How much for a Skylake-based system? Very rough and ready component selection from MSY and PC Case Gear.
CPU |
i5 6600 (modest) |
325 |
CPU |
i7 6700K (one-off cost for ongoing performance) |
519 |
Mobo |
Asus H170-PLUS |
169 (H170 PRO GAMING would be a solid choice too, at $230) |
RAM |
16gb of DDR4 2400MHz or whatever |
150 |
SSD |
Samsung 850 EVO M.2 120G/250G/500G |
99 / 135 / 243 |
Case |
Antec P280 |
169 |
PSU |
whatever |
100 |
OS |
Windows 10 |
??? |
If you want to cheap out a bit, you can tweak a few little things:
- Select a basic H170-based motherboard: Gigabyte or ASrock will be somewhat cheaper, but it still bottoms out around $150. The cheap Asus H170 board is $160 and it uses DDR3 RAM (widespread, cheap, will become "old" in ~2yrs)
- Use DDR3 RAM: it's cheaper and still very performant, just not future-proof. You can get 16gb of DDR3 for $115 at MSY, but will need to buy a mobo that takes it
- Use slower RAM: Baseline DDR4 RAM is 2133MHz speed, very slightly cheaper at about $140 from MSY
- SSD: you can cheap out a bit with a different brand SSD and maybe save $20
- Case: the P280 is a fancy noise-dampened case. You can pick a basic one and maybe halve the cost
Choice of CPU
Current socket is LGA-1151.
- i7-6700 = 3.4 GHz + 3/4/5/6 boost increments, TDP of 65W
- i7-6700K = 4.0 GHz + 0/0/0/2 boost increments, TDP of 91W
i7-6700 |
i7-6700K |
Advantage |
|
Base clock MHz |
3400 |
4000 |
17.6% |
4 cores active |
3700 |
4000 |
8.1% |
3 cores active |
3800 |
4000 |
5.2% |
2 cores active |
3900 |
4000 |
2.5% |
1 core active |
4000 |
4200 |
5.0% |
April 2016
CPU |
i7-6700K |
484 |
Mobo |
Asus H170M-PLUS |
165 (H170 PRO GAMING would be a solid choice too, at $214) |
RAM |
16gb of DDR4-2133 Corsair Vengeance LPX 2x8gb kit (13-15-15-28) |
112 |
SSD |
Samsung 950 Pro M.2 256G (MZ-VKV256) |
265 |
Case |
Fractal Design Define R5 |
145 |
PSU |
Antec Truepower Classic 650W TP-650C |
150 |
OS |
Windows 10 Home/Pro |
137/199 |
Using my existing GPU, that's a total of 1458 for the cheaper choices, and 1569 for the expensive ones (Windows Pro and Gaming mobo).