Novice needs MB advice, should it be i7 Skylake 1151 Z170 or Xeon 2011 V3 C612 based workstation.?

PeterZ640

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Wow the choices are immense!
My preference is the Xeon 2011v3 with a C612 chipset and the E51650 Ver3 is the perfect processor.
Why, good throughput, benchmarks at 13,543 and has 6 Cores and a reasonably high clock speed 3.5GHz and in Turbo mode 3.8GHz. Supports ECC, Registered memory... Server level Reliability. Lots of x16 PCIe slots - that arent crippled as one adds boards.
The negatives are:- not so mainstream, few have USB3.1, not so many have M.2, as I am looking for preferably an ATX form factor, or even an E-ATX there are not many. Bloody nightmare finding out about the boards ...what ram will work etc.

However the LGA 1151 Z170 should be the best option for the future.
The positives as I see it are:-
There seems to be a lot of choice, very up todate. All have USB 3.1; and many have two M.2.slots. There also seems to be tons of memory options.
The negatives are :-
Even the 6700K only benchmarks at 11,002 and only has 4 Cores.

I will be mainly editing Photoshop stills, these are big files, circa 160MB per image, and 400 to 900 images shot in an all day shoot. Currently a small amout of 1080p video editing, but would like the system to be able to edit 4K video in the future ( with an upgrade is OK). I was told my software favours a high clock speed, and can use up to 6 Cores but after that extra cores seem to make no difference!

My best options:-
1st Choice .. Supermicro X10SRA 2011v3 with the C612 chipset, with a E51650v3 processor.
Pros: Best architecture and processor, people say Supermicro are top "server quality" boards?? Any views welcome?
Cons: Few people seem to know them. No USB 3.1 [ note it says the X10SRA can be upgraded to USB3.1 , but this is a "BOM upgrade for OEMs only"! I suspect thats almost like a new MB??. Confusion As to what memory it takes.
Its slightly more expensive but only by circa £100 ... So no problem.

2nd Choice
MSI Gaming M7 with the i7 6700K
Pros: Has USB 3.1, and MSI's Military grade components, and particularly the "Armour2" over-soldering to increase reliability and strength for GPUs. It also Two M.2s . Lots of people seem to know this type of MB. Can overclock if absolutely necessary, great memory choices like Corsair LPX.
- Hopefully I will be able to get help configuring the system to boot from my OS disc, that will be an Intel 400GB 750 PCIe NVMe SSD ... AIC form factor. Apparently its tricky?

Note I prefer using the AIC route, namely using a PCIe slot, bigger has fans, less heat near MB. But due to Samsungs move to M.2 that could be a good technology to have on the MB. Say Intel and HP are the only ones going for full PCIe cards

Negatives:-
The i7 6700K Only benchmarks at 11,002 , uses Non bufferred, non ECC ram, only has 4 Cores.
I suspect it wont be as rock solid as the Xeon choice.
Being a sort of Gaming type of machine, it appears one is expected to know everything.... Er this is my first ever PC build ( scares me silly).

The lack of USB 3.1 may be massive in the future, as downloading a shoots worth of images, Say 32GB from a CF card, and the 2nd safety card is a pain!
But at the moment I can only buy a USB 3.0 card reader anyway. And it has to be a top quality card reader, as these fast cf cards are expensive , and if damaged could damage the camera's pins! ( thats my nightmare)

Any views, advice, much appreciated.
Epecially on
- build quality of MSI verses Super-micro?
- these actual boards?
- respective companies technical support?
- can usb 3.0 be upgraded to 3.1.... if only by buying say a PCIe card later?
- Just for the stills editing, using one 4K screen could I get away With using the Quadro nvidia K620 circa £130 or do I need the £400 MSI GTX 980 4GB version? ( really purchased the GTX 980 for future video editing; and also to ensure,that the stills editing will go as fast as it can. - note if there would be no difference editing stills with the K620 ... Then that would do me fine for a year.
 

PeterZ640

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Dec 26, 2015
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Thanks for your reply. Yes I did miss them, really due to ignorance on my part.
I thought they were to be replaced by Skylake.

I also looked at the 2011 v3 c612 Xeon range, partly as I used them at work, experienced great reliability, and their market penetration in the massive server - Financial market means they will hopefully stay around for some time.