Gaming computer upgrade - Is Skylake worth it?

[ManGraveyDavey]

Hello everyone,

Long story short I ran in to a series of unfortunate events and am forced to upgrade my rig.

I built this in December 2009:

CPU: Intel i7 860
Motherboard: EVGA p55 FTW 200
GPU: Nvidia GTX 275
HDD: 600 GB Western Digital
RAM: 4x2gb Corsair @ 1600
PS: 750watt Bronze
Case: Antec 900 v2

My GPU died so i recently purchased a GTX 970. After serious troubleshooting it would not work in my current system. I know its not DOA because I tested in a friends computer. I believe my motherboard is the problem.

My current plan is to wait till skylake hits market. NewEgg lists them in bundles with a motherboard and DDR4 ram that say they will be available 8/14.

Considering I don't upgrade my computer often at all (my current cpu is a 1st gen intel core processor) I think that upgrading to skylake is a smart idea considering all of the hardware benefits: M.2 and DDR4. And DDR4 isn't nearly as expensive as it used to be.

I'm thinking about getting a bundle from NewEgg for 525$ that includes:

i5 6600k
MSI Gaming Pro
Corsair Vengeance 2x8gb @ 2666
I plan to cool the cpu using the Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO.

In the future when I have the money I plan to upgrade to the 128gb samsung sm951 and a 3TB Toshiba HDD. Possibly a NZXT Kraaken X41 for water cooling too.

Just wondering what the community thinks about this from my standpoint? Or does anyone have a solid case about why I should get maybe a i5 4690k, i5 4590, or even AMD 8350?

 

[Supernova1138]

Form a pure gaming performance standpoint, going with Haswell offers better bang for your buck, as you can re use the RAM from your previous build, you can't do that with Skylake unless you use an ASUS Z170-P D3 board, which seems to be about one of the only LGA1151 boards right now that can use regular DDR3. If you don't plan on getting a high performance M2 SSD while running SLI, you could argue that Z97 is sufficient for your needs.

Skylake has the advantage of being potentially more future proof, as DDR3 is nearing the end of its life, and if you want to upgrade or replace RAM down the road, it's likely to be easier to get DDR4 than DDR3. You also get a lot more connectivity off the chipset which is nice if you want a high performance SSD and want to run a multi GPU setup at the same time.

I'd say if you can afford it, go with Skylake, it will probably age a bit better than Haswell if you are planning on keeping this system for 5+ years. If you think you're going to do a more frequent upgrade cycle and want to save a bit of money now, then you could probably just do Haswell and jump on the DDR4 wagon later on.