Skylake mobo £100-£120?

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Reccomendations for a motherboard in that price range to run an overclocked 6600k/6700k for mainly gaming purposes? I'd prefer Intel components, and decent onboard audio, but to be honest, at that budget, a hassle free experience is the priority.

Leaning towards gigabyte or Asus, but open to suggestions.
 
Asus Z170-A for me. Looks great but more importantly you get that premium Asus build quality and stability. Audio is top notch as well.

Speaking as someone that has only used Asus mobos over the years.
 
RavenXXX2 said:
Asus Z170-A for me. Looks great but more importantly you get that premium Asus build quality and stability. Audio is top notch as well.

Speaking as someone that has only used Asus mobos over the years.
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I use them myself generally, but I see they're using asmedia for usb3.1, and an older realtek audio chip on that board?
 
1150 is good, I have it on my ROG gene II, the amp on the Asus is more powerful so should sound better. In your price range most use the 1150 chip for audio.

If you want dedicated Intel 3.1 USB then try looking at the MSI below.


http://www.msi.com/product/motherboard/support/Z170A-GAMING-PRO.html#down-manual

Edit yeah in fact it is an even older audio chip on the Asus so can't comment on its performance. But the MSI is 1150, Asus being real stingy.
 
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Asus have a cashback promotion currently, so something like the Asus Maximus VIII Ranger Intel Z170 for 139.99 (119.99 after cashback) might be worth considering.
 
I'm thinking of sticking with Asus due to their excellent BIOS fan control.

I'm stuck between the z170-a, the pro gamer and, if anyone can tell me its worth it, the z170 rog ranger.

I actually have a PCI xonar DG hanging around, that would fit into the 170-a, which has a legacy PCI slot.
 
I'm currently running a z170 pro gaming but with the latest bios the cpu fan header will only drop as low as 60% with my pwm fan in manual mode. Some of the older bios version could drop my pwn fan to 20%. Something to keep in mind if bios fan control is a priority. You can get around this by using the fan xpert software.

Also to add to this I'm getting a lot of poping from the onboard realtek acl1150 audio.

I've got a z170-a coming tomorrow to test. Hopefully it won't have the bios fan control problem or the audio poping.

I really wanted to try a asrock extreme4 but have also read people having problems with bios fan control on the asrock forums.
 
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Plexman said:
I'm currently running a z170 pro gaming but with the latest bios the cpu fan header will only drop as low as 60% with my pwm fan in manual mode. Some of the older bios version could drop my pwn fan to 20%. Something to keep in mind if bios fan control is a priority. You can get around this by using the fan xpert software.

Also to add to this I'm getting a lot of poping from the onboard realtek acl1150 audio.

I've got a z170-a coming tomorrow to test. Hopefully it won't have the bios fan control problem or the audio poping.
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Ok, I'm ruling out the pro gamer bes on that, and apparently the fact that it only has 5 fan headers. I want 6 controlled by pwm/dc in BIOS if possible.

Can someone tell me why I'd want a ROG Ranger over the z170-a? The only quibble I have with the z170-a is push pins holding in the MOSFET heatsinks. It's only a minor thing though.
 
I have a ROG Ranger, and for me the difference was the audio, the Ranger uses the newer Realtek 1150 whereas the Z170-A uses an older Realtek 892 codec.

I hated the sound that came from my old Gigabyte board which had the Realtek 892, so didn't want to go back to a board with that audio codec.

I'm no audiophile but I also used to own a PCI Xonar DG, and would say it's comparable to the Realtek 1150 in terms of sound quality, so if you can reuse that maybe stick with the Z170-A.
 
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