Motherboard for 7700k

I prefer gigabyte. They tend to be very reliable. Something along these lines.
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128966

otherwise you can opt for the previous z170 board and get a gaming 3 or 5 board for fairly cheap

1. Yes... Kaby Lake is here ... but only in its 1st iteration. As e have seen n the past ... early purchasers are sometimes punished for living on the bleeding edge. For example, early Z97 buyers were saddled with a design error (Asus boards) in which external devices once asleep would wake up. This bug was fixed with the C1 stepping boards... if you had prior, you had to live with it. Who can forget the industry wide recall with P68 builds whereby all the early adopters had to RMA the boards in exchange for B3 stepping boards. Also note that as production lines improve, even CPUs and RAM improve their efficiencies and overclock ability inches up as required voltages get lower over time. I usually wait at least 3 months which also allows time for feedback from board owners as to which boards are troublesome and which are better received. Not saying it will be a disater ... just saying if ya wait 3 months, your chances of getting a better CPU / MoBo are increased.

2. Getting the most expensive processor and an i7 at that and pairing it with the cheapest budget cooler seems a mismatch. Yes I understand you have decided not to overclock .. but the lower CPU speed of the i5 is a marketing move, put in place just to make the jump to the i7 seem justifiable. A 7600k is just a 7700k with hyperthreading disabled and the boost speed purposely gimped.

3. I think you will find 3200 RAM at the same price as 3000

4. The HD is one of the slowest you could possible find.

http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/hdd-charts-2013/benchmarks,134.html

Seagate SSHD = 9.76 Mb/s in Gaming
WB Black - 6.34
WD Blue - 4.01

5. The price of the 1070 will tank when the 1080 Ti drops and the 1080 costs what the 1070 is now.

6. I think we had this discussion before... the HAF912 was a great case when it came out ... like 6 years ago. But at this price range... the Phanteks P400 Eclipse has literally taken the $60 price category by storm winning best case of 2016 in its category

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zMOrX3MM-s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzXmR9QerOY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQmPG-pKks4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQAcw0rervw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=viR7uHEhoYA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_SsUwBtpC4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-aJzKiizvJI

Just picked up the Aorus Gaming 5 myself. Fired right up.

I haven't heard of any early issues with the Z270 chipset so far. I have the early Z87 chipset with the USB 3.0 / sleep issue, easy to deal with those types of problems though.

If it's not the case, it will be the very 1st time....as Roseanna rosanndanna said "It's always something"

Well since I'm going to pair the system with Acer XB241H which is an 1080p 144hz monitor, i think i need to get an i7. 7600k is good for 60 fps but it would start struggling after 100 fps. To be honest i think 7600k will bottleneck 1070 at 1080p. I guess the CPU market being stagnant for the past few years is to be blamed.

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The presence of a 144 Hz monitor has no impact whatsoever. If you want to go from 60 fps to 100 fps, a 7700k is not going to do that.... The 7600k does not bottleneck the GFX card in gaming, (neither does the 2600k as you will see below). Out of the box,you might see less than 1 fps difference in gaming ... but when both CPUs overclocked, it disappears ... sometimes its even slower

Comparative performance of 7700k vs 7600k **out of the box**
http://www.anandtech.com/show/10968/the-intel-core-i7-7700k-91w-review-the-new-stock-performance-champion/6

Alien Isolation = 179.00 vs 178.95 (175.59 for 6 year old 2600k)
Total War: Attila = 36.00 vs 35.50 (33.0 for 2600k)
GTAV = 74.32 vs 73.51 69.21 for 2600k)
Grid Autosport = 172.90 vs 172.11 (154.05 for 2600k)
Shadow of Mordor = 98.40 vs 98.46 (98.11 for 2600k)



As you can see, even the 6 year old 2600k does quite well.

So with a 0.4 Ghz speed advantage (10.5%) and for 40% increase in price, the 4.2 Ghz 7700k gets you a not exactly whopping average of 0.42 fps faster than the 3.8 Ghz 7600 k. That's not exactly a good return on the extra $100 investment. If you are willing to spend $100 for a 0.04% increase in fps, why not spend $200 and get a 1080 with an increase of over 17.3% ... The ROI is 216 times greater.

And that ignores the fact that you can erase that 0.4 Ghz (0.42 fps) advantage by overclocking. Also, because with half the active threads, you will see about 7C temperature difference between an i5 and i7 which quite often will lead to a higher OC for the CPU with lower temps. Of course you can turn off hyperthreading on the i7 and get those same temps but then again why pay $100 more for a feature that you are going to turn off ?

I was able to find 3200 MHz Ram at the same price but they cas latency 16 which would actually make it worst. So i opted for 3000 MHz with cas latency 15.

I heard SSHD performance increase over regular HDD is marginal. Anyway hard drives usually affects loading speeds in games which is something i can deal with currently. ]And also Blue seems to be faster than Black. Also i have a WD blue in my current system which has been running without a problem for nearly 4 years, another reason why i chose blue.

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I oft them at the same price but prices change daily ... but, no it's not worse. Different apps can favor one or the other but a good guideline for overall latency is:

CAS x 1000 / DDR Speed

15 x 1000 / 3000 = 5 ns
16 x 1000 / 3200 = 5 ns

As for SSDs versus HDs and black vs blue, the numbers are the numbers. The Black scores 50% faster than the Blue. The SSD is 50% faster than the Black... in loading files. The Black and SSHD are warranted for 5 years, the Blue 2 years.

My goal is to tell ya what the differences are, you get to decide if the $20 increase in price is worth 250% of the speed and 250% the warranty. But I think you can see my dilemma tho trying to reconcile:

$100 more for an i7 that nets 0.04% more speed is good
$20 more for an SSHD that gets ya 250% more speed (and 250% more warranty) is not

Well i don't think will Nvidia will lower it's price of 1080 and 1070 when 1080 ti comes out. I think 1080 ti will priced between 1080 and titan xp. I only think a price drop would only happen once Vega comes out which isn't going to happen anytime soon.

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The 1080 Ti was ready a long time ago. Like the 780 Ti and 980 Ti, I doubt nVidia will drop it until AMD shows their hand. As for the price drop, it happened with the 780 Ti and it happened with the 980 Ti; so I don't see why this will be different.

I had a pair of 770s in my last planned personal build. However, the 780 dropped from $670 to $510 the day that the 780 Ti was announced as being available starting the next week. As a result I saved $320 plus I got two sets of coupons for 2 times $180 worth of free games buying an SLI pair. That saved me another $360 in XMas shopping.

I haven't heard of any early issues with the Z270 chipset so far]. I have the early Z87 chipset with the USB 3.0 / sleep issue, easy to deal with those types of problems though.

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That one was important enough to me to wait as rebooting every time I went to get coffee or had a telephone conversation, I would lose my externals which would have been a real PITA. Of course if that doesn't bother ya, then it's a non-issue. Then again, having to take out ya MoBpo, return it and wait 2 weeks for the replacement to arrive w/ he B3 recall was a different story.

It's the luck of the draw kinda thing but let's not forget, saving installation of 3 - 5 BIOS and driver updates in the 1st few months (and redoing your OCs after each one) is something else best avoided. I'm not saying "ooh scary scary, don't do it" ... I am saying go into the decision with eyes open and with full knowledge of both known and potential issues.

I took a long look at the ASUS Prime Z270 A. It has some nice features, but some I didn't need.

Also looked at the ROG/Strix boards, a lot of variants. Just seemed like they've tacked on a $20 premium over ASRock, Gigabyte, MSI for the same stuff.

Really hard to go wrong, it just depends what is available and what you want to spend. Once you are passed $130 or so they all have decent looking VRMs and heatsinks. Under that and I wouldn't shoot for the moon with an overclock.

I see some exposed VRMs and it looks pretty light. Not something I would overclock on, but since that isn't your plan it might be okay.

Larger fans are typically quieter, but that Zotac has very large cooler. You might read through this for general Pascal advice. But yes, as long as temperature allows you can make pretty much any Pascal GPU run similar clock speeds.

My friend, do some research before you ask. Its very easy to find the list. I found it in a minute right here. I would recommend the ASUS PRIME Z270-A or the ASUS STRIX Z270E.

Micro ATX boards are usually a little cheaper, just the nature of motherboards. Micro ATX is the most common size made for off the shelf computers and they have a few less components on them.

If you think the Z270M-D3h is enough, then give it a try. It's not like it won't work. Only thing it lacks that jumps out is SLI support, but that isn't a big deal for single GPU systems.

Not really. Three less slots in general. Maybe subtract a USB or fan header here and there. Depends on the exact board and what you want it to do.

For gaming, even an ITX board with a single PCIe slot is enough. Plop the GPU in and rely on the motherboard's features for everything else.

Basic advantage is the smaller case options.