Intel Skylake i5 6600K & i7 6700K 1151 Z170 Review

Introduction

If there is one thing guaranteed to indicate how swiftly time is passing, it's another major release from Intel. We'd barely got used to Haswell before Devil's Canyon appeared, and we only seem to have just got settled with that when it's time for the next batch of processors and motherboards to appear. Welcome to the OC3D review of the Intel (Skylake) Core i5-6600K and Core i7-6700K CPUs.

Continuing a long-standing dedication to providing overclocking tools to the masses, the Skylake pair we have on test today also return to the overclocking fray with a full spectrum of options at your disposal. Anyone who longed for the BCLK to be unleashed will be pleased indeed.

Those of us with LGA1150 socketed motherboards have been looking with envious eyes at those fortunate enough to obtain an X99 chipset with all its DDR4 magnificence, but the best things come to those who wait, and the Z107 chipset brings DDR4 support to the more affordable Intel architecture. Having just seen the Broadwell CPUs with their incredible Iris 620 iGPU we are somewhat surprised to see the Skylake models only having the HD530 graphics. However, as these CPUs are more likely to be found in gaming rigs then we can understand the decision.

No your eyes do not deceive you. The i5-6600K and i7-6700K support both DDR3 and DDR4. The perfect crossover point, enabling those on limited budgets to obtain the latest hardware foundation without throwing away all of their previous build. 

Connectivity has never been lacking on an Intel platform, and the Z170 chipset is no exception. DDR3 and DDR4 support, 10 USB 3.0 ports, 6 SATA ports, 20 PCI Express 3.0 lanes and PCI Express storage support. About the only thing it's natively lacking is USB 3.1, and we're sure that the motherboard manufacturers will pick up that slack.