Best Motherboard (and most future Proof) - no budget

Would love to get folks thoughts on, hands down, the best motherboard available if budget is not an issue?

In terms of update cycle, future proofing, and the expected updates from Intel this year do folks think z170 is the best option?

For background: I am torn between buying an 6700 processor now, or waiting for intel to update their extreme edition processors from 5900 series to 6900 series later this year, so I'm thinking by choosing the best and most future proof motherboard I should be safe...no?

Thanks!

Well, it depends on your needs really. Buying the most expensive motherboard doesn't make it the best or more futureproof as for the most part, feature sets are the same sans a couple of things (maybe a u.2 port or something - if that even takes off).

As far as Z170 or X99, that depends on how you use the PC (which isn't listed). But, in either case, a $200 motherboard will give you all you need. There is little/no point in paying more for a board in most cases.

I believe the next two releases be it Intel's enthusiast Level chips or Mainstream will work with existing sockets and chip sets

so x99 or z170 should be as future proof as Intel gets , don't look much further than that though

As E_D said, the intended use will give you some insight to platform and board level.

Thanks for the insight. While i certainly do surf the web, listen to music, and convert movie files, the hardcore work i do involves a lot of intense excel usage (heavy macros, and very large and complicated financial models). while working in excel i'll need access to various websites, research tools, and other information. i'd say then multi-tasking is critical, but being able to crunch through hardcore numbers is key.

I also do a lot of OCR work as well, and copy and move very large amounts of data to and from cloud services.

If helpful, i currently have a Thinkpad P50 with the XEON 1505 processor, 32GB of ram, 512 of NVME SSD, Nvidia M2000M, and 4k display. i have a 40 inch 4K TV and 2 23 inch monitors as my monitor setup, which I plan on having be the full time monitors for this new computer. Geekbench single core score of 3741 and multi-core score of 14012

When it comes to internet work the data speed is the bottle neck. 60Mb/s is 7.5MB/s of data speed over the internet.

In my experience excel can utilize multithreading to a point but sheer cpu speed tends to win out most of the time due to vba code not utilizing multithreading well. Also if you are doing large financial models I assume your codes are inter dependent and thus the code in cell A must resolve before the code in cell B can execute. If this is how the code in your workbooks is written sheer cpu speed will prevail over extra threads.

If this runs true for your models I would recommend an i7 6700k as it will offer you 8 threads which will be plenty to handle what multithreading is available in excel while still allowing you to have a high cpu clock which will benefit the majority of the sequential code in excel.

Like some said before, paying over 200 bucks for a motherboard for me it's considered already... overpaying.
Stick with x99 or z170 with Asus sticker and you will be a happy camper

As above and it looks like you've got the RAM thing figured out. Get a MB that handles higher speed RAM for spreadsheets. My experience.\ FWIW.

if it was me...i highly doubt id go past the maximus v8 hero

Ozz1 said:

if it was me...i highly doubt id go past the maximus v8 hero

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Thats a good one. If you plan to overclock the OC Formula is solid board as well.

Yea, they have pretty good overclocking options on their bios. Nick is helping them out tuning their overclocking series which gives you endless and probably even some settings you won't even know whats that for..

Overclocking is good but with these highest OC series boards are various issues and for some reason there is high DOA rate. Lower ASRock or MSI seem the best option if you are not going to use sub 0 cooling.

Think that most highest motherboards have BIOS tuned for max performance and OC. Most lower have it optimized for stability. Simply not all motherboards are designed for average users and what is best for one user doesn't have to be best for other.

never forget the silicone lottery, its damn well what you get, unless youre lickin someones arse to get better, most simple individual people like me get the whatever we get, and thats it in a nutshell