All I want for Christmas...

[cruzinforit]

As the song goes, all I want for Christmas is a Z170 mini ITX motherboard with Intel GBe, DDR3 support, and a minimum of 5 SATA III ports. Won't one of these companies please oblige? So far everything announced is DDR4 only. There really is no good cost/benefit for DDR4 over DDR3-1866 right now.

 

[ShintaiDK]

Pretty much forget DDR3 on MiniITX. Also more than 4 SATA ports will be extremely rare if any. If you can replace 1 SATA with a M.2 then sure.

 

[cruzinforit]

I can handle one less SATA port, but the lack of DDR3 is painful, since I currently have 24GB of DDR3, I would already be downgrading to 16GB one way or the other, but the performance advantage (or lack therof) of DDR4 makes it a terrible value proposition. I get that DDR4 is the new hotness, but the performance advantage just isn't there to be worth the additional cost for the average person.

 

[ShintaiDK]

With DDR4 you can use 32GB in 2 slots on MiniITX.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I can handle one less SATA port, but the lack of DDR3 is painful, since I currently have 24GB of DDR3, I would already be downgrading to 16GB one way or the other, but the performance advantage (or lack therof) of DDR4 makes it a terrible value proposition. I get that DDR4 is the new hotness, but the performance advantage just isn't there to be worth the additional cost for the average person.

Is it DDR3L? Skylake won't take regular DDR3.

 

[Wreckem]

Pretty much forget DDR3 on MiniITX. Also more than 4 SATA ports will be extremely rare if any. If you can replace 1 SATA with a M.2 then sure.

So far these two Z170 m-itx boards have 6 sata ports. These will be two of the three most popular itx options when it comes to Z170. The other will be whatever Asus decides to release.

Asrock Z170 Gaming-ITX/ac
Gigabyte Z170N-Wifi

Several Z97 boards did as well, such as the Gigabyte Z97N-Wifi.

I doubt many if any Z170 boards of any form factor will be taking DDR3. More than likely one would have to step down to H170 for that.

 

[obidamnkenobi]

Is it DDR3L? Skylake won't take regular DDR3.

What? are you serious? That blows. I have have 12GB of DDR3 I want to use. DDR4 is like $100-150 bucks for 8 or 16GB! Then I'll have to reconsider my upgrade plans. My i7-920 is working pretty well..

edit: looks like 2x4GB is ~$60. That's more doable.