Need advice to choose Z170 mobo

memory_leak · Post by **memory_leak** » Fri Dec 25, 2015 2:21 pm

Hello guys,

I am putting together a new machine and need some advice to choose best mobo. I have decided to go with Z170 chipset (6700K cpu), air cooling (noctua D15) and 32 gig of HyperX Fury at 2666 Mhz.

So far I have been looking at three mobos:

MSI M9 Ack
ASUS Z170-WS
Gigabyte GA-Z170X-Gaming 7

Wifi and good audio provide some icing on top, but I really wonder which one of those is better in terms of stability and durability. As I understand Asus has put some extra regulators on it's WS version, which seems to add in to stability and durability. How does other two offerings compare in that department? Finally is Gigabytes offering of Creative audio which I understand is hardware implementeation worth some extra bonus?

My requirement for mobo is to support two M.2 drives (2x950 Pro ssd). Beside chipset and 2xM.2 ports, I don't have so much requirements. Goal with build is to get relatively quiet PC with relatively good prestanda. I'm not aiming for fastest build and breaking some overclocking record, but if I can get 200 - 300 mhz xtra without adding too much noise I will be happy. Does not need to be totally silent, but I don't want an airplane either. For graphics I plan to get EVGA gtx980 sc+ and for the supply depot I plan to get Bequiet's Dark Power pro 11 850W, but it maybe is sufficient with 750W, will have to research it bit more.

If you have some other suggestion for mobo, plz feel free to suggest, as said, the only requirement is to support two M.2 slots and to be able to boot from both (one is going to hold windows os and other one linux) and to provide some basic oc-ing capability.

Thanks for help in advance and best regards

edh · Post by **edh** » Sat Dec 26, 2015 11:38 pm

memory_leak wrote:As I understand Asus has put some extra regulators on it's WS version, which seems to add in to stability and durability.

Sounds a bit of a gimmick. Lots of motherboards boast such things.

What I would add is that Asus is best for fan control. Giabyte fan control isn't great.

boost · Post by **boost** » Sun Dec 27, 2015 6:25 am

The Asus Z-170 Deluxe has all the features and extras you want. You can use a second M.2 SSD with the included adapter that uses the PCIe 4x slot, farthest from the CPU. I bought it for the HDMI 2.0 port.
The Samsung 950 runs really hot. If you have a workload that benefits from the extra bandwith from M.2 PCIe 3.0 4x over SATA, you might run into thermal throttling. Anandtech tested a heatsink adapter that solve the problem. The heat issue and the price made me buy a Sandisk Exterme Pro II for my Linux and Windows drive. If you need more speed, the Intel 750 series is a good but expensive choice.
SSDs, both M.2 and SATA, help with the boot time, but Z170 boards boot slow, 20s for Z170 vs. 10s for Z97.
I'm running a EVGA 980 ti Classified from a beQuiet E9 CM 580W PSU. 500W is plenty of power for a single 980GTX.

Post by **CA_Steve** » Sun Dec 27, 2015 7:42 am

boost wrote:The Samsung 950 runs really hot. If you have a workload that benefits from the extra bandwith from M.2 PCIe 3.0 4x over SATA, you might run into thermal throttling. Anandtech tested a heatsink adapter that solve the problem. The heat issue and the price made me buy a Sandisk Exterme Pro II for my Linux and Windows drive. If you need more speed, the Intel 750 series is a good but expensive choice.

There's a little bit of FUD here. Anandtech really had to hammer the SSD to cause it to downclock. It didn't affect what we'd call normal operation. That said, I think all the SSDs out there in this form factor run hotter than their 2.5" brethren due to the lack of cooling normally provided by the metal casing as a heatsink.

memory_leak · Post by **memory_leak** » Sun Dec 27, 2015 6:58 pm

Ok, thanks a lot on input!

I just posted a question about what PSU to for this system in another section, but you gave me a clue. I am looking at Enermax Digifanless 550W, and was wondering if it will be enough. As I read from an review online EVGA GTX980Ti sc+ peaks at 240W, so I suppose you are correct about 500W being enough.

I haven't made my mind 100% about hard drives. I am even considering two ordinary sata SDDs, budget 850 Evo drives, since OS certainly don't saturate 10 GB/s during normal operation. My interest in 950 Pro drives is mainly because they beat everything else in random write performance (at least from what I have red in some review) which is really what matters for OS. I am currently runing my system from 840 pro ssd, and the system boots in like 3 - 4 seconds (windows 10 on ASUS G75VW laptop). To be honest boot time is not the most important thing. My windows runs for weeks before I have to reboot to update it, and same for linux. I am also getting a lot of ram so I can ran a lot from ram. I am currently using ramdisk for windows, and Linux is already very good at using ram for tempfs. I haven't used swap in Linux for like ages. Anyway, I am not even sure the real fast M.2 drive will come to very good use so to say, but there is always a thrill of putting together a dream killer machine

. I do it only once in few years.

20 seconds boot times indeed sounds ilke going back to 1998

. Are you really booting off of ssd?

Need advice to choose Z170 mobo

Need advice to choose Z170 mobo

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