LGA 1151 Mobo, Need Help In Making a Decision!

[mode101wpb]

I'm in the process of putting together a new PC and I'm beyond overwhelmed with the selection of LGA 1151 Mobos and I need some opinions to make a selection.

What I plan to use it for:

Typical Web Browsing, LibreOffice Applications, Streaming Movies and etc, Gaming, would like to be able to run the latest titles at playable levels in FPS and graphics. No hard core photo editing or 3D work.

Other points:

-Micro ATX
-Skylake i5-6600 or 6500
-No plans to OC
-No plans for SLI or XFire
-No SSD planned
-Feel 8GB should be the bare minimum and good enough, but it's nice to be able to bump up to 16GB if needed.
-Need plenty of USB ports, at least 4 to 6 on the rear, need at least two to be 3.0 or better.
-Internal WiFi, nice to have or ability to add a reliable card, I use a Rosewill USB adapter which works great.
-No 4K, 1080P Min, but may like to upgrade eventually but know little on games or available content.

I have looked at Asus, MSI, Gigabyte and ASRock, I only ever owned Asus but the latest reviews are mixed so I'm open to the others.

I sorta ruled out the Z170 due to the fact I don't plan on doing any OC or adding other features I mentioned, so I'm down to the B150 vs H170M, pricing is much lower on these vs the Z170, but not much in some instances, MSI's B150 Mortar is close or $10 to $20 less than a Z170 so I'm thinking even if I don't OC, will I gain something else by going Z170 instead or at the price, should I just go for it?

If anyone can help me decide, it would be much appreciated. Thanks!

 

[nerp]

H170/B150 both would suit you well. A stretch of $10 to $20 for a Z170 board might be decent, too. You really can't go wrong. Ideally, you want to make sure you've got a board with the ports you need and the features you're looking for. I personally would not limit yourself to boards with onboard wifi since that really narrows down your options. Any mATX board will have pcie slots for an add-in card later.

Generally you can ignore reviews unless there are many of them piled up over time. If a board only has a handful of reviews, it's not so great of a measure.

You might want to narrow down a list and post links so people can pick apart your selections. I personally like ASUS, and will consider MSI boards, both have served me well over the years. I like boards that advertise durability and stability and high quality components. The board in my sig appealed to me because I too am not really an overclocker and it lured me with its promises of isolated audio signals for quality, onboard Intel LAN, other "quality" factors.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Don't forget that Skylake likes FAST DDR4, to take maximum advantage. And any chipset other than a Z170, will limit you to the slowest speed, DDR4-2133. If you want DDR4-2400, or 3000 or 3200, you'll NEED a Z170 chipset.
(Ok, KBL should let you use DDR4-2400 stock on lower chipsets, but speaking about Skylake, in the now, you'll need Z170.)

 

[mode101wpb]

H170/B150 both would suit you well. A stretch of $10 to $20 for a Z170 board might be decent, too. You really can't go wrong. Ideally, you want to make sure you've got a board with the ports you need and the features you're looking for. I personally would not limit yourself to boards with onboard wifi since that really narrows down your options. Any mATX board will have pcie slots for an add-in card later.

Generally you can ignore reviews unless there are many of them piled up over time. If a board only has a handful of reviews, it's not so great of a measure.

You might want to narrow down a list and post links so people can pick apart your selections. I personally like ASUS, and will consider MSI boards, both have served me well over the years. I like boards that advertise durability and stability and high quality components. The board in my sig appealed to me because I too am not really an overclocker and it lured me with its promises of isolated audio signals for quality, onboard Intel LAN, other "quality" factors.

Good points, I don't think the Asus board in your signature is available in uATX?

Don't forget that Skylake likes FAST DDR4, to take maximum advantage. And any chipset other than a Z170, will limit you to the slowest speed, DDR4-2133. If you want DDR4-2400, or 3000 or 3200, you'll NEED a Z170 chipset.
(Ok, KBL should let you use DDR4-2400 stock on lower chipsets, but speaking about Skylake, in the now, you'll need Z170.)

I only see minimal gains according to this benchmark, am I missing something? Which doesn't make it any easier, the price differences between components nowadays is not much so it's almost like why not just go for the top end for future proofing right?

http://forum.overclock3d.net/showthread.php?t=72710

 

[Justinbaileyman]

Sorry to steal your thread but I too am need of a 1151 motherboard and ram and am totally clueless as to what I should get. I mean do I want ddr4 2133,2400, or 3200?? Is there even a real noticable difference? Should I go b150 r Z170? Would really like to be able to upgrade to kabylake later on in the future if possible on this socket. Will be running a 6700k and will be used for 1080p gaming and then 4k later on when that becomes mainstream.Also using to rip CD's, DVD's, and Blu-ray's I own and making them MP3's, and MKV's to put on my HTPC.

 

[UsandThem]

If you want to overclock, you want a z170 board.

The impact that different DDR4 speeds has on Skylake is up for debate (outside of using integrated graphics). Some say it has a noticeable difference, some say there is no difference. The debate is moot at this point because the price difference between DDR4 2133 and higher speeds is so minor. It only makes since to get the faster stuff and not worry about it. DDR4 3000 pricing is pretty good.

Kaby Lake will still use LGA 1151, so a BIOS update should be all that is needed. I doubt you would need to go from a 6700k to a Kaby Lake CPU. Based on Intel's track record the last 6 years or so, the performance difference will likely be very minor.

Just go to Newegg, filter the motherboards by socket and chipset, form factor (ATX, mATX, etc) and look for ones with good user reviews. I usually will Google the model number to read actual reviews and to see if there are any issues a large group of people are posting about.

Outside of that, if you read through the first 4-5 pages in this sub-forum, there are already many 'pick my motherboard' posts that should help shed some light on what people like here.