Skylake Primer: best price to performance ratio Skylake CPU / Motherboard / RAM

I held on to my AMD Athlon XP CPU until the very first Intel i7 (Nehalem) release in 2008, which was a historic ground breaking leap in CPU microarchitecture.
For years (and years) my overclocked 2008 i7 CPU could beat any desktop PC system available at local stores... Roadmaps showed no such next leap before Skylake... and now Skylake is here in 2015.

Price-wise, what is the best price to performance Skylake CPU, what are reliable Skylake motherboards and what is the DDR4 price to performance outlook for the near future?

6600k.

Any midrange board is plenty reliable, including overclocking. Long gone are the days that motherboards matter for ambient overclocking. Something good like msi gaming m5, giga gaming 5, asrock ex6, asus proom are all solid among many others.

Currently, your sweetspot for ddr4 is around 2800-3000 mhz. Just like with every other ram before it, as time goes on, speed increases, and timings decrease and that sweet spot speed will likely go up for a while.

There are plenty of reviews showing performance and comparisons, including our front page!

You can spend a lot or a little. I chose to spend as little as possible at Microcenter. So I picked up the i5 6600K for $229.99 and got the cheapest Z170 motherboard they had, the ASRock Z170M Pro4S for $99.99 minus the $20 bundle discount so $79.99 out the door. It overclocks the i5 6600K to 4.6 GHz which is about what you'll get on air cooling with any motherboard. No need for anything bigger than mATX for me these days, the most I'd do is two-GPU SLI or Crossfire anyway. At Microcenter you can spend up to $499.99 for a Gigabyte GA-Z170X-Gaming G1 with quite a few Z170 motherboards on either side of $300 but I don't see the point of wasting all that cash.

Over here in Canada the 6700k is $475 and the 6700 is $420. I haven't been in the loop for awhile other than the occasional lurking. How do these Z mobos do with higher bclk? what is the stock bclk for z170? 100mhz? the 6700 has a lower multi than the 6700k, wondering if the frequency can be made up with bclk adjustment.

I'm not 100% sure if Skylake has unlocked higher straps. Previous generations had unlocked 125/167 bclk straps only in K series CPUs. At the end you could set only +5-7MHz max on locked series. If it was unlocked then something like 8 core Xeons would cost like 5930K and could still reach 5GHz.
K series Skylakes can make high bclk but it won't help in performance. It's more for memory tuning. PCIe bus is locked at 100MHz.

c627627 said:

I held on to my AMD Athlon XP CPU until the very first Intel i7 (Nehalem) release in 2008, which was a historic ground breaking leap in CPU microarchitecture.
For years (and years) my overclocked 2008 i7 CPU could beat any desktop PC system available at local stores... Roadmaps showed no such next leap before Skylake... and now Skylake is here in 2015.

Price-wise, what is the best price to performance Skylake CPU, what are reliable Skylake motherboards and what is the DDR4 price to performance outlook for the near future?

Click to expand...

Bang-for-the-buck-wise, I think, if your OC'ed 2008 i7 CPU is so good, you're the best off actually sticking to it for a couple of years more. Or replacing only the CPU itself with a higher i7 model that your mobo will support, if yours isn't the highest already. Used ones should be mighty cheap right now.

In any case, you are well-off enough right now to at least wait a while until the market becomes a bit more saturated with Skylakes and their novelty wears off slightly, or even until AMD releases Zen, which might be an interesting enough architecture on its own but will probably at least cause Intel prices to drop a little. Supposedly next year.

Thank you. Yes. I actually came to the same conclusion. I have an i7 950 [200] BCLK x 20 = 4.00 GHz.

Tell me more about prices. What do you see Skylake prices being today, generally speaking, and what do you see them dropping off to supposedly next year.

Also tell me about heatsinks. My Thermalright Ultra-120 eXtreme was way overpriced because of the novelty of new i7 CPUs. I was going to post this in the cooling section but this goes together with any Sklylake compatible heatsink... What is out there in 2015-2016 now as far as coolers go, how much are they?




_____________________
Intel i7 950 [200] BCLK x 20 = 4.00 GHz @ [1.4000] CPU Voltage & [1.35000] QPI/DRAM Uncore Voltage, Batch 3029A40
2 x 4GB Kingston HyperX T1 DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) [DDR3-1651MHz] 9-9-9-27 @ 1.66 DRAM Bus Voltage
ASUS P6T Deluxe v.1 [LGA 1366 Intel X58] BIOS 2209
Thermalright Ultra-120 eXtreme 1366 RT with 120mm Scythe S-Flex F fan
ATi Radeon HD 7870 XFX Black 2GB HDMI 2XDVI GDDR5 1050MHz Core Clock
OCZ Agility 3 180GB SSD
Asus Xonar DX sound card
Antec nine hundred case, two front 120mm fans, one back 120mm Fan, one top 200mm fan
Corsair RM850 850W

I see Skylake prices today as newegg.com, microcenter, etc see them... around their MSRP of $360 (MC is usually a lot lower).

Who knows what pricing will be in 6 months or so. Look at Ivybridge CPUs and see what they are compared to their MSRP on release day. I would guess the price will not drop much. Haswell surely didn't.

Coolers range from ~$25 to ~$100 (air cooling), depending on what you are looking for... something better than stock but not for HEAVY overclocking, grab a $30 Hyper 212 Evo. Pushing the limits on air? Noctua D14 or D15 are arguably the best. There are solid AIO coolers out there as well. There are PLENTY of coolers available because the mounting holes are the same past the past couple of generations (not to mention, these cooler mfg make mounting for new processors if needed anyway). Lots of people asking which heatsink to use here... take a look in the cooling section and build threads.

You can probably use TR 120 Ultra on skylake. All you need is 1156 mounting kit and if there won't be anything on the way on the motherboard then it will fit. I just don't remember how mounting kit looks like on the back side.

Yes. I'm sure there are mounting kits or I can just let the heatsink go to accompany my current motherboard, a 2008 ASUS P6T Deluxe motherboard which year after year after year is selling in the two hundred dollar range... This was crazy to me five years ago and it is crazy to me in 2015/16... Can you imagine a 2001 motherboard selling in 2008... for any price close to its retail, let alone above... yet that is what's happening in 2015 with 7-8 year old motherboards!

I personally have made the decision to wait, maybe there will be later revisions of Skylake motherboards in 2016...

Of course I would research the cooling section of the forums and elsewhere but it is always useful in new architecture threads to post opinions on motherboard brands and models and pricing as well as heatsinks, since many people could be coming back to the game having been absent for years, things change.

That Microcenter combo deal is certainly a price to performance winner it seems to me and thank you for posting that, for those of us that do have a Microcenter nearby (I do).


_____________________
Intel i7 950 [200] BCLK x 20 = 4.00 GHz @ [1.4000] CPU Voltage & [1.35000] QPI/DRAM Uncore Voltage, Batch 3029A40
2 x 4GB Kingston HyperX T1 DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) [DDR3-1651MHz] 9-9-9-27 @ 1.66 DRAM Bus Voltage
ASUS P6T Deluxe v.1 [LGA 1366 Intel X58] BIOS 2209
Thermalright Ultra-120 eXtreme 1366 RT with 120mm Scythe S-Flex F fan
ATi Radeon HD 7870 XFX Black 2GB HDMI 2XDVI GDDR5 1050MHz Core Clock
OCZ Agility 3 180GB SSD
Asus Xonar DX sound card
Antec nine hundred case, two front 120mm fans, one back 120mm Fan, one top 200mm fan
Corsair RM850 850W

If people are buying that board for $200(ish) , they are being ripped off or it comes with a CPU. Look at the 'sold' ebay listings. There are many (most?) that were sold for sub $100 or around that price.

Typically the only boards you see that cost that much are rare boards or ones that overclocked particularly well. Otherwise, its pretty cheap.

Why hold off?
You only need a CPU, motherboard, and RAM. The performance will more than double in both single- and multi-threaded applications.

c627627 said:

Thank you. Yes. I actually came to the same conclusion. I have an i7 950 [200] BCLK x 20 = 4.00 GHz.

Click to expand...

A Xeon X5650 and up (Westmere) would physically fit in, you'd need to Google around a bit to check if your mobo will let it in gently, though. The gain would be rather small, however, no more than ~20% in the best of cases, i.e. 5690. (Your CPU is already faster than X55-- Xeons and X5647, unless you can use the additional cores.) For it to be worth it, you'd probably need to find it much cheaper than the usual.

If you're worried about tech age more than performance, I'd wait till after Christmas or even Zen release from AMD, to get a Skylake + DDR4 cheaper than now or Christmast time. I'm having a nagging suspicion that Skylake i5s are already going up slightly compared to just after coming out. Christmas won't help things.

The benefits of Westmered will only show itself only in multithreaded applications that could use more threads than the 8 his has. Otherwise it's the same.

A platform upgrade is in order here. I don't see the point in waiting either unless it's for Black friiday deals. Zen, I hear, will catch up to intel, not blow by it.

1366 chips are ~30% slower at the same frequency comparing to skylake. Use more power and generate more heat. Motherboards are limited if you wish to use SSD, USB 3.0 or any other devices. Even though it's still not that bad then I wouldn't invest in that platform. It's better to find someone who wish to desperately sell haswell or simply look for Z170 boards with DDR3 support if you wish to save some on RAM. Anyway it's still better to sell old stuff and move to skylake looking at current prices.

Zen is still a myth. I won't believe in it till it actually hits the store shelves. All last premieres of "exceptional" AMD products had at least additional half year delay ... or never appeared on the market ... or were mainly marketing and pure disappointment for users.

Will my RAM work on Skylake motherboards?
It is
2 x 4GB Kingston HyperX T1 DDR3 1600

c627627 said:

Will my RAM work on Skylake motherboards?
It is
2 x 4GB Kingston HyperX T1 DDR3 1600

Click to expand...

If you buy a board that supports DDR3, but why not upgrade to DDR4?

The DDR3 (JEDEC) standard is 1.5v. DDR3L what Skylake actually supports, is 1.35v. If you have 1.35v DDR3 (not sure on the ram you listed), it should work without potentially damaging the IMC. 1.65v will, in time (not sure how long), damage the IMC.

That said, there are very few boards that support DDR3/L on the market limiting your choices significantly. Something tells me, c6, you like choices... so move to DDR4 with Skylake.

EDIT: Ran across a link - http://wccftech.com/skylake-does-not-support-ddr3-damage-ddr3l-only/

As most of my questions on this forum, I ask for informational purposes. I did not do research on this topic, I understand that Skylake boards do take both DDR3 and DDR4.

Information is useful.

It turns out only DD3L not DDR3 is the actual compatibility where DDR3 is mentioned, and once again I can get these answers by doing research and I am not asking anyone to do research for me, but people who know can and do visit our forums and that is what forums are for and what they have always been for so

yes of course upgrading to DDR4 is "better"

yes that is what I will most likely end up doing


but this question is directed to people who may already know:

would manually setting voltages etc. in BIOS make DDR3 RAM work with Skylake mobos and if yes, what are the real world disadvantages when compared to affordable DDR4 sticks in the same board?


Here's my current DDR3 RAM

I understand that Skylake boards do take both DDR3 and DDR4.

Information is useful.

It turns out only DD3L not DDR3 is the actual compatibility where DDR3 is mentioned,

Click to expand...

The DDR3 (JEDEC) standard is 1.5v. DDR3L what Skylake actually supports, is 1.35v. If you have 1.35v DDR3 (not sure on the ram you listed), it should work without potentially damaging the IMC. 1.65v will, in time (not sure how long), damage the IMC.

That said, there are very few boards that support DDR3/L on the market limiting your choices significantly. Something tells me, c6, you like choices... so move to DDR4 with Skylake.

EDIT: Ran across a link - http://wccftech.com/skylake-does-not...ge-ddr3l-only/

Click to expand...

Id imagine you could lower the voltage, not 100% on that.

As far as the performance difference, I would have to look up the same reviews and see (LOOK). That said, it is known that there are very few differences in memory speeds and timings in the majority of applications (not all some do respond well). We tell people when buying DDR4 to be sure and get 2800MHz+, otherwise you are in DDR3 territory but with much higher latency buying 'affordable DDR4'.

To add to that, DDR4 2800+ CL15 is the 'sweetspot' as is DDR3 2133 CL9... the pricing isn't that much different.