Skylake motherboard advice

Childs

Lifer
Jul 9, 2000
11,313
7
81
Building a birthday PC for a relative, and I purchased a Gigabyte Z170 Gaming 3 board. I went to put it together tonight and it wouldnt boot, just 5 beeps! Reseated the CPU a couple of times, just had the minimum stuff plugged in, yada yada. Anyways I said F it and put in a return. I wanted this done by tomorrow afternoon so I will just buy something tomorrow morning.

What I would like to know is what you guys with 6700ks have and how have they been. I kinda dont have time to do a bunch of research...the reviews on a lot of these motherboards vary a lot depending on the store. Gigabyte Gaming 7 looks good on Amazon and Newegg, but the 3 didnt work. Also noticed the 3 was almost warped or something. A lot of flex. Was also looking at the Asus Z170 Pro and Asus Z170-A, but people seem to be down on Asus these days.

I didnt want to spend more than $150 since I'm way over budget on this (basically built something that I would want lol), but $180 (Gaming 7) is as high as I'll go. Any ideas?
 

Childs

Lifer
Jul 9, 2000
11,313
7
81
You know, I saw those motherboards but they had no reviews on Amazon and it seemed like the price was too cheap. Anyways, I couldnt find one locally and the soonest I could get it shipped was Monday, so I went with an Asus Z170 AR. Funny, but it wouldnt boot either until I did the mem test, and even then I couldnt reboot without doing that every time. Updating the bios seems to have stabilized things. Maybe these boards dont like Crucial Ballistix Sport RAM or maybe the CPU has a new stepping or something. So much hassle for a seemingly straight forward build.

But I'll keep the ASRock in mind when I update my machine. It and the fatality version had everything I wanted, just much cheaper.
 
May 31, 2001
15,326
2
0
Relevant to my interests as well, I was thinking of going with the Gaming 7. I'll have to investigate the ASRock.
 

Childs

Lifer
Jul 9, 2000
11,313
7
81
I ended up having a couple more days so I'm going to return the Asus and get a Asrock Z170 Extreme4+. Its $150, but Pro4 and Fatality K4 dont support SLi and this will have a 970. Hopefully it will work out. I'll report back if there are any issues.