With the LGA 1151 / Z170 spectacle starting to finally settle down, enthusiasts are once again looking towards the professional orientated X99 and socket 2011-v3 to fulfill their needs. Whether it is the massive quad channel DDR4 memory bus, the higher core count, the higher PCI-E lane count, or some combination thereof the venerable X99 and 2011-v3 combination still has a lot going for it. One area that it was obviously starting to lag in however was in the value department.

This is partly because X99 motherboards are geared more towards workstation and professionals where the upfront costs are amortized over a longer lifecycle, but mainly due to the fact Z170 motherboard manufactures have entered a new arms race. They?re now including everything but the kitchen sink just to stay relevant. Features once reserved for X99 motherboards such as DDR4 instead of DDR3 support, Intel NICs, four lance PCI-E M.2 ports are all now standard on mass market Z170 motherboards. This does tend to make the arguably superior ? but older ? LGA21011-v3 and X99 based motherboards a tougher sell.

Let's be honest for a moment; the Skylake platform is actually quite expensive once you start looking at the cost of an overclockable processor and suitably feature-rich motherboard to accompany it. X99 on the other hand boasts slightly older processors and mobos from the Haswell-E lineup are still costly things are starting to change.