Upgrade to Z170 or X99

Discussion in 'General Hardware' started by GroinShooter, Jan 29, 2016.

  1. GroinShooter

    GroinShooter Master Guru

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    So I've come to a conclusion that it's time for me to upgrade my PC on the CPU/MB side but haven't quite decided which way to go yet. Here's a couple of different setups I've been considering.

    For the Z170 build the CPU would be a 6700K.
    Motherboard options for the Z170 build:
    AsRock Z170 EXTREME K6+
    MSI Z170A GAMING M7
    Asus SABERTOOTH Z170 MARK 1

    For the X99 build it gets a bit more complicated. For the CPU, I'd get the 5820K. I've considered getting the Gigabyte X99 UD3 or ASUS X99A as my motherboard but I've read a lot about the cheaper X99 motherboards being really bad (having boot issues, defective RAM slots etc.) My budget would be pretty much max 300 euros for the MB so I'm not sure if one of the cheapest X99 MBs is a good way to go. But then again, the X99 platform and a 5820K would (probably?) give me a bit higher performance gain than the Skylake build.

    I'm also wondering when will the new Skylake X99 CPUs come out and with them maybe even new motherboards are coming? Would it be a good idea to wait for them to release?

    RAM is just going to be the basic Kingston 16GB HyperX Fury DDR4 2666 MHz kit.

    About overclocking, yes, I'm going to overclock the CPU straight away.
     
  2. fantaskarsef

    fantaskarsef Ancient Guru

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    If you're going for straight gaming, I'm not sure you'll see much gains if you go X99 platform over Z170 (coming from a X99 user who's happy), as games under dx11 make little use of 6 cores. I personally thought about dx12 though, and in hopes of a few changes, I went for the hexacore still, we'll see in the coming months if that's going to work out to be a good idea.

    I'm not sure if Skylake-E will use socket 2011-3, or if they'll go to another socket (iirc Broadwell-E will be the last for the X99 chipset, somebody correct me if I'm wrong). So the upgrade path more or less ends with Broadwell-E's 10core CPU eventually, whereas the Z170 might be able to run something past Skylake, I don't know about it though.

    That said, people have been using the X99A among other 'cheaper' 2011-3 boards, just read for yourself in the Official Haswell-E Owner's thread, and maybe contact some of the members to see how they're doing with their boards right now.

    I personally think with the DDR4 you can't go horribly wrong compared to DDR3 your gains will always be significant (warning: X99 has quad channel architecture, needs a kit of 4 RAM modules).

    Depending on your method of cooling (air, AIO, water?) you could also check first for which boards compatible cooling sollutions are already available. I went for the R5E because by that time it was the only board that had a monoblock for my custom watercooling loop.
     
  3. GroinShooter

    GroinShooter Master Guru

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    Yup, I'm going for straight gaming but I've also been thinking about what DX12 brings to the table. The problem is I don't feel quite comfortable spending 261€ on the ASUS X99A and possibly find out that it's dead on arrival or starts to have problems after a couple of weeks/months of use. Just reading the user reviews on newegg makes me doubtful.

    I'd feel a lot more comfortable going with the Z170 Sabertooth (I've been using Sabertooth boards for years and none of them have had any problems).
    The MSI and AsRock boards would be a great choice too since they go perfectly with my red color scheme inside my case but I'm not so sure about the quality of those boards.

    For cooling I'm currently using a "semi custom loop" :banana: Fractal S36 in push/pull with a couple of mods; PrimoChill tubes, EK fittings and Nanoxia's red coollant. As far as I know it's compatible with X99 and should be directly compatible with Z170 boards by the use of the LGA 115x mounting plate.
     
  4. zimzoid

    zimzoid Guest

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    Same here thinking about going X99 but not sure if its worth it yet?
     

  5. fantaskarsef

    fantaskarsef Ancient Guru

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    Imho, if you can postpone your update it's never easy to decide on the time to do it. The next new thing is always 'just around the corner', yet Skylake-E is still some time away, and Broadwell-E still uses the X99 mainboards.

    Don't let yourself be doubted by reviews on newegg or any other site, people there buy the thing and NOT respond when they are happy with it, at least not usually. I'd seriously advise you to at least look into the owner's den and see how people have been with their boards, like Rich_Guy and his X99A for instance.

    Tbh if you want to go for reviews do it, I don't want to bias your decisions, it's just I never had any broken mainboards, graphics cards, CPUs, or RAM so far, no matter how many or few bad reports about broken hardware I've read. After all it's down to good or bad luck :)
     
  6. jura11

    jura11 Guest

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    Hi there

    You are on same boat like I'm,currently I'm still on X58,but I'm running at least X5670 which is better than old i7-920,runs cooler and requiere less volts for OC at same 4,2GHz

    I was thinking go with X99,but I'm leaning more towards dual Xeon range than 5820k etc

    Which way I go,this will depends on few things,but I would like to update this year to newer platform

    Hope this helps

    Thanks,Jura
     
  7. Netherwind

    Netherwind Ancient Guru

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    It's quite a popular questions and experts will say that both the 5820K and 6700K are better. It boils down to what you'll do with your computer - will you do rendering, CAD, stream a lot or other tough tasks then the 5820K is the way to go. Is it for gaming then the 6700K might be better (also it clocks better when CPU speed is a factor). Planning on running 3-way SLI or better, then the 5820K will do a better job.
     
  8. Fender178

    Fender178 Ancient Guru

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    x99 is geared towards users who use 3-4 way SLI because of the PCIE-Lanes it has. Also 5820k is future proof because of having 6cores. But If you are just gaming then the 6700k should be good enough. Also any way you look at it Z170 or X99 you need new mobo and RAM for it.
     
    Last edited: Jan 30, 2016
  9. GroinShooter

    GroinShooter Master Guru

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    As far as I know a quad channel memory kit isn't a requirement for X99 boards, more like a recommendation. At least from what I've gathered dual channel kits should run just fine on X99 boards, right? Though if this isn't the case then there's no problem for me in getting a quad channel kit instead.
     
  10. pimpernell

    pimpernell Master Guru

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    Wait for broadwell-e and look how they perform and there is a lot of new mb's comming out around that time.

    And maybe amd finally makes something good again?
    Zen could be nice or at least make intel lower the prices.

    I myself need more pcie lanes to make full use of my samsung 950 pro and sli, so i hope the prices comes down for 2011-v3.
     
    Last edited: Feb 1, 2016

  11. fantaskarsef

    fantaskarsef Ancient Guru

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    Well dual, or even tri-channel runs fine, although I'd suggest you to either get two modules, or four. Quad channel is what it's build for, and you should pretty much pay the same for 2x8GB or 4x4GB. Or you get yourself a dual channel kit and another one later, depends on you. Real world performance gains depend on your workload / use (gaming not so much, although I always had the theory of loading faster, which might be my own bias or just wrong ;) )
     
  12. GroinShooter

    GroinShooter Master Guru

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    I don't think I can wait long enough for Broadwell-E to come out Q2 Q3? But could those probably still use the same LGA 2011-v3 platform? I just checked a couple of BIOS updates for different X99 boards and Gigabyte's X99-UD3 had a BIOS update stating "Support 2016 Q2 coming new CPU". There's definitely no way I'm waiting until the end of this year to see how Zen will do, otherwise I would definitely consider it.
     
  13. Neo Cyrus

    Neo Cyrus Ancient Guru

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    With your 3770K at 4.7GHz I'd say wait a while longer. There's no guarantee that whatever OC you get with either chip will be anywhere near that. It's possible that you might actually lose performance as a shocking amount of things including games are often still single or dual threaded.
     
  14. pimpernell

    pimpernell Master Guru

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    If you feel the need to upgrade now, go for x99 over z170.
    Pcie lanes becomes more important for sli and m.2 support.
    Asus always updates their mb's to support latest cpu's.

    http://nerdtechy.com/best-x99-lga-2011-v3-gaming-motherboards-2016

    Maybe asus x99-pro? the msi one looks sweet as well.
     
    Last edited: Feb 1, 2016
  15. GroinShooter

    GroinShooter Master Guru

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    Asus X99 Pro would cost around 365€ which is way past my 300€ MB budget. But MSI X99A SLI Plus costs 257,60 € and it doesn't seem to have even close to as many critical problems or complaints as ASUS X99A has which makes the MSI board the definite buy if I end up going X99. Both of the MSI boards for either Z170 (MSI Z170A GAMING M7) or X99 (MSI X99A SLI Plus) seem very good. Either one of these will probably be the motherboard I'll end up going with.
     

  16. GroinShooter

    GroinShooter Master Guru

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    I just placed the order on my new parts yesterday, this is what I ended up going with:

    Intel i7 6700K
    MSI Z170A GAMING M7
    Kingston 16GB HyperX Fury DDR4 2666 MHz kit

    Can't wait for the parts to arrive :banana:
     
  17. fantaskarsef

    fantaskarsef Ancient Guru

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    Congrats, have fun with your new rig's back end ;)
     

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