S1dology

Aida64 is very good, and has a free trial version. You should check that out. But why would you feel the need to stress test if you're (I'm assuming) running at stock speeds? No, watercooling is not at all needed for overclocking. Lower-end air coolers (like the Evo 212) should be fine for small to moderate overclocks, while high-end air coolers (like the Noctua NH-D15) is more than capable enough for serious overclocks, and in many cases beats AIO water coolers, at a lower price point.

Good explanation! The northbridge also controlled access to the system memory (RAM), in addition to being a PCIe controller. Also, saying "two main chipsets" is technically wrong. The northbridge/southbridge system is exactly why we call it a chipset - it is a set of two different chips on the motherboard.

Intel normally uses the same socket for both the tick and tock of any architecture, though they usually update the chipset. Kaby Lake should work fine on any current motherboards.

No, all the high-end Intel CPUs (like Haswell-E, Broadwell-E and Skylake-E) uses a X-platform, like X99. The Z platforms are meant for mainstream CPUs. Skylake-E will probably use something like X190.

It's called EZ Tuning or something, you should be able to find a button for it quite easily.

Oh, if it's unresponsive for that long, then something probably went wrong - sorry. In my case it would take a few minutes, then AI suite would start back up with a visual indicator of the stress testing. Have you tried the in-BIOS automatic overclock instead?

It's supposed to do this. The way the automatic overclock works is by stressing your CPU to determine if the overclock is applied correctly, which is why you'll see a 100% utilization after rebooting. It's also supposed to reboot 3-4 times during this process. If you get a BSOD, that is also completely normal, it just means that the attempted overclock has failed, in which case your system will reboot step down the overclock slightly. Honestly, the program (AI suite) tells you all of this before it starts, if you would just read all the warning messages and information this wouldn't be a problem. I've used the automatic overclock myself on my 6600k, which easily got to 4.7ghz, without any issues, with the same motherboard, so you shouldn't have any problems.

Q1 2016 means January, February and March.

As @Sportiva said, it depends on the cooler. My 6600k idles at the higher 20s (28-29 deg C), and the highest I've seen during AIDA64 stresstesting was around 62 degrees C. This is with a Noctua NH-D15 (with both fans) and a 4.7ghz overclock.

http://www.gamersnexus.net/guides/2099-intel-chipset-comparison-z170-h170-h110

How the hell did this thread get to 10 pages? This whole 970 vs 390 thing seriously needs to end. Get whichever is cheapest for you.

Pretty sure there still will be driver updates and optimizations even with DX12, but it's true that as game devs will have more direct access to the hardware, drivers will have less of an impact. We don't really know exactly how this will be, and I don't want to state things as fact when I'm not 100% certain.

*sigh* thought we were done with this now. 1: 8GB vs 4GB of VRAM will, in most cases, not make any difference whatsoever. This is because performance is mostly limited by the GPU core, not the amount and speed of VRAM. A 970 with 8GB would not be magically faster than a regular 970. 2: Don't compare clockspeeds between AMD and Nvidia cards - actually don't compare clockspeeds between differen architectures at all. Not all Hertz are created equal, and there are a lot more variables to consider when comparing performance. Look at actual benchmarks and gameplay, and don't look too much into technical specifications. 3: 'wait for pascal' is not good advice. We have absolutely no idea when Pascal will launch (other than 'sometime in 2016'), and we have no idea how it will perform compared to the current generation. See the Pascal mythbusting thread.

You do know that Nvidia has this exact same feature (called DSR)? Yes, get the 390.

Yes, I've seen some of those articles, which is why I felt the need to ask in the first place. However I believe the main reason for those issues was the system being moved around with the cooler attached, which I won't be doing.