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 2133MHz or whatever, eg. Corsair Vengeance LPX 2x8gb kit || 112 || || SSD || Samsung 950 Pro M.2 256G || 265 || || Case || Fractal Design Define R5 || 145 || || PSU || Corsair RMx something || 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).