGA Z68 SLI.
The motherboard is built using the design of the previous P67 SLI, and it shares many similarities with this model including its Nvidia SLI and CrossFireX certification.
As a result, the board comes equipped with three PCI-Express 2.0 x16 slots, the first two running in x8 mode when populated with graphics cards, while the third one has 4 PCIe lanes available and is meant to be used for installing a PhysX dedicated card.
Expansion options are further enhanced by three PCIe x1 slots, four internal SATA 3 Gb/s, two internal SATA 6 Gb/s, and one eSATA 3 Gb/s.
Taking a quick look at the Z68 SLI reveals a really nicely laid out board with decent room around the CPU socket and no major design flaws, the only thing that can be reproached EVGA being the absence of a regular PCI slot.
However, this is a forgivable omission given the rising number of PCIe add-in cards that have become available and Intel's decision of dropping PCI support from its new LGA 1155 motherboard chipsets.
The CPU is powered by a 8-phase VRM, cooled thanks to an aluminum heatsink.
Overclockers and benchers would also be happy to know that EVGA's latest creation includes on-board power and reset buttons, a diagnostic display, redundant BIOS, EVBot support, and a rear panel CMOS clear switch.
Other features include HD audio, two USB 3.0 ports, two Gigabit Ethernet connections, Firewire, and six rear panel USB 2.0 ports, the only thing missing being a video output connector.
Newegg has the EVGA Z68 SLI in stock and retails the board for $209.99, without shipping.