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Okay so I am not completely clear on the whole PCIe lanes still. Here is my envisaged setup and usage summary: I will never run SLI or Crossfire. Not interested in M2 solid state drives. Never really bother or will ever bother with overclocking. Ordered a 980Ti as part of my upgrade from a socket 1156 (P55 Express chipset) upgrade. Have no need for extra LAN ports, sound card, PCIe ports beyond for the GPU, etc. To this end I have choosen the ASUS B150M-K paired with the Intel i5-6400. From all the Intel tech papers and wiki I cannot make out if there is a performance issue between Z179 and B150. Both have DMI 3, System Bus speed of 8 GT/s, PCI Express 3.0. So for my usage scenario I do not see the point of splashing out for a Z170 with all sorts of bells and whistle which does not impact performance directly even running DDR3 versus DDR4. The only thing I am unclear of is that B150 supports a maximum of 8 PCI Express lanes and the Z170 supports a maximum of 20 PCI Express lanes. The CPU (i5-6400) supports 16 maximum PCI Express lanes. How does the CPU and motherboard PCI Express lanes play of each other? The motherboard manual of the ASUS B150M-K does not indicate weather the PCI Express x16 port is shared with another PCI Express port, USB, SATA, etc. So if the chipset supports a max of 8 PCI Express lanes does it mean that the advertised PCI Express x16 lane on the ASUS B150M-K board actually can only run at x8? Informational links to my post: Comparison of all the chipsets and CPU mentioned above: http://ark.intel.com...185,90592,90591 ASUS B150M-K motherboard information: https://www.asus.com...specifications/ Online retailer price for the ASUS B150M-K motherboard: http://nam-webshop.c...m?item_id=14939 (displayed currency is Namibia Dollar) B150 block diagram: http://www.intel.com...50-chipset.html Z170 block diagram: http://www.intel.com...et-diagram.html Wikipedia chipset info: https://en.wikipedia...ipsets#LGA_1151 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGA_1151

Okay so I am not completely clear on the whole PCIe lanes still. Here is my envisaged setup and usage summary: I will never run SLI or Crossfire. Not interested in M2 solid state drives. Never really bother or will ever bother with overclocking. Ordered a 980Ti as part of my upgrade from a socket 1156 (P55 Express chipset) upgrade. Have no need for extra LAN ports, sound card, PCIe ports beyond for the GPU, etc. To this end I have choosen the ASUS B150M-K paired with the Intel i5-6400. From all the Intel tech papers and wiki I cannot make out if there is a performance issue between Z179 and B150. Both have DMI 3, System Bus speed of 8 GT/s, PCI Express 3.0. So for my usage scenario I do not see the point of splashing out for a Z170 with all sorts of bells and whistle which does not impact performance directly even running DDR3 versus DDR4. The only thing I am unclear of is that B150 supports a maximum of 8 PCI Express lanes and the Z170 supports a maximum of 20 PCI Express lanes. The CPU (i5-6400) supports 16 maximum PCI Express lanes. How does the CPU and motherboard PCI Express lanes play of each other? The motherboard manual of the ASUS B150M-K does not indicate weather the PCI Express x16 port is shared with another PCI Express port, USB, SATA, etc. So if the chipset supports a max of 8 PCI Express lanes does it mean that the advertised PCI Express x16 lane on the ASUS B150M-K board actually can only run at x8? Informational links to my post: Comparison of all the chipsets and CPU mentioned above: http://ark.intel.com/compare/88185,90592,90591 ASUS B150M-K motherboard information: https://www.asus.com/us/Motherboards/B150M-K-D3/specifications/ Online retailer price for the ASUS B150M-K motherboard: http://nam-webshop.com/item?item_id=14939 (displayed currency is Namibia Dollar) B150 block diagram: http://www.intel.com.au/content/www/au/en/chipsets/business-chipsets/b150-chipset.html Z170 block diagram: http://www.intel.com.au/content/www/au/en/chipsets/performance-chipsets/z170-chipset-diagram.html Wikipedia chipset info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_chipsets#LGA_1151 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGA_1151