However, now I see that on the shellshocker they have an MSI Gaming board that is a B150 instead of a Z170. When looking up the difference between the Z series and B series I see the B series is considered "Business class". What throws me off though is that the MSI is entitled as a gaming board.

I also see that with the B series it states that CPU overclocking isn't available....yet the MSI has one click overclocking? Am I missing something here?

MSI Board: //www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813130887

• 2

Last edited: May 26, 2016

• 4

Depends how much overclocking you want to do. As long as the board has the features you need, and it is only for regular use, the B series should be fine.

• 5

Asrock Z170 Pro 4 for overclocking. It has quiet decent 10 phases VRM. If you don't interest in overclock then choose whatever you want.

• 6

Get the most cheap Z170 chipset,better suport for high frq ram,oc,features,stability,etc ..

• 8

Having tested many boards... buy Z170 for less headaches. They want you to pay to play OC, so pay the cost, and enjoy the benefits of not having features disabled on your "K" CPU. If you do not plan to OC at all, then buy B150.

For about the same price you can also get Biostar Racing GT7... Lots of affordable and reliable Z170 boards out there for every budget.

B150 has less SATA ports possible, less PCIe configurations for CPU, and less PCIe lanes on chipset. Puget Systems has a nice page with the physical differences: //www.pugetsystems.com/labs/a...-B170-Q150-Q170---What-is-the-Difference-635/

• 9

Why not a H110 is more cheap and almost like a b150 ...

If u oc u want the z170 tier chipset if not get the h110 it will do the JOB

• 10

I think I will opt for the Z170 as planned. I have OC'ed a little in the past but with this new board and processor I plan on getting [skylake] I really wanna push it.

• 11

I wonder if you could run for example memory at 3000MHz XMP profile with a B150 motherboard? I'm running 3000MHz memory on a Z170 board and it overclocked my CPU slightly [which is not a K CPU].

• 12

The h variants,and b variants DO offer LIMITED oc options, sometimes you need to run an older bios[likr the asrock h97] but be warned to not expect full oc suport,the b150 msi also offers limited oc support,but im not sure how or what,i just built the pc,and did limited testing.