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[ILoveBish]

I have a feeling it's going to be really hard to get at the Microcenter in Tustin.

I called and the dude said "SlyLake? What is that, some fan or something?"

I broke down and ordered from tiger direct. 8GB DDR4-2400 + Asus MB (i like asus boards) + the 6600k for 460 shipped with 2-day air. I have shop runner but like 1 item on tiger direct is eligible for it, what a sham. They want you to sign up for their 80 buck prime wanna be service for free 2-day air. Whatever, if i can get it sooner at MC i'll cancel the tiger direct order immediately.

 

[Kintaco]

No 6700K bundles anywhere? All I've seen is the 6600K bundles.

 

[The Goat]

So did anyone score a 6700k in the US? I was refreshing newegg and several other sites the entire day. Nothing popped up :/ Got all the parts sitting in my cart, just waiting for the damned CPU to become available. I found one site selling it, but for a gouging $650. Wanted all my parts by the weekend, but that definitely isn't happening now

 

[Unknown Soldier]

I want a 6700K myself, but a part of me sort of wants a 5820K too.

The early reviews are showing the 6700K hits around 4.5-4.6ghz reliably, if that's the case then a 5820K which hits 4.2-4.4ghz is probably close to being a wash in overall performance. But the 5820K gives me an extra 2 cores to play around when I'm encoding videos.

I'm conflicted. Either way I'm upgrading, I'm sure as hell not waiting another year for Skylake-E. It's gonna be Skylake or Haswell-E.

 

[Paganmoon]

Well, I'll be upgrading from my Core-i5 750 this fall (finally), but considering the benches, it'll probably be a Haswell-E with X99 chipset, to get 2 fullspeed 16x PCIe slots, for a future crossfire or SLI setup. Seems to be the better deal this fall at least.

 

[V1LÆM]

I think I'm gonna wait for Skylake-E.

I have an i5-4590 which should be fine for another year. I regret not getting the 4690K. When Skylake-E comes out I'm gonna get the i5-6690K or i7-6790K (assuming that's what it'll be called).

 

[Grief.exe]

I'm going to wait for DX12/Vulcan benchmarks and see how much separation exists between my 2500k and the HT equipped i7s.

I desperately want to sink my teeth into a fully water cooled, silent build, but Skylake is massively underwhelming so far.

 

[Coulomb_Barrier]

I want a 6700K myself, but a part of me sort of wants a 5820K too.

The early reviews are showing the 6700K hits around 4.5-4.6ghz reliably, if that's the case then a 5820K which hits 4.2-4.4ghz is probably close to being a wash in overall performance. But the 5820K gives me an extra 2 cores to play around when I'm encoding videos.

I'm conflicted. Either way I'm upgrading, I'm sure as hell not waiting another year for Skylake-E. It's gonna be Skylake or Haswell-E.

Nope, and it would be pretty remarkable if a 4-core CPU could match a 6-core HEDT. A 5820K is still faster at stock and significantly faster overclocked in CPU-related tests. Look at Kitguru benches, in particular overclocked results with a 4.7Ghz 6700K v 4.5Ghz 5820K.

http://www.kitguru.net/components/cpu/luke-hill/intel-core-i7-6700k-i5-6600k-skylake-cpu-review/5/

The only tests where the 6700K tops the 5820K is in single-threaded benches, which is what you'd expect owing to its higher frequency at stock and OC.

 

[Lactose_Intolerant]

Hardocp

In the "Guys Talk, You Hear Things" category, it seems that "everyone" is having luck with their Skylake processors and getting those to 4.7GHz overclocks with 3000MHz memory speeds. It seems that the only thing enthusiasts are going to be bound by is what speed RAM they can afford. There are not a lot of 3600+ DDR4 kits floating around right now, so we were lucky that we could show you that speed. This is certainly good news.

 

[mkenyon]

I think I'm gonna wait for Skylake-E.

I have an i5-4590 which should be fine for another year. I regret not getting the 4690K. When Skylake-E comes out I'm gonna get the i5-6690K or i7-6790K (assuming that's what it'll be called).

Probably 6820K, 6930K, and 6960X.

 

[qa_engineer]

Nope, and it would be pretty remarkable if a 4-core CPU could match a 6-core HEDT. A 5820K is still faster at stock and significantly faster overclocked in CPU-related tests. Look at Kitguru benches, in particular overclocked results with a 4.7Ghz 6700K v 4.5Ghz 5820K.

http://www.kitguru.net/components/cpu/luke-hill/intel-core-i7-6700k-i5-6600k-skylake-cpu-review/5/

The only tests where the 6700K tops the 5820K is in single-threaded benches, which is what you'd expect owing to its higher frequency at stock and OC.

With the introduction of DX12 more cores in this case is a good thing as well, in the sense that more and more games will support scalable multithreading... that is if gaming on a Windows 10 machine is your cup of tea. 5820K and X99 is a no brainer right now.

 

[SolidSnakeUS]

With the introduction of DX12 more cores in this case is a good thing as well, in the sense that more and more games will support scalable multithreading... that is if gaming on a Windows 10 machine is your cup of tea. 5820K and X99 is a no brainer right now.

See, I'd love to go to an X99 platform with a 5820K or a Z170 with a 6700K especially to get the extra cores since I have a 3570K, but I don't know if it's worth it. Will DX12 really work that much better on i7 CPUs than with i5s?

 

[forrest]

With the introduction of DX12 more cores in this case is a good thing as well, in the sense that more and more games will support scalable multithreading... that is if gaming on a Windows 10 machine is your cup of tea. 5820K and X99 is a no brainer right now.

I just received my NCase M1 which will house my new build. While the x99 seems like a solid route, unfortunately the itx offerings are pretty poor with just one ASRock mobo available and for my needs the board layout is pretty awful.

 

[mkenyon]

See, I'd love to go to an X99 platform with a 5820K or a Z170 with a 6700K especially to get the extra cores since I have a 3570K, but I don't know if it's worth it. Will DX12 really work that much better on i7 CPUs than with i5s?

You'd need to go X99/2011-V3 to get more than 4 cores.

From a 3570K, you'd probably only notice a difference in situations where you're watching a stream or something on one monitor and playing a game on your main.

 

[SolidSnakeUS]

You'd need to go X99/2011-V3 to get more than 4 cores.

From a 3570K, you'd probably only notice a difference in situations where you're watching a stream or something on one monitor and playing a game on your main.

Which I do for both. I would play something on my main and then have Skype/video calls on the other screen or do something on my main and have a video running on the other and stuff like that. But it all comes down to, if I were to go to i7, should I go X99 or go Z170? And the question to go along with that, is it even worth doing i7 for the future of gaming?

 

[tokkun]

With the introduction of DX12 more cores in this case is a good thing as well, in the sense that more and more games will support scalable multithreading... that is if gaming on a Windows 10 machine is your cup of tea. 5820K and X99 is a no brainer right now.

I hear this DX12 argument all the time, but I've yet to hear an explanation that makes sense.

Doesn't DX12 just parallelize the CPU draw calls? Parallelization of the rest of the CPU workload (that is not in the driver) will be no different than before. The evidence does not seem to suggest that this is a significant bottleneck based on the fact that benchmarks do not show a linear improvement in framerate with IPC.

There is some evidence that CPU performance helps with frame time tail latencies. This makes some intuitive sense; if rare events can cause the CPU to be the bottleneck, then it would impact the tails. But I don't see how you can extrapolate the conclusion that parallelizing the draw calls over 6 cores be will better than over 4 slightly faster cores.

 

[Coulomb_Barrier]

Which I do for both. I would play something on my main and then have Skype/video calls on the other screen or do something on my main and have a video running on the other and stuff like that. But it all comes down to, if I were to go to i7, should I go X99 or go Z170? And the question to go along with that, is it even worth doing i7 for the future of gaming?

If you have the budget and want more performance, go with X99. If small form factor is important, Z170 may be a better choice.

 

[mkenyon]

Which I do for both. I would play something on my main and then have Skype/video calls on the other screen or do something on my main and have a video running on the other and stuff like that. But it all comes down to, if I were to go to i7, should I go X99 or go Z170? And the question to go along with that, is it even worth doing i7 for the future of gaming?

I think the marginal price increase of a 5820K + X99 is well worth it over 6700K + Z710. I put my money where my mouth is, and just ordered a 5820K and this. But value is different to each person, and ~$150 extra on the 5820K + X99 might be just a bit too much.

If you have the budget and want more performance, go with X99. If small form factor is important, Z170 may be a better choice.

Plenty of small mATX cases, some even smaller than the popular ITX cases.

 

[Tovarisc]

Cross posting this interesting bench from Eurogamer.

----

Eurogamer ran benches @ 1080p

Core i5 6600K vs Core i5 4690K (same 3.5-3.9GHz base/turbo)

• 17% faster @ The Witcher 3
• 1% faster @ GTA V
• 10% faster @ Battlefield 4

Core i5 6600K vs Core i5 3570K (3.5-3.9GHz vs 3.4-3.8GHz base/turbo)

• 22.4% faster @ The Witcher 3
• 20.6% faster @ GTA V
• 18.1% faster @ Battlefield 4

Core i5 6600K vs Core i5 2500K (3.5-3.9GHz vs 3.3-3.7GHz base/turbo)

• 25.8% faster @ The Witcher 3
• 31,7% faster @ GTA V
• 25% faster @ Battlefield 4

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2015-intel-skylake-core-i5-6600k-review

 

[Unknown Soldier]

The issue with 5820K appears to be the silicon lottery, some of them are really awful OCers and even good ones need a lot of voltage sometimes to hit 4.5 and air coolers can't keep up. I feel like for pure single thread and gaming performance the 6700K would fare better.

I'm still conflicted.

 

[mkenyon]

The issue with 5820K appears to be the silicon lottery, some of them are really awful OCers and even good ones need a lot of voltage sometimes to hit 4.5 and air coolers can't keep up. I feel like for pure single thread and gaming performance the 6700K would fare better.

I'm still conflicted.

I spose I often forget about those cooling concerns. I put all my systems under a full custom loop

 

[Yautja_Warrior]

It seems to be a great cpu but an expensive upgrade, as you will need a new motherboard to go with it, also the jump in performance from the last few gen Intel cpu's is still not massive.

If you are running an i5 2500k or higher then you really won't need to upgrade urgently, unless you absolutely need to have the latest cpu, especially for gaming.

My i5 2500k still ticks along nicely @ 4.3GHz.

 

[SolidSnakeUS]

The issue with 5820K appears to be the silicon lottery, some of them are really awful OCers and even good ones need a lot of voltage sometimes to hit 4.5 and air coolers can't keep up. I feel like for pure single thread and gaming performance the 6700K would fare better.

I'm still conflicted.

I'd probably still do the 6700K if that's the case. Also, is the performance boost of the X99 and the possible silicon issue worth an extra $100 to $150 for the CPU + Mobo combo?

Cross posting this interesting bench from Eurogamer.

----

Eurogamer ran benches @ 1080p

Core i5 6600K vs Core i5 4690K (same 3.5-3.9GHz base/turbo)

• 17% faster @ The Witcher 3
• 1% faster @ GTA V
• 10% faster @ Battlefield 4

Core i5 6600K vs Core i5 3570K (3.5-3.9GHz vs 3.4-3.8GHz base/turbo)

• 22.4% faster @ The Witcher 3
• 20.6% faster @ GTA V
• 18.1% faster @ Battlefield 4

Core i5 6600K vs Core i5 2500K (3.5-3.9GHz vs 3.3-3.7GHz base/turbo)

• 25.8% faster @ The Witcher 3
• 31,7% faster @ GTA V
• 25% faster @ Battlefield 4

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2015-intel-skylake-core-i5-6600k-review

This basically tells me that I will probably get at least an overall performance boost of 20% by going from the 3570K to a 6700K.

 

[Melhisedek]

This basically tells me that I will probably get at least an overall performance boost of 20% by going from the 3570K to a 6700K.

Is that really the case if both are overclocked to lets say 4.5? I thought the performance boost got lower the greater o/c was.
I might be wrong ofc

 

[AJLma]

I'd probably still do the 6700K if that's the case. Also, is the performance boost of the X99 and the possible silicon issue worth an extra $100 to $150 for the CPU + Mobo combo?



This basically tells me that I will probably get at least an overall performance boost of 20% by going from the 3570K to a 6700K.

The silicon lottery thing seems overblown. The 5820k ships at 3.3Ghz stock and pretty much everyone hits 4Ghz. Like I said in this thread before I think I got a poor overclocker, but I'm still stable at 4.2Ghz on 6 cores/12 threads. So it's a question of, would you rather have 4C/8T at 4.8-5.2Ghz? or 6C/12T at 4.0-4.5+Ghz?

These processors are going to be trading blows for a while, but on an even playing field(proper multithreading) the 5820k will come out ahead every time and by a significant margin.

 

[Yautja_Warrior]

Is that really the case if both are overclocked to lets say 4.5? I thought the performance boost got lower the greater o/c was.
I might be wrong ofc

With the older Intel cpu's being (mostly) really great overclockers, hitting between 4.5 - 4.8GHz and these new cpu's hitting a similar overclock ceiling, the performance gap will likely be smaller.

 

[LilJoka]

Those eurogamer numbers just look way to much too me, anybody else?

10fps gain in a gpu bottleneck situation with 500Mhz CPU oc just seems un heard of.

 

[Tovarisc]

Those eurogamer numbers just look way to much too me, anybody else?

10fps gain in a gpu bottleneck situation with 500Mhz CPU oc just seems un heard of.

Here one site more doing 1080p gaming benching, Skylake looks like solid upgrade; http://www.hardware.fr/articles/940-17/cpu-jeux-3d-watch-dogs-total-war-rome-2.html

Edit: Also seems to support numbers that Eurogamer was seeing and reporting.

 

[LilJoka]

Here one site more doing 1080p gaming benching, Skylake looks like solid upgrade; http://www.hardware.fr/articles/940-17/cpu-jeux-3d-watch-dogs-total-war-rome-2.html

Edit: Also seems to support numbers that Eurogamer was seeing and reporting.

Yeah im looking at other benches, seems like truth. In that case, its really is a decent upgrade.

 

[Green Card]

These don't come with any fans/heatsinks right? Would the CM Hyper 212+ work? http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835103065
They're $20 AR right now.

 

[LilJoka]

These don't come with any fans/heatsinks right? Would the CM Hyper 212+ work? http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835103065
They're $20 AR right now.

Should be fine, but looks like prices are super inflated. Just look at intels RRP for 4790K and 6700K, its the same price, yet in the UK its atleast £80 more for the 6600K.

 

[Green Card]

Should be fine, but looks like prices are super inflated. Just look at intels RRP for 4790K and 6700K, its the same price, yet in the UK its atleast £80 more for the 6600K.

I've seen people places force bundles and tiger direct charges $7 more than MSRP. Amazon does have preorders are up for $40 over MSRP but I'm hoping they will lower it before release. Are they doing the same with these other parts too? What do these usually go for?

 

[LilJoka]

I've seen people places force bundles and tiger direct charges $7 more than MSRP. Amazon does have preorders are up for $40 over MSRP but I'm hoping they will lower it before release. Are they doing the same with these other parts too? What do these usually go for?

I haven't really checked the boards, but it should be about $100-120 similar to haswell. CPU should also be around 4790k price.

 

[DonasaurusRex]

Random aside: the reason Fury is an "unbalanced" design is because they could only fit 4 "modules" of GCN on a feasible 28 nm die. This is why only 64 ROPs and notably worse geometry performance than Nvidia's Maxwell flagships. Unfortunately geometry still matters and all the compute performance on Earth can't get around that. GCN is pretty much maxed out on 28 nm even with the die space saved by using HBM instead of GDDR5.

If AMD's slide is to be believed, and we all know AMD has a history of embellishing their performance claims, adding 40% IPC would put Zen around the performance of Sandy Bridge by their own estimates. If so they will still be 30% or so behind Skylake, or by 2016 it will be Kaby Lake. Either way I don't like AMD's chances with Zen and I still don't see any reason to wait for it instead of buying Skylake of your are planning to upgrade.

i think there are too many variate workloads to know what a 40% increase in IPC would do for a core no one has seen will do or where it will place it. Maybe if Zen were Bulldozer but its not, nor is it a shared resource module design like Bulldozer was. They are just talking about IPC count , we dont know what that will be combined with. I haven't seen much more than some slides saying zen and zen+ are coming. What are you going on?

 

[Unknown Soldier]

These don't come with any fans/heatsinks right? Would the CM Hyper 212+ work? http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835103065
They're $20 AR right now.

LOL meanwhile I'm over here looking at the Noctua NH-D15 for almost $100 though that might be with price inflation. I figure my i7-950 lasted 6 years at 4 ghz and I invested in the NH-D14 on that one. I might as well cough up the extra for the monster air cooler and not care about my temps ever.

 

[Kudo]

I went with http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835608040 . Insane performance for smaller and silent cooler.

LOL meanwhile I'm over here looking at the Noctua NH-D15 for almost $100 though that might be with price inflation. I figure my i7-950 lasted 6 years at 4 ghz and I invested in the NH-D14 on that one. I might as well cough up the extra for the monster air cooler and not care about my temps ever.

Doesn't NH-D14 fit 1151? Could just go with that and buy cheap-o for old setup or something so you can use that computer too. If you don't have the correct backplate I think you can get those for free from Noctua.

 

[ZOONAMI]

Has anyone done a 5775c vs 6700k comparison?

 

[Melhisedek]

when you guys say AIO water cooling solution, does that imply GPU also or only CPU?

 

[Tovarisc]

Doesn't NH-D14 fit 1151?

If cooler supports LGA115x, like e.g. 1150, it will go to 1151 without any problem. Quick glance at http://www.noctua.at/main.php?show=productview&products_id=34&lng=en tells us that NH-D14 supports LGA115x so it does fit 1151 too

when you guys say AIO water cooling solution, does that imply GPU also or only CPU?

AIO usually refers to CPU only cooling solution.

 

[Zaptruder]

So how many upgrade cycles do you guys think the 1151 and 2011-3 will last?

I'm pretty sure that we'll get at least the 6790k with the 1151 and hopefully that's a decent upgrade.

But the 2011-3... the 2011 went a couple rounds... not sure how that'll translate for the 2011-3 though.

 

[Unknown Soldier]

Doesn't NH-D14 fit 1151? Could just go with that and buy cheap-o for old setup or something so you can use that computer too. If you don't have the correct backplate I think you can get those for free from Noctua.

The problem is if I pull my NH-D14 off my i7-950, what am I going to put on it when I stick that old mobo and CPU into an old case? If I just buy an NH-D15, that solves the issue. Hell I can just literally pull the old mobo with CPU and heatsink right out of the old case and drop the new mobo with CPU and heatsink in to replace it.

It's possible I'm lazy.

 

[Evo X]

Cross post from other thread.

More proof that Skylake scales hugely with faster memory. 17.3% better performance in Watch Dogs when comparing 2133mhz ram to 3333mhz.

 

[tokkun]

So how many upgrade cycles do you guys think the 1151 and 2011-3 will last?

I'm pretty sure that we'll get at least the 6790k with the 1151 and hopefully that's a decent upgrade.

But the 2011-3... the 2011 went a couple rounds... not sure how that'll translate for the 2011-3 though.

Does it really matter to you? Given the paltry improvements in CPU performance, it seems difficult to envision a scenario where I would be upgrading my CPU but not the motherboard.

 

[Unknown Soldier]

Cross post from other thread.

More proof that Skylake scales hugely with faster memory. 17.3% better performance in Watch Dogs when comparing 2133mhz ram to 3333mhz.

Skylake seems to be crazy bandwidth dependent, HardOCP found similar things with games. Dual-channel DDR4 is some kind of bottleneck, I guess there's a reason why X99 is quad-channel DDR4.

I'm looking at getting a DDR4-3200 dual-channel kit for my 6700K build. There are faster ones than that but price shoots up tremendously after 3200.

I'm thinking about the Gigabyte Z170-UD5H, my previous 2 mobos were both Gigabyte (X58A-UD3R and EP45-UD3P) and I've been happy with Gigabyte. Unless there's a compelling reason to choose Asus or MSI these days.

 

[Evo X]

Skylake seems to be crazy bandwidth dependent, HardOCP found similar things with games. Dual-channel DDR4 is some kind of bottleneck, I guess there's a reason why X99 is quad-channel DDR4.

I'm looking at getting a DDR4-3200 dual-channel kit for my 6700K build. There are faster ones than that but price shoots up tremendously after 3200.

I'm thinking about the Gigabyte Z170-UD5H, my previous 2 mobos were both Gigabyte (X58A-UD3R and EP45-UD3P) and I've been happy with Gigabyte. Unless there's a compelling reason to choose Asus or MSI these days.

Hobestly, these days all 3 of the company's you mentioned make quality motherboards with comparable features. It seems aesthetics and BIOS are the main differentiating features.

If you've had luck with Gigabyte, then go with them again. Had a Gigabyte mobo on my Q660 build, then Asus on my 2500k one. Probably gonna go with Asus again personally because I have had really good experience with their products.

As far as ram for Skylake, I really like the new Rip jaws V series from a price performance standpoint.

 

[tokkun]

Skylake seems to be crazy bandwidth dependent, HardOCP found similar things with games. Dual-channel DDR4 is some kind of bottleneck, I guess there's a reason why X99 is quad-channel DDR4.

I'm looking at getting a DDR4-3200 dual-channel kit for my 6700K build. There are faster ones than that but price shoots up tremendously after 3200.

I'm thinking about the Gigabyte Z170-UD5H, my previous 2 mobos were both Gigabyte (X58A-UD3R and EP45-UD3P) and I've been happy with Gigabyte. Unless there's a compelling reason to choose Asus or MSI these days.

Are you sure it's bandwidth-sensitive and not latency-sensitive?

I think people often forget that RAM timings are relative to the memory clock; that DDR4-3333 in the picture actually has absolute latencies that are much lower than the DDR4-2133. I noticed that HardOCP made this mistake in their review:

Memory timings are spelled out on our test system page, and I would give those a look because as we scale our memory clocks, our timing latencies do in fact increase greatly and you will see this impact some of our testing

When in fact the absolute latency of the memory they were testing was going down, not up. Funny how they claim to see an impact. It's a good reminder of the cognitive biases that go into these things.

 

[daninthemix]

Are you sure it's bandwidth-sensitive and not latency-sensitive?

I think people often forget that RAM timings are relative to the memory clock; that DDR4-3333 in the picture actually has absolute latencies that are much lower than the DDR4-2133. I noticed that HardOCP made this mistake in their review:



When in fact the absolute latency of the memory they were testing was going down, not up. Funny how they claim to see an impact. It's a good reminder of the cognitive biases that go into these things.

I don't get this. Are they saying it's actually possible to be RAM-limited now, in terms of bandwidth? Everywhere I read was "DDR4 not much different to DDR3".

 

[tokkun]

I don't get this. Are they saying it's actually possible to be RAM-limited now, in terms of bandwidth? Everywhere I read was "DDR4 not much different to DDR3".

That is the claim. I agree that it doesn't seem to jive with the previous observations. I think there are two possible explanations (and they are not mutually exclusive):

1. Skylake in particular is sensitive to RAM bandwidth in the DDR4 range where previous architectures were not.

2. The performance difference is due to the lower absolute latencies of the higher bandwidth memory.

Of those two, I think the latency explanation seems a little more plausible, given that the results of a few tests that included the 5775C have shown some gaming benefit to the L4 eDRAM in Broadwell. That L4 has lower bandwidth than the quad-channel DDR4 in X99, so if bandwidth was the answer we would expect X99 to do even better (which it doesn't). However that L4 has a sizable latency advantage over the DDR4; hence why I suspect this is an artifact of memory latency.

 

[The Goat]

Skylake seems to be crazy bandwidth dependent, HardOCP found similar things with games. Dual-channel DDR4 is some kind of bottleneck, I guess there's a reason why X99 is quad-channel DDR4.

I'm looking at getting a DDR4-3200 dual-channel kit for my 6700K build. There are faster ones than that but price shoots up tremendously after 3200.

I'm thinking about the Gigabyte Z170-UD5H, my previous 2 mobos were both Gigabyte (X58A-UD3R and EP45-UD3P) and I've been happy with Gigabyte. Unless there's a compelling reason to choose Asus or MSI these days.

Yep, this is exactly the build I've went with. 3200 kits are just at the point of being to expensive. Now if Intel could just shove the 6700k out to all the retailers, that would be great.

 

[Grassy]

Hobestly, these days all 3 of the company's you mentioned make quality motherboards with comparable features. It seems aesthetics and BIOS are the main differentiating features.

If you've had luck with Gigabyte, then go with them again. Had a Gigabyte mobo on my Q660 build, then Asus on my 2500k one. Probably gonna go with Asus again personally because I have had really good experience with their products.

As far as ram for Skylake, I really like the new Rip jaws V series from a price performance standpoint.

I'm guessing Ripjaws V is better than 4 if you were going for Z170/6700k?
My go-to store has the Ripjaws 4 DDR4-3200 16Gb quad channel kit for $329, and the Ripjaws V DDR4-3200 16Gb dual channel kit is only $270(Aus prices...).