EDIT3: build complete, final build and thoughts at post #23.

EDIT2: new list.

EDIT: This isn't getting any replies as is, so I'm moving the tl;dr to the top. Feel free to just respond to the tl;dr and ignore the wall of text below, or just to refer to it if something in the list makes you think I'm a crazy person. I mainly want advice on the motherboard: whether I should put more money into it, how much, why, good models that I should reasonably be able to afford, etc.

TL;DR: here's the list, without the essay. (Store doesn't have to be Mwave.) Putting off getting a graphics card and a few other things 'til later because I need a work rig right now and will have more money later. Already have storage. Tell me if there are better parts I should use or if I should reprioritize my spending. I have ~$100 in extra funds now.

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Hey duders. I haven't built a PC in years and years and years, so I've been having a lot of difficulty figuring out which parts to put my money into. I've put a lot of time over the last few days into trying to understand various components and figure out what factors should inform my decision-making, but I'm still unsure on a lot of things, so I figured now's the right time to present a list with my thoughts and request feedback.

Basically, I have ~950 kangaroo dollars (~US$700 or thereabouts) on hand to start my build with, and I do need to get it up and running ASAP since my last laptop just died. I also want to turn it into a serious, quality gaming rig in a month or so when I have more funds, but right now I just need to be able to set up a dev environment so I can get work done on it, so I can put off things like graphics cards and even storage (I have a few old drives sitting around) until I have the money. With the list I've built thus far I have extra money to buff up certain parts of the build, but adding a graphics card on my current budget would be pretty ruinous to everything else. For now I'm only really playing KI these days, and maybe picking up Forza Horizon 3 and ReCore soon, all of which I can play on my Xbox One and then move over to PC. (Thank god for Play Anywhere.)

With that in mind, the parts: (US$ figures are ballpark and supplied for the sake of Giant Bomb's large American member base)

I'll want a decent CPU, probably more for gaming than software development -- typically deploying builds to other hardware, and/or caring more about the big O kind of time save that means the difference between seconds and days/years/aeons, not the hardware kind that means the difference between seconds and more seconds.

At face value I'm not that interested in overclocking, which seems to make the 6500 the processor of choice. In fact, Australian summers have done things to my CPUs in the past which have led me to underclocking to stave off upgrade costs. But the option has some appeal for staving off obsolescence, which is one reason why that Z board is listed there. I figured I'd be able to drop in a 6600K in 2 years' time for cheap and get even more longevity out of the system -- but as it turns out, old CPUs don't exactly drop in price (scroll down to the graph). So maybe I should get that 6600K (and a fan, so outlay an extra ~$100) now? Or maybe I should downgrade to a H or B board and forget about overclocking? Alternatively, I guess I could save $100 or so now by downgrading to something like an i3, and add the CPU to the list of components to throw more money at later, but that seems like the least appealing option.

If I'm a little unsure about the CPU, I'm bewildered about the motherboard. I've read through a bunch of resources and guides to get a sense of what features or properties should inform my decision-making, but I'm still not making a lot of progress. The Fatal1ty board seems to pop up at multiple review sites (but far from all) as a value-for-money board in my (nominal) price range, but even if it's the best option at that price range I'm wondering if it's worth sinking more money into the board, and then I'm not sure how much more or what boards at those prices are good. This is probably where I need the most help. @xgryfter provided some thoughts in another thread, but I'm not sure that doubling my motherboard budget in context is the greatest idea. (But then again, maybe it is!)

Er, I'm cheaping out on the memory for now. Wasting $25 up front on memory that I'm going to pull out in a month's time seems fine to me, and the decent memory kits don't seem to be sold in singles, otherwise I might've made that a 1x8GB stick or something. That said, if nothing else in this build wants the extra $100 or so that I have in my budget, this might be the first thing I put the money into.

For storage, I have a 5-year-old 64GB Kingston SV100S2 SSD lying around, which performs IO at about half the speed of an entry-level SSD these days and is kinda cramped for a Windows 10 install, but it should suffice. Maybe if I find an adapter for my ASUS Taichi's weird proprietary M.2-like SSD I can have a 128GB primary drive instead. I also have a bunch of laptop HDDs sitting around that'll provide ample storage for my meager needs (including my music collection I have...maybe 30GB of data?) until I have money to throw at more storage. I'm interested in getting one of those M.2 drives at some point.

These components seem immune to obsolescence, so I'm willing to put a lot of money into them.

Getting a good PSU is something that informed builders stress pretty highly, so I did a bunch of searching around on the PSU for a Gold- or Platinum-certified unit that reviewed well, had plenty of power (500W+, I know I don't need 750W), and was easy to acquire in Australian stores, and ended up with this EVGA unit. I can't seem to find the G2 in 650W or 550W models in Australia, and the Corsair and Seasonic units seem to cost the same amount or more for less power, so I figure, what's a little more power than I'm ever likely to need hurt? I agonized over idle usage info for a while before figuring it probably doesn't matter. I'm envisioning 10 quality years with this unit, a vision which seems to be backed up by the warranty.

The case is probably the first place where I should think about making compromises, but the H440 seems to be a widely beloved favorite. I like the look of it, it seems very well-featured, and the silencing features have some appeal. (I think my Xbox One is a little loud, and that's apparently the quieter console.) Also, how did nearly every PC case become horrendously ugly in the 5 years since I last looked at these things?! I don't know, in the interests of the rest of the system I could go down to an S340 which also looks like a nice unit, albeit giving up some nice things like the noise-reducing padding. I could also get a dirt cheap case and add this to the growing list of things to improve later, I guess.

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Anyway, advice and suggestions on any and all of this are welcome.

Thanks in advance duders.

An update on this, I'm probably switching out the Fatal1ty K4 for a K6. Not much more expensive, supports SLI and USB 3.1, seems to be of a higher build quality and has some useful-looking debugging features that the K4 lacks. There are also ASUS and MSIproducts in this price range I'm considering. I doubt I'll go over this price range.

I'd take the ASUS Pro Gaming board over the Asrock any day of the week, it's a great board. I've done a few builds with it and am using the Z97 version in one of my personal systems. I've only had the pleasure of using that MSI board once but I liked it well enough, funny thing is I used it to replace that Asrock board for a client.

My opinions...

1. You want to replace as few components as possible (obviously) but you need a good base as well so builds like this can be really tough. The 6500 is a good CPU, even without an OC you should get an absolute minimum of 3+ very good years out of it so I wouldn't sweat not having the k. The motherboards you chose are a good start but like I said above I'd go with the MSI or ASUS over Asrock.

2. Really try to get a smaller power supply; you only need a 500w to 550w max for that machine like you said, so if you can save $40 by buying a lower wattage rating you'd be in a really good position. That being said, while having the best is nice, sometimes that isn't an option, thankfully there are many manufacturers out there who make very solid and dependable power supplies that aren't necessarily the creme of the crop but also don't cost an arm and a leg. I'd check out JonnyGuru and maybe HardOCP for some reviews and then compare what you read there to what you can find locally.

http://www.jonnyguru.com/modules.php?name=NDReviews&op=Review_Cat&recatnum=13

http://www.hardocp.com/reviews/psu_power_supplies/

3. Get a cheaper case. Maybe grab this http://au.pcpartpicker.com/product/4tV48d/corsair-case-cc9011041ww and save $80.

3. 4GB is not enough memory, even for short term use, so put some of the money you saved above into getting some proper RAM, (something like this http://au.pcpartpicker.com/product/xjp323/gskill-memory-f42400c15d8gvr) it doesn't have to be anything crazy just don't stick that value shit in there. Now you don't have to replace it in a couple months and you can add another 8GB kit in a few months if you feel the need.

Sorry I didn't reply sooner, for some reason I didn't get an email when you tagged me so I didn't see the thread until just now.

EDIT: I'm sure you know about Tweak Town being as that they are AU based but if not (and you can stomach the worst, most ad filled website design this decade) I'd check out their reviews. I personally don't trust these guys as much as I do Johny Guru or HardOCP but it may be easier to find their reviewed products locally. http://www.tweaktown.com/cat/cases_cooling_and_power_supplies/index.html

I keep looking for the gpu. I'm no expert, but I thought you had to occupy dual slots for memory.

edit- for 239 us, the 6600k is available on a major retailer's site

@xgryfter said:

s'cool. I might not pull the trigger on this build for a few days yet, and I've been learning a bunch about these parts and bouncing ideas off other people in the meantime. Thanks for your input. :)

Ah, I'd gotten sticker shock at the Sabertooth you endorsed in the other thread. The Pro Gaming board is a lot more manageable with my budget.

I might possibly be able to afford the Maximus VIII Ranger, however, which is at the low end of the ROG lineup. Is that a worthwhile upgrade? (Probably can't afford the lower-end Sabertooth, though, but some thoughts on that board too would be appreciated. EDIT: also the ROG Hero, which is nearly the same price.)

Are you just trying to find savings to reinvest in the rest of the build, or are there concerns about drawing too little power from a PSU during idle states?

Among the EVGA models, I can move to the 650W G1 and save $20. Any lower and I'm missing out on the Gold cert. Seasonic's Gold certified units are about as expensive as the EVGA in my current list even for a 550W unit. The Corsair CS550M 550W offers a $40 saving. I'll look into this a little more, but I might just end up sticking with the EVGA.

I'll look into it. I've also been considering switching to the NZXT S340, which saves almost as much and is a case that I still think is very nice. I'll switch to the S340 for now.

Heh, "that value shit" is pretty much what I thought when I looked at that stuff, too.

As fat as modern IDEs and web browsers have gotten in modern times, 4GB for Windows 10 still seems reasonably workable to me. But with the changes made thus far I think I can easily fit in 16GB of decent RAM right now, with money to spare, so I'll just go ahead and do that.

That opens up questions about the kind of RAM I should get: GSkill, Kingston, Corsair? If I can get a 2x8G kit of DDR4-3200 GSkill Ripjaws for $20 more than than the DDR4-2400 kits, should I leap on that or is extra speed completely useless? Should I prioritize 1x16GB kits like the GSkill Aegis?

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Anyway, this is where I'm at now, with probably $50-$100 to spare. I could see moving to a 6600K and a non-stock cooler, or upgrading the motherboard. Maybe if I pull more money out of the power supply or the case (I'm thinking about moving to that Deepcool Tesseract that people seem to be into, then getting a more expensive case when I have the money) I can do both. Again, thanks @xgryfter for the help! :)

I've used G-Skill in almost everyone of my builds for the last 10 years and I've only had to RMA two pair and one of those was because of an issue with the motherboard (Gigabyte) not the RAM. They also overclock easier and are more stable than any of the other brand names I've used. Going with 3200 will give you more headroom if you decide to overclock (which can literally be done with just a push of a button on these motherboards) and will make hitting those higher speeds easier. If you grab a K then grab the 3200 if not just stick with the 2400.

As far as power supply is concerned I'm trying to save you money by not having you buy more than you need but ultimately it's up to you where you want to allocate your funds. If your budget was a bit bigger I would say grab the EVGA 750w because there is absolutely nothing wrong with having some headroom and that's an awesome unit, it's what I use in my gaming system. The G1 is also a good unit, if you think you can put that $20 to good use elsewhere it'll still be way more than enough for your build.

@fnrslvr: If you aren't going to overclock (and you shouldn't look to it as future-proofing if you are buying a non-K CPU now, as it'll just be easier to pick up whatever generation processor we are at a few years down the road, plus the cost angle isn't going to work out that well), you can shave another $60 off it by going to a H170 chipset instead; this one from MSI is well regarded and even comes with a full-lane M.2 slot if you want to give that form factor a go. It seems to hover around $190-200 kangaroo dollars. Upgrading your motherboard really isn't important at all, as $100 there to get an extra 1-2% of performance (or less) could go towards a big GPU upgrade instead, so unless you have really specific requirements, I always tell people to go for the cheapest, name-brand motherboard that suits their needs.

If you go a bit cheaper on the case, you're in spitting distance of a GTX1060 without even making another cent.

EDIT: Also, rebates are for suckers. Never expect to get a dollar out of them and don't factor their inclusion into your price. If they eventually do pay out, that's great, but you'll dig a deep hole if you are relying on them to counter the price of other parts.

@mirado: lol, I don't think Australian stores do rebates. If you're wondering about the cheap DDR4-3200 or anything else, that comes courtesy of a modest little document fondly known by the locals here as PARTS.pdf. I was disappointed at their prices on the parts I was looking at before, so it's a good thing I checked back again.

They've also got that ROG Ranger motherboard on there at $290, which I'm very interested in if it's indeed a better board than the Pro Gaming board. That or the MSI Pro Gaming M5. Unfortunately they don't seem to have any Sabertooths. :(

My original instinct was to go for a cheap motherboard and a 6500 on the assumption that I'd be replacing the CPU (and hence the board, because inevitable new Intel socket standard) far more often than @xgryfter thinks I'll need to. That's why I was looking to put so much money into both the case and the PSU, since those are clearly highly future-proof. But it seems like getting 4 years out of a CPU/board is plausible, especially if I'm willing to get the K now and keep the overclocking option open. That makes putting money into the board seem far wiser.

I'm probably going to go for a GTX1070 or 1080 by around the end of October. I have other priorities 'til then. Meanwhile all the gaming I'll likely be doing is just an hour or so of practice a day in KI, which I have an XBone for. In the long run I'll be able to throw money at this thing, but for the next week or so I only have enough funds to get it started. Maybe next week I'll find $200 to get one of those NVMe drives to put in it.

@xgryfter: yeah, I get what you're saying wrt the PSU. At this point though I'm leaning towards further gutting the case budget, and maybe even stretching my budget a little, to fit in both the 6600K and a better motherboard. The PSU seems like a component I can just nail now, rather than getting something that's nearly as good but doesn't make sense to replace later.

@fnrslvr: Really, there's zero difference in performance between a $484 Maximus VIII Extreme and a $150 board from your manufacturer of choice. You really don't need a "better motherboard" as there's really no such thing unless a cheaper one is lacking some specific feature that you need (Thunderbolt support, dual NICs, etc). I'd list out the features I need to have, and pick the cheapest board that hits those points from the brand that I'd like. Don't get pulled in by the marketing; any two boards using the same chipset are going to overclock to more or less the same point (it's far more likely that the variance between individual processors will determine the kind of overclock you can push should you choose to do so). Anything beyond that point is just pissing away money.

That's complete bullshit, there is significantly more to a motherboard than just it's overclocking ability and core features. You should probably refrain from giving PC advice as you obviously don't know what you are talking about.

PSU is overkill, you can run an i7 & SLI GTX 1080s on a 550W (you probably shouldn't because it's cutting it close but it is possible).

Go for a 550W and save some of that cold hard cash. The EVGA G2 and Corsair RMx series are super, they both have 550-650W variants.

If you are not planning on SLI, a humble 450W will be enough for an i5 or i7 quad-core and a GTX 1080, if you are going to buy an AMD card I would err on the side of safety and get a 550W (AMD are not known for being power efficient).

The H440 wouldn't be my choice but it's a nice case, for me it's a little cooling starved and I don't like the cable management area but unless you are going small form factor case ventilation/cooling is not really a concern.

RAM - 4GB is a waste, you will later have to discard that stick or fill all your RAM slots making it cost more later on to upgrade, you should get 8GB minimum. Don't buy DDR4-2133, RAM speeds see a nice little increase by 2666 but quickly diminish afterwards, I am using DDR4-3200 but only because the DDR4-3000 I wanted was out of stock.

Remember if you are going to overclock you will also need a CPU cooler, the Intel ones are abysmal even at stock speeds. You will have to look at the Noctua DH-14/15 or Cooler Master Hyper 212, I am using AIO water cooling and my 4.7 Ghz 6700k idles at 28-32c and has max load temps of 56c with this amazing cooler.

@xgryfter: You're nuts, mate. If you think that dumping an extra $300 into a motherboard is going to show any difference for this person's primary usage, you're the one who shouldn't be giving out any advice. It's not there.You won't see it. Doesn't matter what heatsinks they've slapped on the VRMs or their better power phasing or anything like that. Any gains in capacitor or material quality are worthless given the average user's upgrade cycle, which'll see them tossing the whole mobo in five or six years anyway. Spend that money elsewhere.

Care to enlighten me on what I'm missing?

Obviously quite a bit considering not a single person here, including myself, recommended to him a $300+ motherboard so I don't know where you are pulling this shit from.

@jasoncooke:Again, the PSU was chosen for Gold cert/build quality/reviews, and 750W just happened to be the lowest power unit offered by that manufacturer that sat in that sweet spot. (And the competing products in that quality bracket offered less power for the same price, so I may as well take the 750W.) I might sacrifice quality and pick a cheaper unit if I feel like I need to claw back some cash to throw at something else, but I don't think I'm there yet.

EDIT: also the list has changed. This is the last list I posted, though the motherboard is unsettled and will probably change. Probably getting DDR4-3200, case suggestions are welcome, and thanks for the cooling info because I'm probably going to go for the 6600K.

Also, @mirado, @xgryfter, make your cases and all, but be nice. I have a compsci degree and I'm doing my research, you don't have to worry about a poor clueless sap being misled. If you can link me to some solid info backing up your thoughts that I can dig into it'd go a lot further than arguing about whether some other duder knows what they're talking about.

Also @xgryfter I'm still interested in your thoughts on those ROG boards, the lower-end Sabertooth, etc.

The lowest power unit EVGA offer in the G2 series is 550W, Corsair RMx PSUs (550w - 1000W) have a slightly better review than the G2 (which is meaningless) but also offer an additional three years of warranty, that is why I bought a Corsair (650W for some buffer), I was close to buying a G2 a while ago.

A 550W or 650W G2 / RMx is significantly cheaper than the 750W models where I live, it's unfortunate if they don't sell them in Australia.

@jasoncooke: Yeah, 750W is the lowest G2. They do sell the RMx's at 550/650W, but they're about the same price as the 750W G2.

Well that sucks, is this an Australia thing or a specific store?

I'm "pulling this shit from" @fnrslvr's post about spending more on a motherboard and what kind of benefit he'd actually get from doing that. The boards I posted were a comparison between about as ridiculous as you can get and something more modest in order to illustrate that more money != a lot of actual gain. You still haven't explained how that thought is "complete bullshit."

Can do. Here's a video illustrating my point; list out what you need in a board (number of SATA ports, etc), and then pick a board from a manufacture you like. That's it, really; you can split hairs all you like, but at the end of the day, the major companies all make similar quality boards in similar price brackets. One'll have a different flavor of UEFI BIOS, one might overclock a bit better than the other (but see my original point about how an individual CPU makes a far bigger difference when it comes to overclocking potential), one might have better customer support, but at the end of the day, they will all basically offer the same PCI-E layout, they will all have around the same quality of onboard sound (although you'll probably be running HDMI out of your GPU so that's moot), they all have a similar amount of USB ports. Thow a dart and it'll land on a board that will do you just fine; you'll never find an AMAZING board that blows away a similar priced competitor, or a total pile of dogshit from someone reputable. You spoke about the Maximus VII Ranger or the Sabertooth, right? Let's break them down:

1. Chipset: The same.
2. PCI-E slots: The same.
3. SATA ports: The same.
4. Onboard Audio: Ranger has a different ROG chipset, the Sabertooth uses the usual Realtek.
5. USB ports: Seems like the same.

I could keep going, but really, the only notable difference I can see at ALL is that the ranger claims to support faster RAM overclocks, but it's hard to say as they both are happy to use the usual XMP profiles, so the Sabertooth might just not have all of its options listed. And the likelihood of that making any sort of difference is close to nill given all other things being equal, anyway.

So, do you like the color white, or the color black? :D

@jasoncooke: I googled around a bit, checked au.pcpartpicker.com, etc. Turned up a 650W at one place for $10 cheaper in store in a different state, not worth the postage. It's fine, having a really reliable 750W unit with a 10 year warranty means I'll basically always be set.

Okay, so I've been busy for a few days so I haven't been able to get back here with an update, but this is the current build.

Actually, table:

For a total of $1048.

I have a line of interest-free credit in the form of a dad who insists I don't compromise on parts, and I'll have more money in about a week anyway, so I'm able to go over my original budget. With the extra funds I've gone ahead and added the 6600K and a widely recommended cooler, whilst still filling out the memory and holding onto the good PSU. I'm probably going to stick with the S340 case, in part because it's cheaper than the H440 and nice enough, and in part because just about every case on the market is ugly as sin anyway. The H440 looks nicer than everything else on the market and the silencing stuff really appeals to me, but it seems like the case has a few problems and I'd really like to see a new generation version of that model before I commit that kind of money.

The motherboard topic still frustrates me. I've opted for the MSI M5 over the Fatal1ty K6, I'm not sure it's the right decision and I might switch back but there's not that much between them to separate them. I'm disqualifying the ASUS boards in this price range because the diagnostic features on the boards seem worse. (I would like to have the board tell me what's wrong if a random component fails and the machine doesn't boot, and error code > single LED per component.) I could find more money to put into the board and go for a higher-end model from ASUS or MSI, but I'm still struggling to see the value proposition.

On that topic,

To be clear, I don't expect a performance gain.

I mean, pretty early on into reading up on this stuff I looked into the Intel Z/H/etc chipsets, and just looking at the layout diagram on this page I thought, "geez, that's basically the entire thing what logically simulates the x86 random access machine thingy. There's basically no opening for the board vendor to fill with a component that'd make this thing chew through instructions faster at all." I mean, I get that better connectors and/or power phase components/cooling might permit better overclocking, I guess? But they're all using the exact same Z170, they're all trying to stretch the same limited supply of HSIO lanes across their selection of ports, etc. It's pretty clear that I'm paying for an essentially Intel system with whatever the vendor can tag on around the edges.

lol, that white Sabertooth does look pretty nice...

I moved up from the ASRock K4 to the K6 because of things like on-board diagnostic LED screen, USB 3.1, and SLI (I don't know that I'll use this, but these kinds of convenient options add up). The MSI seems similar in features (lacks on-board switches and a cover for those IO panel components, but hey, extra M.2 drive and one of the M.2 drives not being under the video card has some, far-off appeal?) and is a brand which isn't ASRock, who have taken some flack in this thread. But then I think, ASRock seem to be planting their flag at the K6, unless you want some super-nutty overclocking board. They're not trying to upsell me on a hierarchy of boards above this tier like MSI (M7, MPower, XPower) or ASUS (the ROG boards, the Sabertooths), where each successive leap has dubious and/or poorly explained benefits. So I don't know, maybe I'll switch back to ASRock because the K6 is basically their premium board and their offerings make sense to me?

I don't know dude, it just doesn't seem like the vendors make the case for moving up from this K6, M5, etc. price tier, to the Hero, Sabertooth, M7, etc. tier, all that clear at all -- and it annoys the hell out of me. Reviewers don't make the case clear either, and yet they seem to endorse this entire tier of boards without taking a moment to address the (to me) obvious question of what you're getting over the tier below or what you're missing out on from the tier above. I know you've been trying to drive home your take that there's no difference and that the correct decision is to get the cheapest model that has the features, but the very existence of this elaborate pricing hierarchy drives me mad. Are they just shilling snake oil to fools, or is there a legitimate customer for each of these boards? At this point I could probably find the extra $50-$100 if I felt like I was going to get a meaningfully better component, like I'm willing to spend more on the PSU, but even after studying this intensively I don't see the point.

I don't know. I think I'll move back to the ASRock. Seems good, reviewed well, that Fatal1ty guy seems like a cool dude, and they all have 3 year warranties anyway. (Except the Sabertooth's 5.)

Fuck motherboards.

You probably won't be needing the more expensive, higher model Asus or MSi boards, as even the Asus Pro Gaming is very good. At the same time, the Asrock boards have gotten very favorable reviews, so I would guess that is also a fine choice. The K4 is actually a little smaller than a normal ATX board, so I don't know how it is to mount.

You will be able to play some games on the integrated GPU, though usually not the newest games. Turning down the settings to medium and resolution to 720p should allow you to play a lot of 3 or 4 year old games at good frame rates. I will of course recommend you buy a GTX 1070 or 1080, though if you're holding off until early next year NVIDIA will probably announce the 1080ti in January and I'd expect the 1080 to drop in price.

It's all hot bullshit. Or, at the very least, I've never seen any hard data telling me otherwise. A good mid-tier board will last you more years than you'd care to keep it, and outside of a few nice but not critical extras (and the obvious caveat about the voltage regulation/overclocking potential, but that's such a small subset of the market that those people hardly need my help in choosing hardware), I've always shaken my head when people spend huge amounts on the motherboard, especially when they may have a substandard PSU. I mean, given unlimited money, I'd go nuts. I'd eat a Maximus VII Sabercat Ultra Tough Edition ROG Black right up. No reason not to do it. But without unlimited funds, I'm going to take the $50 or $100 or $200 I could blow on a board that no one can really tell me what I'm getting out of it, and get a better GPU, or a bigger SSD, or even faster RAM.

Let me go back to my example of the craziest Z170 board out there, in the closing of this review from Tweaktown:

I want to take a second and discuss the value of this $500 Z170 motherboard. It's no secret that differentiation is hard to provide and even harder to communicate with the Z170 chipset. Since so many features are provided through the PCH and CPU clocks are roughly the same among boards, many users are just fine with a sub $200 motherboard. The truth is that these higher priced boards might cost a premium, but there are features that add to their cost.

It then goes on to talk about overclocking related features, a built-in wireless card, and a Thunderbolt port. That's it. That's what the most extreme of the extreme can get you, so how little must the sub $300 offerings have to differentiate themselves? Hell, that crazy board can't even do 3/4 way SLI! (In fact, none of them can, unless they have an add-on PLX chip.)

So, it may be a case of the normal offerings being good enough, and the crazier offerings being a bit better, that causes the reviews to endorse what they do. There's nothing wrong with those more expensive boards, after all. Or, it could be more nefarious; the people usually interested in this stuff would be the ones visiting these sites, so the reviews reading like marketing pitches may be a bit intentional. I can't say, all I know is that in recent years, your choice of motherboard really has never mattered less when you enter the murky middle of the product line. As long as the board you receive is working the way it should, you'll hopefully never know that it's there, and it'll perform to a roughly equivalent degree both in terms of operation and longevity as something more expensive.

You're a well informed duder. You probably know more than I do given what I've read, or at the very least you're more informed about the (lack of) differences between your choices. Don't fret over it; trust that if you can't see a striking, glaring difference, that there isn't one. Your part selection looks excellent to me. With the addition of your storage drives and your GPU of choice, you'll have a killer system.

So uh, this build turned out pretty good.

Butcher of the Horde

Named after a Magic: the Gathering card of the same name. Powerful, if scrappy in places. Also red/black/white.

After all that drama over the motherboard decision, I ended up going with the ASRock Fatal1ty K6. The main reason I went with it, was because it turns out the board's in the same price tier as the Hero and the Sabertooth and the M7, but ASUS and MSI hate Australia and charges us extra whilst apparently ASRock sees fit not to.

I went with the EVGA GTX 1070, about a month after getting the build running, because I was impressed with the quality and service of the PSU. The media has taken note of some issues with the card's cooling, but their warranty seems like the best around, they made some firmware adjustments, and they're sending out thermal pads, which I'll mess with if I feel like the fan is getting too loud. I haven't really been able to push it yet to find out -- the card really doesn't care at all about Killer Instinct, and I haven't had the space for much else until I got my 960 Pro in the mail just today. Downloading DOOM now, then maybe Dishonored 2.

The 960 Pro is probably all kinds of overkill for games, to the point where I'm really unlikely to see a game actually milk anything close to the peak performance out of the thing. But I'm going back into research in static analysis of large code bases, so maybe my research will be able to make use of it. In truth, I saw a good local deal on the Pro (AU$430, which is the RRP of the drive converted to AUD, but I would've been hit by shipping and the Australia Tax so it would've been a bunch more), didn't see any reviews for the 500GB 960 Evo forthcoming (the 250GB Evo is apparently a disappointment so I wasn't risking it), and this was only AU$100 more than the celebrated MyDigitalSSD BPX was selling for locally, so I just lost patience and jumped on the drive. Now I should probably find out if this thing is eligible for that Watch Dogs 2 code, but my backlog is pretty huge at this point, so...

Anyway, I'd like to thank everyone who contributed advice to this thread. I'll post pics shortly.