Intel Skylake Z170 Motherboards: A Quick Look at 55+ New Products

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• Oyster - Wednesday, August 5, 2015 - link

  Ian, do you think it is possible to supply us with a tabular breakdown of all the motherboards? Not sure about others, but going through page-by-page is a bit overwhelming, and confusing at the very least. Good coverage as usual!

• Eidigean - Wednesday, August 5, 2015 - link

  I second this. looking for number of M.2 slots, PCIe slots, USB 3.1 ports w/ type of controller (Alpine or otherwise). I'm shocked so few support 3 M.2 slots.

• MrBowmore - Wednesday, August 5, 2015 - link

  Why not just use the pcie? Is there anything better than a intel 750 and demands M.2? I dont get the need for M.2.

• Eidigean - Wednesday, August 5, 2015 - link

  Well, the SM951 is quite interesting. Also, if the M.2 slots are used, the PCIe slots can be used for 4 GPUs, NICs, or RAID cards. The ASUS workstation board in this article is interesting.

• Gadgety - Wednesday, August 5, 2015 - link

  Tabular would be great.

• The_Assimilator - Wednesday, August 5, 2015 - link

  Z170X-UD5 and Z170X-UD3 galleries are swapped.
  
  I'm glad to see that Gigabyte is exposing 2x USB 3.0 internal headers on almost all their boards - USB 2.0 needs to die. Now if only they would replace the dual USB 2.0 headers with an additional 3.0, giving 3x USB 3.0 headers, then I would be ecstatic. My Z77X-UD5H is still the only decently-priced motherboard around with a trio of USB 3.0 headers, and it's not getting any newer!
  
  Regardless, I'm probably going to skip Skylake, for the simple reason that I'm not interested in buying a board equipped with the useless SATA Express. By the time Cannonlake rolls around, M.2/NGFF should have killed SATAe and there will be even more USB 3.0 ports from the chipset.

• DanNeely - Wednesday, August 5, 2015 - link

  I bought a GB board for a 4790k earlier this year for the dual headers. At least in the medium term though, I think they do need to keep 1 or 2 2.0 headers around. Not everyone buys a new case for their new builds, and older cases have built in 2.0 ports on the front/top panel. The same thing for front panel SD card readers; there are USB 3.0 versions out now, but the SD reader won't benefit from the faster connection so why spend money to replace it. I can't remember who makes it, but there's one OEM who sells some PSUs with an internal USB2 header for monitoring purposes.
  
  Beyond all of that, the chipset itself provides 14USB ports only 10 of which can be 3; so the mobo makers have 2 "free" headers to do something with. Dell/HP/etc will ignore them; but in the box ticking consumer market they're going to get used either for internal headers or a pairs of ports in the back. Anyone clinging to w7 who doesn't have PS2 peripherals in the closet will need those since 7 doesn't have a USB3 class driver; and at least in my case refused to talk to a 2.0 device in a 3.0 port until I got drivers installed.

• Impulses - Thursday, August 6, 2015 - link

  If you're using an SD reader for a modern camera with modern SD cards then it'll absolutely benefit from USB 3.0... Last 128GB SD I bought for like $58 can read at 150MB/s (or about 3x USB 2.0 speeds), Lexar UHS-II card. Most recent mirrorless bodies can take advantage of it too...

• 8steve8 - Wednesday, August 5, 2015 - link

  when will these actually be for sale?

• Ian Cutress - Wednesday, August 5, 2015 - link

  Depends on the motherboard and what region you are in, but some are listed already: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-...