Motherboard Advice Needed

[7string]

I'm hoping for some motherboard advice. I'm going to get an i7 6700K CPU. I already have a 1000w Corsair PSU, Antec Solo II case, a couple Samsung 500GB SSD's, and an older Quadro video card. It will run Win 10 and Reaper. Interface is a NI Komplete Audio 6. I'm hoping to get a Clarret 4 pre.

Main question being the chipset. Should I get a X99 or Z170? I'm kind of leaning towards an Asus or MSI, but don't really know any better. Thanks.

 

[Loren Littlejohn]

I just did a build and went Z170:

Corsair 100R case (silent one, not see through side one. Been happy with how quiet it has been although admitedly this is a cheap fucking case)
Corsair RM650 psu
i7 6700K
Corsair HM60 (psu cooling)
EVGA Gt740 2gig GPU
500g Samsung SSD
16gigs of crucial balistix DDR4 2400 ram
Gigabyte LGA1151 intel Z170 ATX DDR4 motherboard GA170X-UD5


The only thing I would have done different is go with M.2 for the system drive over that samsung SSD since I was buying everything new. Since you already have the SSDs this is kind of moot.

I'm still using mech drives for stuff so there is an additional 4TB of drives in this build that I already had for either backups or samples.

I'm not overclocking at the moment, but to be honest I have been happy with the performance of the 6700k without overclocking it.

The biggest surprise at least for me is how fucking quiet this build is. My mac pro was loud as fuck and unless I stick my head down next to the case I can't hear this thing even with the fans on full blast.

 

[7string]

Cool. I have overlooked M.2 until now. Thinking it was out of my payscale. They are the same price as the standard SSD's. Does everyone still use 3 drives for system / audio files / drum samples?


That Gigabyte board you have looks like a winner.

 

[AD Chaos]

I too assembled a built around the 6700K a month ago. Also replaced my SSD with an m.2 for Windows 10.

Went for an ASRock Formula because again, it was the best bang for buck, and of all the options it's the one that overclocks (RAM) the highest (benchmark tests and presentation of Skylake was done on this board, afaik). Not the most robust online FAQ community though, because it's not as popular as say ASUS or MSI, and m.2 is definitely not an easy install (Samsung support is quite dismal for their m.2s).

The m.2 drive is faster for some things, but quite slower than my regular SATA SSD for others (both are Samsung). I really thought it was gonna be much faster for loading busy projects (my m.2 has about 6 times the benchmark numbers as the regular SSD) and samples but alas, that did not turn out to be the case; it's faster, but definitely not 6x faster.

My build:
i7-6700K
ASRock Z170 OC Formula
CORSAIR Dominator Platinum 64GB (4 x 16GB) DDR4 3466
CORSAIR 1200W
CORSAIR H110i
SAMSUNG SM951 M.2 512GB
WD Black 6TB
Thermaltake t81
And other parts from my older pc.

 

[7string]

Thanks for the info AD.

 

[AD Chaos]

No problem!
Happy hunting for the board

 

[Smallstep]

Curious how much you guys paid ?
I decided to make a new build. I was supposed to re-use old parts (drives) and I probably will but I wanted a system ready to work on its own.

i7-6700K Unlocked
CoolerMaster Hyper 212 EVO
Asus Z170-P
Kingston HyperX Fury, DDR4 2666 Mhz (2x8 Gb)
Crucial M.2 MX200, 250 Gb
Caviar Blue 2 Tb
Asus GeForce Strix GTX 1060 OC, 6 Gb DDR5 PCI-E 3.0
Corsair Carbide Spec-02
CoolasMaster G750M 750W
Windows 10 Pro

And added a 120mm TrueQuiet exhaust at the top, right above the 212 EVO.
Also, bought an Asus 27" monitor (VE278)

I almost reached 2.5k$, cause I bought localy.
I'd have probably saved 250$ if I went with newegg.
But well, I can afford it + the guys are cool, take the time, don't bullshit (I knew exactly what I wanted though), and need their job. Did you buy localy ?

Can't wait to see how it'll work... (installing atm), coming from an AMD 6000+ I started to build 9 years ago lol