Thanks, I didn't know that the i5-6500 is the best value processor right now.
What about the following Z170 board? It's about $45 CAD more than the B150 board.
ASUS Z170-E ATX LGA1151 Z170 Skylake DDR4 3PCI-E16 3PCI-E1 SLI Support CrossFireX USB3.1 Motherboard
I don't see why the B150 boards wouldn't be good for this cheap build? Would it not support the M.2 SSD and SATA HDD? I won't be using RAID, or overclocking, or SLI/CrossFire, or more hard drives in the future.
What is the 20 GB over provision? And I guess we shouldn't fill up past 70% or it would affect performance?
If the X400 is the much better one, then why are they still selling the Z400S for around the same price?
Also I am looking at the memory support for these motherboards ...
3466(O.C.)/3400(O.C.)/3333(O.C.)/3200(O.C.)/3000(O.C.)/2800(O.C.)/2666(O.C.)/2400(O.C.)/2133 MHz
... does this mean all ram above 2133 Mhz are overclocked? So if we buy for example 3200 Mhz ram, does it mean it comes already overclocked? It's a $20 CAD difference between this 3200 Mhz and the 2133 Mhz one.
The EVGA 650 GQ 80 Plus Gold 650W ($79.99 CAD after $20 rebate) seems to be cheaper than the EVGA SUPERNOVA 650 P2 ($111.99 CAD after $20 rebate) for us here in Canada. So I guess I'll just pick the cheaper of the two.
1. Asus motherboards are a good choice. All companies make good boards, so just go with whatever one has good reviews and has the features you want (like ACL1150 sound chip over ALC892) or SLI certified or Crossfire certified if those features are important to you. The Asus z170-e board you mentioned looks good outside of the onboard sound. It only has a ALC887 codec, which is pretty basic. You could try it and see if it sounds good to you in games and music, and if not, you could add in a sound card at a later date ($30+).
The ASUS H170 PRO GAMING has ALC1150 and is cheaper. It is not Nvidia SLI certified, but is AMD Crossfire certified.
2. To see the differences between the B150 and the h170 and z170 boards, you can read about that here:
http://www.gamersnexus.net/guides/2099-intel-chipset-comparison-z170-h170-h110
It only makes sense to go with a h170 or z170 for the price.
2. Over-provisioning can be read about here:
http://www.seagate.com/tech-insights/ssd-over-provisioning-benefits-master-ti/
And yes, the performance of the drive will decrease when it fill it past 70%. My son filled one of his SSDs up to 90% and the system began moving like a dog. Stutters, small freezes, etc. Once we took it back down below that fill level, it sprung back to life. Like I said, you should be able to get a 250 GBish drive for less than $20 more than a 128 GB drive. All SSds come with a small over-provision from the manufacturer to increase performance and to replace NAND as it 'dies' after so many writes. Increasing the over-provision just gives it a little extra boost. It is not the end of the world if you don't set an additional over-provision, but I find it useful and I do it. Here is another article explaining it:
http://www.kingston.com/us/ssd/overprovisioning
Sandisk x400, Sandisk Ultra II, Samsung 850 EVO, Crucial MX200, PNY 2211, Toshiba Q300, and Intel 535 are all good basic drives with good performance. You could pick whichever one you could get the best price on in your area. I like Samsung drives, but that's my personal preference for price/performance.
3. I can't comment on why Sandisk prices the drives the same. All I can tell you is the X400s is
significantly slower than the X400. If you look at Sandisk's website, they even state the X400s is for smart devices, is slower, and is rated by Sandisk with a much shorter shorter life (72 TB writes vs 320 TB writes for the X400). On Sandisk's website, it states the X400s is for:
A slim, power efficient drive for embedded applications and mobile devices, the Z400s brings new levels of performance and intelligence to electronic signs, point-of-sale systems, notebooks and other products.
You don't want a SSD that is meant for registers and electric signs.
5. The default memory speed for Skylake is DDR4 2133. However, it supports Intel XMP which is running the memory 'overclocked'. It is different than overclocking a CPU as it is developed and certified by Intel. You simply go into the BIOS and enable XMP. The motherboard will then run the RAM at its rated speed. You don't need DDR4 3200, but I'd get at least DDR4 2666 - DDR4 3000 as the price is almost the same as DDR4 2133.
http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/gaming/extreme-memory-profile-xmp.html
6. The EVGA GQ is a good power supply, so if you can get it cheaper, then it is fine. However, the EVGA G2 (gold) and P2 (platinum) are two of the best rated power supply lines out there. They have a 10 year warranty, while the GQ has a 5 year warranty. If they are close in price, the G2 and P2 are worth considering.
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