Skylake m-ITX Motherboards

So whats the main reason to wait for the skylake stuff to start to appear for mini itx. Ive just got £500 inheritance and was thinking of building a rig to plonk under my TV for the casual gaming that I randomly do. I am waiting for the Silverstone ML08 to appear before I buy anything, and I already have a GFX card and SFX PSU that I use in my eGPU that I am going to reuse. Is there any point waiting and spending the extra cash on this new chipset, or should I just go old school and get the 1150 stuff?
 
altich88 said:
The only worry I have with the Gigabyte is that they seem to be having problems with their fan control software:

http://www.overclock.net/t/1507050/warning-gigabyte-isn-t-offering-any-fan-control-anymore-z87-z97

There's a comment towards the end that mentions problems still seem to be present on z170.
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I'm not sure I understand what that all means though. Is it just that you can't control the speed from software? Does it still speedup fans itself as and when it's required?
 
hooneeawr said:
I'm not sure I understand what that all means though. Is it just that you can't control the speed from software? Does it still speedup fans itself as and when it's required?
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Not sure I'm afraid, it's the problems with setting custom fan curves that put me off as I'm a silence freak.
 
The surprising thing is the absence of an M2 connector at all. Even if you don't get a big step up out of a Skylake CPU, then being able to easily use NVMe SSDs (such as the upcoming Samsung 950) hopefully makes the switch to Z170 worthwhile - only having U.2 limits choice to the Intel 750 SFF AFAIK

All the boards have their compromises as you would expect in ITX size - its just a shame the M8I isn't 100% perfect. Next in the pecking order and price scale in my view is the Asrock Gaming ITX/ac which has been available in EU for a little while.
 
Good to see more of the boards being released now.

But now the dilemma is what one to pick?

The Asus Maximus VIII Impact has no M2 connector, which puts me off. As said before, the U.2 limits the choice of storage. So that is off the list.

MSI Z170I Gaming Pro AC looks good,
but the the bottom-side m.2 port accepts only up to 60mm long modules, so the 80mm Samsung SM951 will not fit. As 2280 increasingly seems to be the de facto size standard for m.2, and as m.2 seems to be fairly settled as the new OS-media standard, this may well be a misfire by MSI - especially when the boards by Gigabyte and ASRock competing in this space do offer 80mm m.2. http://www.kitguru.net/components/m...170-mini-itx-mainboard-with-premium-features/
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So that one is out for me.

Gigabyte Gaming 5 has the worst position of the USB3.0 header ever, right next to the CPU, so any low profile cooling options will hit the usb3 header cable.

So it seems the AsRock Fatal1ty is the only viable option that ticks all the boxes. I'm not really bothered by the looks of the board, even if the Asus and MSI, and gigabyte 'look' better. My board will be tucked away and never seen. So a moot point.

Have i missed anything? Or are there other boards coming out?
Comments?

Cheers.
 
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