Best Of
Re: Icrontic New Years 2015 (ICNY)
Plans finally settled: in for @RyanFodder and myself, 12/30-1/3. No pups, and staying @ hotel recommended by @Ryder.
Re: Upgrade kit combo recommendations
So, I'm a big believer that the chipset is extremely important to the overall longevity of the computer. Intel's latest z170 chipset adds native support for:
- a new physical SSD connector called m.2 (the future is not SATA ports)
- a new system bus for m.2 drives called NVMe (it's a PCI Express link optimized for SSDs)
- USB 3.1 Gen2, AKA SuperSpeed+ (10Gbps)
- USB Type-C connectors
- DDR4
These are major developments in the chipset space, and you're going to feel the burn in 3-4 years if you don't have these connectors on your mobo.
Having the fastest USB connector always helps. But did you know that we're beginning to phase out the USB connector everyone knows and loves? Its replacement is called USB Type-C. This one is about the same size as MicroUSB (Android phones), but it's reversible. USB Type-C is independent of the USB version, but you ideally want USB 3.1 Gen2 for bandwidth and USB Type-C connectors on your motherboard.
But SSDs on SATA will be a thing of the past in a few years, too, as SSDs move over to the m.2 connector and use NVMe for bandwidth--about 4-8x faster than a SATA SSD right now, and climbing. Sure, budget SSDs will stick around on SATA for a long time to come, but even decent performance drives that a PC gamer might buy will probably go m.2+NVMe.
And on the DDR4 front, it's basically no better than DDR3. Tests have conclusively proven that no amount of DRAM bandwidth yields increased performance for the processors it's currently being paired with. However, DDR4 is expected to hit economy of scale in 18 mos, at which point DDR3 is going to become more difficult and more expensive to obtain all the time. It's better to buy into DDR4 now so you can get affordable DRAM replacements down the road if something goes wrong.
With that in mind, I suggest this. It ticks all the boxes: USB Type-C, USB 3.1 Gen2, an m.2+NVMe port, DDR4, and more. Save $70 more if you don't care about overclocking by swapping in the Core i5-6600 vs. 6600K, and the 6600 is Prime.

Thrax
Re: Upgrade kit combo recommendations
Here is a Skylake system. Not as bad as I thought, but will need DDR4:
sorry, but newegg is easier to search on.. just have to transpose it to Amazon
CPU - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819117563&ignorebbr=1
Mobo: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157672
Wow.. a lot cheaper than I thought.. maybe you can get DDR4
EDIT: I like Gskill memory: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820232178
Total: $415.00
I don't know if the DDR4-2800 memory is a sweet spot for skylake or slow.... someone else will have to comment.
Ryder
Re: Upgrade kit combo recommendations
But back on the rest of the subject, a couple months ago I helped a friend of mine pick out these parts, and he loves his new system. These are current prices for what he got:
i5-6500, Skylake, $205
MSI Micro-ATX Mobo, $89
Corsair 16GB DDR4, $85
Raid Summary 12/13 - 12/14 2015
With Fel Lord Zakuun down, we are now at 9/13 Heroic!
Congrats on yet more progress, IC. New boss? No problem. After defeating Iskar and one-shotting Socrethar again, we proceeded onto Fel Lord Zakuun and started to look like the Moscow ballet as we finally got our feet under us and moved properly, resulting in another no-death kill of a new boss. After that, we went on to another new boss, Heroic Xhul'Horac, where we got him to 26% on our very first attempt. We got several more attempts in and definitely made progress, getting him to 21% on our best attempt. I'm confident we'll down him next week.
Great work, IC! Also welcome to new raiders Synlast and Reviak 



