Skylake non-K and BIOSes, in 2017.

[KonaKona]

So, long story short I'm considering building a small system with an emphasis on single core performance. The two best/cheapest ways to go about that at the moment are with a G3258 or a G4400. The 3258 is starting to get old and motherboards are gonna be harder to find in the coming months. The 4400 will probably be around 6-12 months from now, and so will Z170 boards...

... But, to my knowledge, intel got grumpy at the whole skylake OCing thing and I assume most/all motherboards sold now would likely have a BIOS that does not support this. So with that known, is it realistic to downgrade the BIOS on a Z170 board to get this back? I'm not sure if boards get grumpy if you try to use an older BIOS or not. And also obtaining the correct BIOS in the first place.

 

[ATMINSIDE]

Won't be long till the new Kaby Lake unlocked i3 hits the shelves... just a thought.

 

[Woomack]

Intel won't release any new BIOS/Microcode which lets to unlock bclk OC and I don't think that any Z270 motherboard will have that. Most Z170 motherboards have BIOS with older microcode and it's not that hard to get it. Problem is that some of BIOS releases have locked other functionality and in most cases IGP is not working ( for some reason on my MSI IGP was working even though it shouldn't ).
As ATM said there will be new unlocked K series i3 but it will cost more than any older pentium. I'm not sure if all motherboards will be able to overclock it.

 

[KonaKona]

Won't be long till the new Kaby Lake unlocked i3 hits the shelves... just a thought.

Yes, and although that will probably be out by the time this build happens, it will also be over double the price of a G4400. And this is actually a case where the extra threads don't give any benefit.

Intel won't release any new BIOS/Microcode which lets to unlock bclk OC and I don't think that any Z270 motherboard will have that. Most Z170 motherboards have BIOS with older microcode and it's not that hard to get it. Problem is that some of BIOS releases have locked other functionality and in most cases IGP is not working ( for some reason on my MSI IGP was working even though it shouldn't ).
As ATM said there will be new unlocked K series i3 but it will cost more than any older pentium. I'm not sure if all motherboards will be able to overclock it.

Yeah I've read about it breaking some stuff, but as long as the disabled power functions don't tip the system past the max power draw of the horrible little case PSU (discrete GPU will be low power and relatively unused) then it's fine by me.

If it's still trivial to get a Z170 board to OC then that's just what I'm looking for.