At Computex 2015, many motherboard manufacturers began showing x170 and Z170 motherboards, which are on the new LGA 1151 socket. Asrock, MSI, and Powercolor have shown off in detail what the new chipset holds!
Asrock’s Skylake Motherboard Offerings!
Asrock has quite the line of LGA 1151 motherboards in development, and these range from the lower-end Extreme 4 boards, all the way up to the high-end Extreme 7 and Fatal!lty offerings. The low end of the LGA 1151 boards from Asrock are quite good, still having M.2, DDR4, Dual Channel RAM, and 20 PCIE lanes- while not having all that great of power delivery or other features.
The high-end boards, such as the Extreme 7 feature three M.2 slots, exceptional power delivery, and very impressive amounts of Sata and Sata-Express ports. The maximum amount of PCIE lanes for LGA 1151 is 20, so you will not be able to do anything like Tri-SLI, or having more than 2 M.2 drives and having a dedicated GPU, but the inclusion of a great many PCIE options is very good for expandability and compatibility.
MSI’s new Skylake Motherboards!
Having many of the same features as Asrock’s motherboards, from PCIE 3.0, M.2, and great Sata options, the MSI motherboards also have a few unique features as well. A few, in particular, are the additions of MSI’s GameStreaming card, and AudioBoost 3- new additions that have evolved from Z97 motherboards. The Game streaming card is a hardware video game streaming card that is built on to the motherboard, allowing for 1080p 60 Mb/s streaming without a performance hit. AudioBoost 3.0 is a new and improved Audio chipset for MSI motherboards, that is much better than the normal built-in audio on motherboards. The combination of these features should make the new Skylake motherboards from MSI great for gaming, and game-streaming!
Last but not least, PowerColor’s Skylake motherboards!
Powercolor also has LGA 1151 motherboards in development, and much like MSI and Asrock, have many different SKU’s of boards. The high-end motherboards from Powercolor have very good specs, with DDR4, Sata 3 and Sata Express, Overclocking support, M.2 support, incredibly well-designed power delivery, and all the other features that Skylake offers. The new design is perhaps the most impressive, with Powercolor moving away from rainbow designs of the past and more towards a cleaner, modern look that Asus and MSI have had for a number of years now. This is interesting to see, and the fact that Powercolor is now making truly high-end motherboards is very promising. Perhaps PowerColor will make a name for themselves in the overclocking world with these new boards!
Release Date and Pricing!
The release date of Skylake is now rumored to be set to August, which lines up with the previously leaked Intel roadmaps which pointed to a Q2 release of Broadwell, which has in fact happened. It is reasonable to guess that Intel is planning on a Q3 release of Skylake, since Broadwell was a “Tick” and Skylake is planning to be an architectural “Tock”- as Intel has named it. In other words, the unimpressive Broadwell performance is going to pale in comparison to the performance of Skylake. Based on the truth in previous rumors that about Broadwell, the rumors of a Q3 release are more than likely true.
The pricing of these new Skylake motherboards will likely follow that of which Z97 has had- at the lowest being $130, and at the highest being $400. This is likely not going to change for some time with the consumer-grade platforms from Intel, and is a good price for all of the features you are offered with LGA 1151 and the x100 chipset!
What do you think of Skylake, and these new motherboards based on LGA 1151? Let us know in the comments below!
Im getting the upgrade itch, been holding out for all the new tech to become mainstream and run well. Think this is the generation for it ?