Tuesday, December 22, 2015

Intel's Skylake CPU shortages are driving me nuts, and a Redshift update!

This post (archive here) from The Motley Fool the other day finally confirms my frustrations regarding Intel and their so-far really terrible track record producing 14nm silicon thus far, ever since Skylake was launched a few months ago.

Redshift Update

Alright, so here's the lastest on my PC building project ever since I posted an update. I decided to go with Skylake, for a few reasons. However, some of you folks are still going to facepalm over it but in the end, it was really something I had to choose.
  1. It has an upgrade path
  2. Z170 chipset offers more over the previous generation
  3. Internal VRMs no longer present on CPU dies
  4. I plan for this platform to be the one I'm on for the forseeable future
  5. If I don't go Skylake, I'll always regret it
And so, here we are. I choose Skylake for the basis of my system. I'm solid with this decision now, because I've already purchased the motherboard. I'll have an unboxing post available here soon. I bought the Gigabyte Z170X Gaming 3 for ~$147, and I'm pretty happy with the board so far. I can't wait until I actually get a chance to try it out.

Skylake Shortage

Alright, now for the other part of this post. Right now, the prices for the 6700K and 6600K are very much skewed right now. Intel is having terrible issues right now keeping up with the demand for it, for whatever reasons they are having with their manufacturing. According to them, though, their supply will get better come next year. I truly hope so.
Photo via The Motley Fool (saved me the effort of having to take my own screenshot)
I mean, just look at that photo above. The 6700K has a MSRP of $350. Meanwhile, you have prices of $400+. Some retailers offer it close to the price of $500. The MSRP for the 6600K is $243. That price is now heavily inflated by $40+. Some retailers are selling it close to the normal price of a 6700K.

For these reasons, I won't be buying the CPU for my build until some time next year. I really don't have a huge budget for this project to begin with, and I already buy parts as I go. I'm not an insanely rich person who can just eat whatever price is thrown at them, although I do wish very much that this rig was done by Christmas (it won't).

Redshift will be my next generation gaming machine, as well as my PC upgrade. I'm skipping consoles because they are really underpowered compared to a regular PC. My partlist (subject to change, but the URL stays the same) is available here.