Difference between gigabyte boards.

[hahapingazzz]

Hello, I'm ordering my first build within the next few days and was just wondering something.

I originally wanted a gigabyte z170x gaming 3 motherboard: https://www.pccasegear.com/products/33047

But in order to save a bit of money on the build I've decided to get a gigabyte z170 hd3 motherboard: https://www.pccasegear.com/products/32861

And I have a few questions that hopefully someone experienced or someone that knows what their talking about could answer for me.

1: is there anything important to gaming that I'll be missing out on by getting the cheaper board? Other then not being able to run sli.

2: is there any downside to getting the cheaper board?

3: if I run an ssd through m.2 on the cheaper board, will it cause my graphics card to run on 4x, or would it still work on 16? as that wouldn't work because nvidia cards need at least 8x

4: will I be able to overclock on the cheaper board?

If anyone's nice enough to clear all this up for me, that would be amazing, thank you

 

[hahapingazzz]

I forgot to mention the computer will only be used for gaming.

 

[Gingerbread]

1) You will only be missing SLI
2) Fewer m2 slots, no sli, no usb 3.1
3) If you run the m2 on x4 doesn't matter which board you have, your GPU will run at x8, since the skylakes support 16 PCI-E lanes (which is not a problem since a GPU running at x8 and x16 has 99% identical performance so don't worry about that)
4) yes you would be able to overclock it since its a Z170

 

[JerryJF]

Gingerbread is right.
With motherboards like the z170x part of the cost will be paid towards the aesthetics of the board, because a lot people who pay for the high end gaming boards are enthusiasts with a windowed case to show off their components. If you dont have a windowed case, then aesthetics isn't much of a problem for you, as performance is the key.
The z170 hd3 is using the high-end z170 chipset and all other high-end specs ( eg. 3200mhz ram etc) and you are not paying extra for the extreme specs that only looks good on paper as a lot of gamers will never use them. for example the metal shielding on the PCI-E, it definitely looks nice, but when is the last time you ever heard of a graphic card ripped a PCI-E slot off its motherboard.
I personally would recommend you to save the $80 (dont pay for something you dont need), put that money towards your graphics card or an AIO liquid cooler ( you will see a much more appreciated system improvement on those components). By 'upgrading' those components, your gaming rig can last you a bit longer before you need to upgrade again if you spend the unnecessary money on a higher-end motherboard which you won't utilise all its features to its max potential.

 

[hahapingazzz]

Since it will have fewer m2 slots, would I be able to run an ssd off of m2 and another off a sata slot? also what is the difference between running an ssd off an m2 rather then just a regular hard drive slot?

 

[Gingerbread]

None. Since regular slot supports up to 6gbit/s, m2 supports more, but there are no SSDs which can push the limit of the standard SATA slot.

 

[JerryJF]

ssd for the m2 slot?
I assume the ssd in m2 slot is the small elongated stick rather than the flat metallic 'boxed regular ssd.
if the ssd in the m2 slot is not NVMe, the speed will be the same as regular ssd via the sata ports (about 560mb per sec).

 

[hahapingazzz]

So I'd be better off running the ssd's off sata slots and letting my graphics card run at 16x? Even though 16x won't make much of a difference

 

[Gingerbread]

Yeap just SSD in sata slots (but you have to get an ssd made for sata, because m2 ssd is different from the sata ssd) and run the card at x16.

 

[JerryJF]

yea, no speed difference, save up for a NVMe when price drops in future.

 

[hahapingazzz]

Ah okay, thanks for all the help and info guys, I'll just get the cheaper board