Z170 and X99 advice
This is all great information! Stay with me as I try to remember my questions to some of your points..
PCI lanes: What issues would I have with gaming performance on the Z170 using two 970's, a pcie sound card (xonar phoebus), and a pcie wifi card (ac68).
Gaming will be this PC's main use with the only occasionally design in solidworks and cad software for school.
Overclocking is awesome but I don't usually try to bench to the extremes. OCing the memory is interesting as well, I've never had a good experience with that on my 8150.
Power comsumption is not too much of an issue to me, I was just running a 590 with my oc'd 8150 and now sli 970's with an oc'd 8150.
So X99 will still be used for the next processor? If so, any idea what the price would be? One of my issues is that I would be making a hard loop watercooled rig and constantly having to re-mold the loop from switching motherboards would be obnoxious.
I'll post more as questions come up. Thank you for the help so far!
Seeing as that sound card only uses 1 PCIE lane, and that wifi card also only uses 1 lane, you should be perfectly fine on the Z170 platform. Both GPU's will run at x8 a piece in SLI, and your other two PCIE cards should work flawlessly. If gaming is the main focus, then Z170 will have you covered.
As far as overclocking goes, you have to remember that with Z170, FIVR or the Fully Integrated Voltage Regulator has been moved off the chip, and back on the board. You cannot buy a super cheap board and expect to get great OC results. You also have to understand that even with the high end boards, some will OC better than others. While i personally do not know which board will be best for you, i suggest you check out some reviews of boards, and make sure they have the additional features you might also want (USB 3.1 type A and/or type C, built in WiFi, etc). So far, the average OC of the 6700k seems to be somewhere between 4.6 and 4.7ghz. 4.5ghz seems to be very easy to obtain.
Also remember that the TIM is not soldered on the Z170 SKU's, so you might have issues with some cores varying in temps, ranging anywhere from a 5-15C difference between cores. For example: Core 1 might be 60C at load, but core 4 might be 75C at load. While this is not always the case, there have been extreme cases like this, in which a delid was used to remedy the problem. X99 SKU's are soldered, they do not have this issue. If your temps are an issue, you can lap the IHS and the contact plate on your CPU cooler for a very flat, even surface. This can also help temperatures out when OCing.
Power consumption should only be a problem for people using older or weaker PSUs, or people looking to run servers/HTPC's. Lower TDP might also be important for ITX users, as dissipating hot CPU's in smaller enclosures can be hard when your CPU cooling selection is very limited. In your specific scenario, you shouldn't have to worry about either.
X99 and Z170 both have another series of CPU's coming out for them. X99 will be getting Broadwell-EP, and Z170 will be getting Kaby Lake. Kaby Lake (from what we know so far, not really confirmed yet) appears to be shaping up to be a side-grade, similar to what Broadwell was to Haswell. The reason we say this, is that its rumored to feature the same features as Skylake (with the exception that Kaby Lake will have SGX, and Skylake does not) but will ship with stronger iGPU's. Now, this rumor is roughly 4 months old now, and we have not heard anything else since, so do not treat it as fact. For more information on Broadwell-EP, look at the following quote:
LGA 2011-v3 socket:
- Broadwell-EP: to be marketed as Xeon E5-2600 v4 etc., while using the C610 Wellsburg chipset platform. Up to 22 cores and 44 threads, up to 55 MB of total cache and 40 PCI Express 3.0 lanes, with 55–160 W TDP classes. Maximum supported memory speed is quad-channel DDR4-2400.[11]
- Broadwell-EX: Brickland platform, for mission-critical servers. Intel QuickPath Interconnect (QPI) is expected to be updated to version 1.1, enabling seamless scaling beyond eight-socket systems. Maximum supported memory speeds are expected to be DDR3-1600 and DDR4-1866.[12][13] Up to 24 core and 48 threads, up to 60 MB of L3 cache and 32 PCI Express 3.0 lanes, with 115–165 W TDP.
Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broadwell_(microarchitecture) , http://wccftech.com/massive-intel-xeon-e5-xeon-e7-skylake-purley-biggest-advancement-nehalem/ , http://www.kitguru.net/components/cpu/anton-shilov/intel-to-release-22-core-xeon-e5-v4-broadwell-ep-late-in-2015-company/
It also appears my previous information was incorrect. Broadwell-EP will be coming out in Q4 of 2015 (sometime soon). Broadwell-EX on the otherhand, will be coming out in Q2 of 2016. Seeing as these two specific SKU's will not be for gaming, you do not need to concern yourself with them. That being said, i would advise you read up on them anyways just to understand what they would be used for. As far as pricing goes, i would say "very expensive" as most higher end Xeons are. Way higher than even the 5960X.
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