{"id":998,"date":"2015-10-05T18:25:58","date_gmt":"2015-10-06T01:25:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/3.209.169.194\/blogs\/glenn\/?p=998"},"modified":"2026-07-08T08:42:18","modified_gmt":"2026-07-08T15:42:18","slug":"building-a-z170-desktop-system-with-a-core-i7-6700k-skylake-processor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sqlskills.com\/blogs\/glenn\/building-a-z170-desktop-system-with-a-core-i7-6700k-skylake-processor\/","title":{"rendered":"Building a Z170 Desktop System with a Core i7-6700K Skylake Processor"},"content":{"rendered":"

Back when I started at SQLskills in May of 2012, I built myself a pretty nice Z77 chipset<\/a> system with an Intel Core i7-3770K<\/a> Ivy Bridge processor and 32GB of RAM, running Windows 7 Enterprise Edition. This system uses an ASUS P8Z77-V Deluxe motherboard<\/a>, with one 512GB OCZ Vertex 4 SSD. It was about the fastest mainstream system that I could build 3.5 years ago. It is mildly overclocked, to 4.3GHz, and it has been extremely reliable over the years as I have used it for much of my daily work.<\/p>\n

Some basic information about this system is shown in Figures 1, 2 and 3 below:<\/p>\n

\"image\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Figure 1: CPU-Z CPU Tab for Z77 Core i7-3770K System<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/strong> <\/p>\n

\"image\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Figure 2: CPU-Z Bench Tab for Z77 Core i7-3770K System<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/strong> <\/p>\n

\"image\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Figure 3: Geekbench 3.3.2 Scores for Z77 Core i7-3770K System<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Even though this system is still pretty fast, I felt like I could do better in some areas, with a current generation Z170 chipset system with an Intel Core i7-6700K<\/a> Skylake processor and 64GB of RAM. Last Saturday, I built this new system, and got Windows 10 Professional installed.<\/p>\n

Here is the parts list for this system:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Fractal Design Define R5 case<\/li>\n
  2. Seasonic SS-660XP2 power supply<\/a><\/li>\n
  3. ASRock Z170 Extreme 7+ motherboard (Micro Center\u2019s web page has it mislabeled as an Extreme 7)<\/li>\n
  4. Intel Core i7-6700K processor<\/li>\n
  5. Scythe Kotetsu CPU cooler<\/a><\/li>\n
  6. (2) 32GB Corsair Vengeance LPX 2666MHz DDR4<\/a> RAM kits<\/li>\n
  7. (2) 512 GB Samsung 850 Pro SATA III SSDs in hardware RAID 1<\/li>\n
  8. 400GB Intel 750 PCIe NVMe storage card<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Initially, I\u2019ll be using the Intel integrated graphics, but I may end up using an EVGA Geforce GTX 960 video card. But then again, I may not, since I want to reduce my power usage and have more PCIe lanes available for storage use.<\/p>\n

    I spent a couple of hours putting this system together, doing a pretty careful job with the cable management. When I had it ready to turn on for the first time (without putting the case sides on, which is always bad luck<\/strong>), I was rewarded with the CPU and case fans spinning, but no visible POST or video output at all. Luckily, the ASRock motherboard has a built-in LED diagnostic display, which was showing a code 55 error. Looking this up in the motherboard manual, I discovered that this was a memory-related issue. I removed two of the 16GB DDR4 RAM modules, and powered it back up, and this time I got a POST. <\/p>\n

    Going into the UEFI BIOS setup, I discovered that my ASRock Z170 Extreme 7+ motherboard<\/a> had the initial 1.4 BIOS, while the latest version was 1.7<\/a>. One of the fixes listed for version 1.7 is \u201cimprove DRAM compatibility\u201d. I was able to flash the BIOS to 1.7 using the Instant Flash utility in the UEFI BIOS setup, and then I was able to use all four 16GB DDR4 RAM modules. <\/p>\n

    Next I created a RAID 1 array with my two 512GB Samsung 850 Pro SSDs, using the Intel RAID controller that is built-in to the Z170 chipset. I made sure the Intel 750 was not installed yet, and then I used an old USB optical drive to install Windows 10 Professional on to the RAID 1 array. Windows 10 Professional installed default drivers for the dual Intel 1GB NICs, so I was able to get on the internet and download and install all of the latest Windows 10 64-bit drivers for this motherboard from the ASRock web site<\/a>. Then I used Windows and Microsoft Update to get Windows 10 fully patched.<\/p>\n

    Windows 10 recognized the Intel 750<\/a> using the default Microsoft NVMe drivers. I will benchmark using those drivers, and then compare the results to the native Intel NVMe drivers<\/a>. So far, I have benchmarked the new system using CPU-Z and Geekbench 3.3.2<\/a>. The basic information and scores for the new system is shown in Figures 4. 5, and 6 below:<\/p>\n

    \"clip_image002\"<\/a><\/p>\n

    Figure 4: CPU-Z CPU Tab for Z170 Core i7-6700K System<\/strong><\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    \"clip_image002[5]\"<\/a><\/p>\n

    Figure 5: CPU-Z Bench Tab for Z170 Core i7-6700K System<\/strong><\/p>\n

    <\/strong> <\/p>\n

    \"clip_image002[7]\"<\/a><\/p>\n

    Figure 6: Geekbench 3.3.2 Scores for Z170 Core i7-6700K System<\/strong><\/p>\n

    <\/strong> <\/p>\n

    Keep in mind, that beyond enabling XMP 2.1, I have not overclocked the new system yet. The new system is about 10-20% faster than the old system, from a CPU and memory perspective, depending on which benchmark you choose. In some respects, this is disappointing, but the real advantage of the new system is having twice the RAM, and a lot more potential I\/O bandwidth with the Z170 Express chipset<\/a>. With Windows 10 Professional, I have Hyper-V support (and the Core i7-6700K supports VT-x and VT-d), so I can run more VMs simultaneously. I also have two Intel 1GB NICS, which I plan to use together with NIC teaming in Windows 10.<\/p>\n

    I plan on getting at least one of the upcoming 512GB Samsung 950 Pro M.2 NVMe cards<\/a> (and this motherboard has three Ultra M.2 slots) when they are released in October\/November, so I will have plenty of disk space and I\/O performance for the VMs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n
    System<\/strong><\/td>\nCPU-Z Single Thread<\/strong><\/td>\nCPU-Z Multi-Thread<\/strong><\/td>\nGeekbench Single-Core<\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
    Core i7-3770K<\/td>\n1573<\/td>\n5920<\/td>\n3680<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
    Core i7-6700K<\/td>\n1711<\/td>\n6815<\/td>\n4404<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Back when I started at SQLskills in May of 2012, I built myself a pretty nice Z77 chipset system with an Intel Core i7-3770K Ivy Bridge processor and 32GB of RAM, running Windows 7 Enterprise Edition. This system uses an ASUS P8Z77-V Deluxe motherboard, with one 512GB OCZ Vertex 4 SSD. It was about the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,20,263,34,35],"tags":[264],"class_list":["post-998","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sql-server-hardware","category-intel","category-skylake","category-ssd","category-sql-server-storage","tag-desktop-system"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sqlskills.com\/blogs\/glenn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/998","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sqlskills.com\/blogs\/glenn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sqlskills.com\/blogs\/glenn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sqlskills.com\/blogs\/glenn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sqlskills.com\/blogs\/glenn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=998"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.sqlskills.com\/blogs\/glenn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/998\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sqlskills.com\/blogs\/glenn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=998"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sqlskills.com\/blogs\/glenn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=998"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sqlskills.com\/blogs\/glenn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=998"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}