Intel's 100-Series Chipsets Detailed: Z170, H170, H110, B170, Q150, Q170

[Jos]

The Z170 chipset has been available for some time now, but due to Intel's staggered launch of Skylake-S the other chipsets from this generation have just recently become available. In addition to the Z170 chipset, there are now five other consumer chipsets: the H170 and H110 for consumers and the B150, Q150, and Q170 for business.

With the move to the new Skylake-S CPUs, all of these chipsets have some large changes over their predecessors, such as the move the DDR4 and many other things we covered in our "Z170 vs Z97: What is the Difference?" article, but they also have a couple of key ways in which they differ from each other.

There are a large number of differences between the three consumer chipsets, but we have marked what should be the most important for the average consumer in red. The first and most commonly known difference is the fact that the Z170 chipset fully supports CPU overclocking, while the H-series chipsets do not.

Read the complete article.

 

[Luay]

Finally my Skylake ignorance is behind me now! I think..

You go from Z to H and you lose overclocking and Dual SLI/CF, going from H170 to H110 you lose M.2.

I agree that the Z is a better option. I was waiting for the i3 to come out and when I started configuring a nifty gaming rig with the Milo8 and GTX970, I found the difference between the $120 GIGABYTE H170N-WIFI and Z170N-WIFI around $20. No one with the right knowledge would go for the slightly cheaper option.

 

[Steve]

Finally my Skylake ignorance is behind me now! I think..

You go from Z to H and you lose overclocking and Dual SLI/CF, going from H170 to H110 you lose M.2.

I agree that the Z is a better option. I was waiting for the i3 to come out and when I started configuring a nifty gaming rig with the Milo8 and GTX970, I found the difference between the $120 GIGABYTE H170N-WIFI and Z170N-WIFI around $20. No one with the right knowledge would go for the slightly cheaper option.

The big one is DDR4 memory speed. The Z170 allows you to run a Core i3-6100 at 3000MHz+ while you are limited to just 2133MHz on the other chipsets. That is the difference between 22GB/s and a little over 30GB/s which can make a big difference in certain applications/games.

That said for the most part DDR4-2133 will be sufficient for the lower-end Skylake processors.

 

[Evernessince]

If only AMD were competitive. Intel cut take out and sell of all the features it wants and laugh all the way to the bank.

I can understand some of these features only being on higher end motherboards but there's no reason you cannot roll these into two chipsets. One for casual customers and another for enthusiasts. Separate business chipsets are a joke and are merely in place to make money. These sort of features have been around for awhile and could easily be available on cost-efficient motherboard.

 

[Reehahs]

The number of chipset can be simplified and reduce to just 4: Z for all bells and whistles; H for cheap low demand PC; Q for premium business features; and B for simple business use like a email etc.

 

[Steve]

The number of chipset can be simplified and reduce to just 4: Z for all bells and whistles; H for cheap low demand PC; Q for premium business features; and B for simple business use like a email etc.

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Intel: "Mind Blown"

 

[mrtraver]

Yet a quick look at Newegg shows that for ATX boards, you can get Z170, H170, or B150 all for $95 - $100. There does not seem to be much price difference, at least at the low end.

What concerns me more is the number of bad reviews and reports of DOA boards and corrupted BIOS across all the chipsets, even from the well-known manufacturers. Even if I had the money for a new system, I think I would wait for these to mature a little more before jumping into the 100 series pool.

 

[3volv3d]

It is always the way these days that you should wait, consoles, phones, pc parts, tvs, vauxhall zafiras.

Overheating, Dead on arrival, glitchy lcd panels, fires and explosions.

So, x99 boards had, ddr4, pointless squeezing cash from those who couldn't wait for these Skylake boards...
And now these are out, with Skylake and ddr4, but missing, USB-C, which may seem like a so what, but its a "so I can't plug in any feckin peripherals!? If we are going to have keyboards mice, phones and the likes with the "you can plug them in either way around" USB-C connectors.

Milk it, by Nirvana seems like an apt track right now to go listen to.

 

[BlueDrake]

This should seriously be a stickied article for buyers, because as these crop up all over. People will likely mistake one for another, and have more headaches with returning and such. I'm glad such detailing was done for the sake of it, I for one already know what I'm looking to get. Just for a general consumer thinking of getting their hands dirty so to speak, actually diving into building their own PC instead it might be more than someone might want to learn.