Help picking a motherboard

[jason200912]

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Productcompare.aspx?CompareItemList=-1%7C13-157-743%5E13-157-743%2C13-157-634%5E13-157-634%2C13-157-629%5E13-157-629%2C13-132-935%5E13-132-935%2C13-130-976%5E13-130-976 Also is msi z270 tomahawk arctic version.

my friend said to get 270 for sure because it has faster SLI. How much faster is this over a 170? Because my research shows no real improvement except the m.2 and some pre installed bios.
What do these extra PCI lanes even do for gaming?

I will be buying a kaby lake cpu. My ram will likely be 2133mhz. no m.2, just ssd and hdds.
For aesthetics, my PC case is black metallic with green LED fans. I do like LEDs. It doesn't have to be green. Main purpose is for gaming.
Also my biggest concern is the boot time speed (which isn't a problem ever since win 8 and 10).  But boot speed was the biggest factor in choosing my current motherboard

 

Also if you recommend ryzen and the x370 instead, please tell me why.  The graphs show that intel is significantly better in amd/intel optimized games such as battlefield.

[Daniel Z.]

2 minutes ago, jason200912 said:

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Productcompare.aspx?CompareItemList=-1%7C13-157-743%5E13-157-743%2C13-157-634%5E13-157-634%2C13-157-629%5E13-157-629%2C13-132-935%5E13-132-935%2C13-130-976%5E13-130-976 Also is msi z270 tomahawk arctic version.

my friend said to get 270 for sure because it has faster SLI. How much faster is this over a 170? Because my research shows no real improvement except the m.2 and some pre installed bios.
What do these extra PCI lanes even do for gaming?

I will be buying a kaby lake cpu. My ram will likely be 2133mhz. no m.2, just ssd and hdds.
For aesthetics, my PC case is black metallic with green LED fans. I do like LEDs. It doesn't have to be green. Main purpose is for gaming.
Also my biggest concern is the boot time speed (which isn't a problem ever since win 8 and 10).  But boot speed was the biggest factor in choosing my current motherboard

 

Also if you recommend ryzen and the x370 instead, please tell me why.  The graphs show that intel is significantly better in amd/intel optimized games such as battlefield.

Wat? 270 doesn't improve SLi. Get the 270 for kaby lake

[Lord Nicoll]

12 minutes ago, jason200912 said:

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Productcompare.aspx?CompareItemList=-1%7C13-157-743%5E13-157-743%2C13-157-634%5E13-157-634%2C13-157-629%5E13-157-629%2C13-132-935%5E13-132-935%2C13-130-976%5E13-130-976 Also is msi z270 tomahawk arctic version.

my friend said to get 270 for sure because it has faster SLI. How much faster is this over a 170? Because my research shows no real improvement except the m.2 and some pre installed bios.
What do these extra PCI lanes even do for gaming?

I will be buying a kaby lake cpu. My ram will likely be 2133mhz. no m.2, just ssd and hdds.
For aesthetics, my PC case is black metallic with green LED fans. I do like LEDs. It doesn't have to be green. Main purpose is for gaming.
Also my biggest concern is the boot time speed (which isn't a problem ever since win 8 and 10).  But boot speed was the biggest factor in choosing my current motherboard

 

Also if you recommend ryzen and the x370 instead, please tell me why.  The graphs show that intel is significantly better in amd/intel optimized games such as battlefield.

Z270 has more PCIe lanes from the PCH, not the CPU, they're still 16, but if you're buying an LGA 1151 board now you might as well get Z270 unless you get a killer deal on Z170 and plan to not use optane (optane is kinda useless for most people here)

the motherboard doesn't really effect boot times as far as Windows loading, but you can configure the BIOS to boot as fast as it can. Get an M.2 drive you want a really fast boot. 

[Jurrunio]

From what I know, the major difference in Z170 and Z270 is Intel Optane support. The rest are just slight improvements, so it doesn't matter unless you have unlimited cash.

SLI speed depends on your GPU. I don't think the motherboard will affect it as long as it supports SLI

PCIe lanes are what connects cards in PCIe slots to the CPU. It seems you do use SLI. SLI only works if each GPU has 8 lanes. Count in other cards in PCIe slots if you have them. If the total number is less than what the Z170 board has, then go for the cheaper Z170.

Kaby Lake works on both Z170 and Z270, as long as you use Windows 10. 2133MHz (DDR4 I suppose) should work with Z170, and Z170 even has M.2

Boot time depends on your storage a LOT more than your motherboard. My ancient system with a Core 2 Quad and G41 motherboard enters Windows 7 in 40-ish seconds, and improved to 20 seconds after using a SATA 3GB/s based SSD as boot drive.

 

If you only play games and no video editing or screen rendering, then Ryzen is significantly cheaper but moderately worse Intel CPU. The price-for-buck ratio of Ryzen is much better than Intel's though, so that's why people recommend it.

X370 is the only board with Ryzen socket and SLI support. It carries a hefty premium in price, lowering the value (price for buck) of Ryzen. If you don't insist on using SLI, get a B350 board. B350 has enough features for gamers, just not quite enough for enthusiasts.

[jason200912]

17 hours ago, Jurrunio said:

From what I know, the major difference in Z170 and Z270 is Intel Optane support. The rest are just slight improvements, so it doesn't matter unless you have unlimited cash.

SLI speed depends on your GPU. I don't think the motherboard will affect it as long as it supports SLI

PCIe lanes are what connects cards in PCIe slots to the CPU. It seems you do use SLI. SLI only works if each GPU has 8 lanes. Count in other cards in PCIe slots if you have them. If the total number is less than what the Z170 board has, then go for the cheaper Z170.

Kaby Lake works on both Z170 and Z270, as long as you use Windows 10. 2133MHz (DDR4 I suppose) should work with Z170, and Z170 even has M.2

Boot time depends on your storage a LOT more than your motherboard. My ancient system with a Core 2 Quad and G41 motherboard enters Windows 7 in 40-ish seconds, and improved to 20 seconds after using a SATA 3GB/s based SSD as boot drive.

 

If you only play games and no video editing or screen rendering, then Ryzen is significantly cheaper but moderately worse Intel CPU. The price-for-buck ratio of Ryzen is much better than Intel's though, so that's why people recommend it.

X370 is the only board with Ryzen socket and SLI support. It carries a hefty premium in price, lowering the value (price for buck) of Ryzen. If you don't insist on using SLI, get a B350 board. B350 has enough features for gamers, just not quite enough for enthusiasts.

The reason I am switching away from AMD is because of 

 

18 hours ago, Daniel Z. said:

Wat? 270 doesn't improve SLi. Get the 270 for kaby lake

Is there a reason for why the 270 would be better for the kaby lake?

[Daniel Z.]

8 hours ago, jason200912 said:

The reason I am switching away from AMD is because of 

 

Is there a reason for why the 270 would be better for the kaby lake?

youdon't have to bios update

[Jurrunio]

On 2017/4/14 at 3:50 AM, jason200912 said:

The reason I am switching away from AMD is because of 

 

Emm you didn't finish what you typed?

[jason200912]

On 4/16/2017 at 4:14 PM, Jurrunio said:

Emm you didn't finish what you typed?

Huge fps difference when playing even in and optimized games.

[jason200912]

I went with the Asus prime ar since it was just about sane price range as listed ones when I bought it used