Intel's 6th Generation Core ?Skylake? product line is launched today, and complementing that release is a range of motherboards from top-line vendors eager to have their hardware inside your new PC. However, for the first time Intel's release range is limited to only K-series desktop CPUs ? namely the Core i7 6700K and i5 6600K, so naturally motherboard vendors are highlighting their overclocking range of Z170 designs at launch this time around. With the H- and B-class motherboards scheduled for later in the year today's range of available models is perhaps the most streamlined it's ever been.

Intel's Z170 chipset, codenamed Sunrise Point, is the first in the mainstream to features DDR4 support and an LGA 1151 socket. As a result new systems will tend to have a higher upgrade cost than previous generations, which could at least inherit DDR3 DIMMs from older systems, or otherwise take advantage of a depressed memory market price. The higher than usual costs necessitate hard work from partners to make their own motherboard designs ? based on the standard Intel chipset and their own secret sauce ? even greater value to get over this upgrade hurdle. Given how strong Z97 was, they truly have their work cut out for them; thankfully new chipset features not available for Z97's launch, such as USB 3.1 and NVMe RAID, will help.

ASUS are well-known throughout consumer electronics, with a major presence in the motherboard and VGA market. However they have also gradually diversified into peripherals, monitors, and more recently wearables. By any measure they?re a hardware giant, but for today we?re focussing on just one small product, the ASUS Z170-A.