Choosing between motherboards

[SjoerdH]

Hi all,

 

I am planning on buying an i7-6700k for my computer, but I am having a hard time on choosing a motherboard.

I've got a list of features I want to have on the board:

- Z170 chipset

- ATX formfactor

- SLI support

- RAID support

- 3 PCIe x16 slots

- Decent overclocking capability

- At least 6 sata ports

- Preferably completely black or black with some white/grey accents, RGB lights would be nice but not necessary

- NO red accents, because I am focussing on a black and green color scheme

 

I have found a couple of boards:

GIGBYTE GA-Z170-Ultra Gaming: This one is completely black, BUT with red leds... such a shame that gigabyte doesn't have this board with RGB leds, but if this mobo has some good performace I can turn off the leds and still have a nice black/white board.

 

ASUS Z170 PRO GAMING/AURA

 

MSI Z170A GAMING PRO Carbon

 

MSI Z170A SLI plus

 

My question is: which of these motherboards have the best performance and features?

If you have seen a different motherboard which satisfies my list of features, please tell me

[PCGeek]

The Asus Z170 Pro Gaming/Aura you have listed is nice.  The EVGA Z170 Classified is also be worth looking into.  I generally stick with Asus and EVGA for their no frills feature set and rock solid stability.

[PCGeek]

11 minutes ago, SjoerdH said:

Hi all,

 

I am planning on buying an i7-6700k for my computer, but I am having a hard time on choosing a motherboard.

I've got a list of features I want to have on the board:

- Z170 chipset

- ATX formfactor

- SLI support

- RAID support

- 3 PCIe x16 slots

- Decent overclocking capability

- At least 6 sata ports

- Preferably completely black or black with some white/grey accents, RGB lights would be nice but not necessary

- NO red accents, because I am focussing on a black and green color scheme

 

I have found a couple of boards:

GIGBYTE GA-Z170-Ultra Gaming: This one is completely black, BUT with red leds... such a shame that gigabyte doesn't have this board with RGB leds, but if this mobo has some good performace I can turn off the leds and still have a nice black/white board.

 

ASUS Z170 PRO GAMING/AURA

 

MSI Z170A GAMING PRO Carbon

 

MSI Z170A SLI plus

 

My question is: which of these motherboards have the best performance and features?

If you have seen a different motherboard which satisfies my list of features, please tell me

I thought you meant Asus Z170 Pro.  The Z170 Pro Gaming has red accents.  I thought you didn't want red accents.

[jj9987]

17 minutes ago, SjoerdH said:

- 3 PCIe x16 slots

There is no Z170 motherboard, that has 3 full 16x connectors. Most of the boards have only 1 16x and rest are 8x or less. Physical size of the connector is 16x, but it only has 8x connectors.

 

What are you going to use the PC for?

[Zagna]

If you want a black/green colors, how about Supermicro C7Z170-OCE. It's expensive but right color?

[SjoerdH]

1 hour ago, PCGeek said:

The Asus Z170 Pro Gaming/Aura you have listed is nice.  The EVGA Z170 Classified is also be worth looking into.  I generally stick with Asus and EVGA for their no frills feature set and rock solid stability.

Thanks for your advice. Sadly only a few hardware stores in my country (The Netherlands) offer EVGA motherboards and those are way too expensive .

 

1 hour ago, PCGeek said:

I thought you meant Asus Z170 Pro.  The Z170 Pro Gaming has red accents.  I thought you didn't want red accents.

I meant the Asus Z170 Pro Gaming/Aura. The word "Aura" makes the big difference in color scheme her .

This is what the board looks like: https://www.asus.com/nl/Motherboards/Z170-PRO-GAMING-AURA/

1 hour ago, jj9987 said:

There is no Z170 motherboard, that has 3 full 16x connectors. Most of the boards have only 1 16x and rest are 8x or less. Physical size of the connector is 16x, but it only has 8x connectors.

 

What are you going to use the PC for?

Whoops, my bad. I actually meant that the board has 3 PCIe 3.0 slots. I want SLI support so I can always put a second 1070 next to the one I already have, for when the prices drop. This means 2 of the PCIe 3.0 slots need to be able to run in x16/x0 mode (when you're using a single graphics card) or x8/x8 (for 2 graphics cards in SLI).

 

I am going to use the pc for gaming.

 

I also noticed that Intel is coming with their new Kaby Lake processors (including the i7-7700k) and Z270 chips, so maybe prices of the Skylake processors will drop soon?

1 hour ago, Zagna said:

If you want a black/green colors, how about Supermicro C7Z170-OCE. It's expensive but right color?

Looks nice! Sadly my wallet is not infinitely large  I am looking for a motherboard with a price of around 150 euros.

[XXXLovelyXXX]

I have the Gigabyte Z170X UD5 TH its not too expensive and it has not one but two Thunderbolt 3 ports! Ready for the future! I know it has some gold accents on it but I could easily be covered or painted.