Differences of new RAM and Boards?

Now with the Skylake processors released, which are using the new socket LGA1151, we also got a lot of new Boards to chose from to support this socket and of course a lot of different DDR4 RAM. And while DDR4 Ram wasn't really used before and it was said that RAM Speed does not make much of a difference, with the new boards and CPUs there is a noticable difference regarding RAM due to the new structure.

Source: Gamestar.de

However…while there are tons of pages regarding CPU and GFX Benchmarks, there is hardly a good overview about which RAM or Board to chose.

I am not going to buy a new PC this year, but I would like your opinion and advice about these anyways.

When looking at Boards I have read that the "new shit" is USB 3.1, PCI Express 3.0, and M.2, which is a port for faster SSDs.
However I probably don't care about USB 3.1, PCI Express 3.0 Slots are in all of the new boards anyways, and while M.2 might be nice, I plan to buy Samsung Pro SSDs, so I don't really need M.2 as it seems (its included anyways).

Actually the most limiting factor for me seems to be the option to use SLI, as I want to keep the option to add a second graphics card at a later date.
But of course there is still a lot of choice. Thing is, that I have no clue about any of the remaining differences. Are some of these boards faster? Or is it purely about the integrated sound card, or one addition slot here and there?
Here are the cheapest SLI compatible boards from 4 different manufacturers I found at my local retailer:
AsRock Z170 Extreme4
Gigabyte GA-Z170XP-SLI
MSI Z170A Gaming Pro (7984-001R)
ASUS Z170-A
Can anyone tell me if there is actually any real difference between them?

I found a "highscore" of overclockers. The interesting thing is that almost all of them are using the same board and the same RAM.

Now I am not going to overclock highly. At least not to a degree that watercooling or nitrogen becomes necessary.
But it makes me wonder: What makes the board ASUS Maximus VIII Extreme better than other boards in that regard? And does it have any effect for "normal people" not overclocking with nitrogen?

And I got a similar question regarding RAM.
The RAM used in the picture is almost every time G.SKILL Ripjaws 4. What is making this Ram better than others?
I checked the list of DDR for ram at my local retailer:
http://snogard.de/?grand=4&showSubOf=78&group=2309
Now what comes to my attention is the Specification, or the speed the RAM is going for. The range is between 2133 and 3200.
Now I'd assume that "bigger = better". The one most often seen in the overclocking shot has a speed of 3000 MHz. The HyperX Predator also found on the shot is going at 2133. So if this RAM is so good, why don't they set it to a higher speed naturally?
Is there any reason to buy 2133 RAM if the same manufacturer also builds 3000 RAM with exactly the same cooling?
Is there any reason not to buy the one RAM which has a rate of 3200? (8GB Corsair CMK8GX4M2B3200C16R DDR4-3200 Vengeance LPX Kit )
Or is there any reason to buy RAM which is only going at 2400 or 2666?
I mean the price difference is negligible (except of the mosty corsair RAM with the big coolers which is at 265€ and beyond)

So any insight from someone more experienced would be cool!

Well, I did some lighter overclocking back in the day, but have been out of the game for many years. So what I'm writing might be outdated.

Performance differences of less than 20% can hardly be seen by the user. You can measure them, yes, but you only see them in game if you are running out of juice and are in this +20% area, and this virtually never happens if you didn't avoid an upgrade for 5+ years.
The value "20%" changes from user to user, but the key is that 1-5% are certainly unimportant except under extreme conditions.

Generally speaking all mainboards with the same chipset deliver the same performance, +/- 2%. The differences, which can be measured but not seen, come from minimal overclocking by certain manufacturers like Asus. So choosing between mainboards of the same category by speed doens't make any sense at all.

Expensive memory only becomes interesting if you want to overclock because it gives you more reserves to work with. If you don't overclock, just buy solid mainstream RAM and forget about the topic. High-speed RAM might push through 1% more data at the same clock speed, but that's not worth 20% or so more money.

It's pretty obvious that Intel sees no reason to release faster CPUs. Of course they could, but the market doesn't demand it. If you only want to upgrade in a year, you could simply wait until the new RAM has become mainstream and then buy. So far the new boards + RAM are too expensive for the performance boost they deliver, especially compared to an i7….k which can be easily overclocked.

edit: Regarding RAM
As a non-overclocker you should buy major brand mainstream RAM, but of course as fast as supported by the mainboard's chipset in combination with the CPU you want. Buying slower RAM is a bottleneck. The slower RAM will disappear from the market after some time, when the prices come down. What this user group doesn'r need is even faster high-performance RAM.
For your 2nd PC, which controls your printer, scanner and your media library, all this doesn't matter. Just stuff some cheap mainstream 8-16GB in.

Yeah, I am aware that the chances are slim and hardly be recognizable.
But so are the prices. I mean if I spend 1800-2000€ (to be fair 400€ of that will be hard drives) on a new PC, I don't really care much about 20€ if I get superior quality/speed for that.

About the new stuff being expensive - that's not really the case.
Yeah, I mean they are expensive, but not by much.
I mean the old Setup would be:
Gigabyte GA-Z97X-SLI (121€) + i7-4790K (380€) + 16GB DDR3 1600 Corsair (98€) =599€
And the new Setup is:
Gigabyte GA-Z170XP-SLI (162€) + I7-6700k (410€) + 16GB DDR4 3000 Corsair (2x82€)= 736€

So while it is 23% more expensive I am willing to pay that for a difference of 10% performance - AND to know that it is more or less future proof.
Besides of that, at the time I am going to buy it, the prices are probably more or less equal or better than the performance boost %.

But I am wondering what of these boards to chose, or if an upgrade to 3200 Corsair for whopping 12€ is going to be an improvement. Or if there is anything I am missing.

But from what you are writing it seems like I should just go for the cheapest board (of those which supports the stuff I want to do with it), and go for the ram with the highest speed and disregard any special RAM cooling or brand printed on it.
Is that correct so far?

Kordanor said:

But from what you are writing it seems like I should just go for the cheapest board (of those which supports the stuff I want to do with it), and go for the ram with the highest speed and disregard any special RAM cooling or brand printed on it.
Is that correct so far?

Click to expand...

I'm a bit surprised the price difference is so low. When I looked a few weeks ago it was much bigger. I would be tempted to buy the more expensive stuff here.

IMHO the normal gamer should indeed stick to the cheaper major brand mainstream stuff, but not the cheap rubbish like Asrock's low cost line. The saved money is better spent on a graphics card.

"future proof" is a point I usually ignore nowadays. When the future is here, you don't *want* to continue using the old parts. I buy what I need now.

Thanks!
Yeah, the prices were only finalized during gamescom I think. Before that it was more like pre Order guesses or extra charges for the impatient ones.

There is a pretty good review right here. The bottom line is that -as expected- the RAM speed does not really matter all that much. You either have higher clocks and higher latency or lower clocks and lower latency so it always kind of balances out just as with DDR3 where the difference between low latency DDR3-1333 and DDR3-2133 was negligible in real world use.
You won't find any games that are memory limited but only GPU (most of the time) or CPU (rarely) limited games.
So at the end of the day I'd just get a decent value 16GB+ kit of DDR4-3000 and be done with it.

As for the mainboards it's mostly about the onboard features. The performance difference is usually negligible (2 or 3 fps at most). If you google "Z170 mainboard roundup" you should find MANY links to reviews where the performance and features of different boards are explored in detail.
Personally I'm an ASUS guy and if I had to build a new Z170 system right now I'd go with the Maximus VIII Hero because I own the predecessor Maximus VII Hero and it's awesome. On a tighter budget I'd probably get this one .

Thanks for the link. And as you wrote: It seems like 3000 MHz are good, but after that there is hardly any increase at all, and so it's not really worth to buy more expensive stuff for overclocking.

Still not sure about the boards...might just roll a dice, go with ASUS again as I didn't have problems with it the last time, buy the cheapest one supporting SLI, or just check which has the most USB ports.