My SkyLake 6700k Journey

[Solarstarshines]

Well Ladies and Gents this is a little about my new build and the Journey i went on to get it done glad it's over


Anyway about all when building a Skylake platform you have to make sure you go into Bios and fix legacy support for USB 2.0 or you'll be dead in the water trust me on this have been fighting this beast for 2 days


I even swapped Motherboards I had a Gigabyte Gaming 7 but the USB froze and couldn't get it to work no mater what i did

So now i am using a Asrock Fatality K6

Anyway my Build consist of these parts

I7-6700K CPU

Ram 32GB of Gskill TridentZ 3200MHZ

Asrock Fatality Z170 K6 Gaming MotherBoard

CD/DVD Burners Pioneer /Asus

Samsung Evo 840-250GB OS

500GB Seagate Barracuda

640GB Toshiba

1TB Seagate Barracuda

500GB WD-MYBOOK Backup

Cooling Corsair H110i GT

Corsair HX1050 PSU

Case Phanteks Enthod Case

Here are some Benches and Pics The last picture with the PC on is with the Gigabyte G1 Board that wouldn't work

 

[Solarstarshines]

I failed to mention i already overclocked it to 4.6 Ghz you can see it on my Firestrike run

 

[Solarstarshines]

My CineBench @ 4.6Ghz

 

[ThrashZone]

Oh no you polluted it with win-8 ouch and 10

 

[essenbe]

Looks good Tommy. Good looking rig. Glad you got it running. How do you like it?

 

[Solarstarshines]

Looks good Tommy. Good looking rig. Glad you got it running. How do you like it?

It's a good rig just unhappy i had to trade the Gigabyte Board for a Asrock but none the less it does the Job i just don't understand how both boards locked up the USB

If any of you purchase a Z170 makes sure to go into Bios and mark USB Legacy or you'll be stuck like me

 

[Solarstarshines]

Oh no you polluted it with win-8 ouch and 10

Polluting on Enhancing windows 7 wouldn't let me use all 32GB of ram

Besides that it's much smoother oh yeah and it was Win 10

 

[ThrashZone]

Still sweet buddy great job by the way
Too bad about the gigabyte board but I'm sure the AsRock is better anyway
Yep home premium is like that you would need 7 pro to use all the good stuff I hear but 32gb of ram is an extreme amount
16gb is all good

I did get a 7 pro just haven't used it yet still planning my way to 10 not sure how it will go
Still have a 8 pro upgrade unused :/
Might eventually be on this 7 home premium and I'll buy 10 next year sometime if it suites.

 

[ignatzatsonic]

i just don't understand how both boards locked up the USB

Are you referring to the installation of Windows 7 on Z170 boards?

As I understand it, by default the Z170 chipset and BIOS will not support full USB 2.0 Enhanced Host Controller (EHCI) mode. This means that USB devices will not work without an XHCI environment.

[PSA] Z170 chipset may affect Windows 7 users - www.hardwarezone.com.sg

It's a known issue and there are workarounds that vary between motherboard manufacturers.

Enabling USB legacy support in the UEFI is one such workaround.

Some BIOSes have a choice to "enable Windows 7 Installation" or "EHCI mode".

ASRock has a USB 3 support patch for Windows 7 installation. As an alternative, you can also download the USB drivers and add them to a Windows ISO.

I don't have any personal experience with this stuff yet, but I'm planning on a Skylake machine (6600K) and that's what I've discovered from studying so far.

 

[ThrashZone]

Yea I really didn't see manufactures limiting sells of z170's just for 8 or 10
7 is still way too popular for that to happen unless M$ starts subsidizing losses to them

Funny thing is 8 and 10 are all downloaded iso's and 7 has mostly cd's so what's up with that no usb support activated

 

[Solarstarshines]

i just don't understand how both boards locked up the USB

Are you referring to the installation of Windows 7 on Z170 boards?

As I understand it, by default the Z170 chipset and BIOS will not support full USB 2.0 Enhanced Host Controller (EHCI) mode. This means that USB devices will not work without an XHCI environment.

[PSA] Z170 chipset may affect Windows 7 users - www.hardwarezone.com.sg

It's a known issue and there are workarounds that vary between motherboard manufacturers.

Enabling USB legacy support in the UEFI is one such workaround.

Some BIOSes have a choice to "enable Windows 7 Installation" or "EHCI mode".

ASRock has a USB 3 support patch for Windows 7 installation. As an alternative, you can also download the USB drivers and add them to a Windows ISO.

I don't have any personal experience with this stuff yet, but I'm planning on a Skylake machine (6600K) and that's what I've discovered from studying so far.

That was the workaround Legacy USB also when i unplugged it ,It stop being stuck not so much with the Gigabyte one it continued to be stuck it sucked balls

This shouldn't be a issue at all i have no idea why they do things like this knowing not everyone is using USB3.0 devices

 

[ThrashZone]

Yea I really don't see how uefi is more secure than legacy unless someone uses a password to access the bios but you can do that on both :/

To me uefi adds more risks than secure
Having utilities that have direct access to the bios to make changes seems more of a risk not less of a risk

So unless a bios password is used where's the security really seems more of a convenience than anything

 

[Solarstarshines]

Yea I really don't see how uefi is more secure than legacy unless someone uses a password to access the bios but you can do that on both :/

To me uefi adds more risks than secure
Having utilities that have direct access to the bios to make changes seems more of a risk not less of a risk

So unless a bios password is used where's the security really seems more of a convenience than anything

Pretty much skipping through all the BS they want you to install 10 from the jump and go from there

If i would of bought Windows 10 after confirming this i would have the working Gigabyte Board so i am like Mother-clucker over here because these people are throwing curve balls on new gear

 

[ThrashZone]

Yea but 10 would have to be on a flash or cd so what's the difference ?
usb3 device okay they are pretty cheap would that really of made it easier if so add to cart
I have 1 I believe but it's huge so I doubt I would waste it on a small iso installer :/

 

[Solarstarshines]

Yea but 10 would have to be on a flash or cd so what's the difference ?
usb3 device okay they are pretty cheap would that really of made it easier if so add to cart
I have 1 I believe but it's huge so I doubt I would waste it on a small iso installer :/

You can always opt for the actual Disc lol

 

[ThrashZone]

Personally I would prefer to buy a os that would come with a disk
10 doesn't yet as far as I've seen it's all downloads so yea burning to a cd I suppose is okay why didn't you ?
10 for sell at like Newegg/.. I'm not sure if those are on cd's or just downloads ?
Nice info to know none the less about usb2

My 8 pro upgrade is a bootable flash on a usb2 device still not using tried it and bailed out of 8.1.
Start8 goes to waste really didn't help 8 much but did a little.

 

[essenbe]

Are you guys blaming the OS? Tommy's problem was the BIOS settings. As far as I know, Asrock has, for some strange reason, always had legacy USB 3.0 disabled. I don't know about Gigabyte. My P67 Asrock board was that way, and that was before Windows 10 was even on the drawing board, and Windows 8 wasn't released yet. The only reason Windows 10 worked is because 10 has native support for USB 3.0, 7 does not. I'm not sure about 8/8.1, but I don't think so.

UEFI is safer. You guys are just thinking of the wrong kind of safe. Windows 10 will install in MBR or UEFI mode. It just depends on how the BIOS is set up. I've installed mine both ways, I'm in UEFI mode now.

 

[ThrashZone]

Yea I was just asking what the difference is a bootable flash installer is no different than another although supporting drivers might help but if the setting is disabled that is another story

I was also referring to all of the new utilities popping up that give a user direct access to bios from inside the os
This will also give any malware..... that is designed to corrupt the bios
I personally don't see how that is more secure quite the contrary I see it as less secure

I know you Steve don't use that type of bios accessible utilities from the os and I now see at least one reason why
Giving a user easier access also gives bad guys easier access imho.

I have yet to try to install anything with a usb device on my asus system so I don't know if it will work or not.

 

[essenbe]

Mike, if you are in UEFI Mode, you may have to disable Secure boot and possibly alter CSM, depending on your settings. If you are installed in MBR, you shouldn't have any problems booting from USB. UEFI disables any external virus or .EXE file from executing and altering the boot settings at startup. I don't know a whole lot about it, but for it to run at startup it is supposed to have to have an acceptable digital signature, and then your computer writes a private key to the UEFI file. Only those things will load at startup. I'm sure, in time, the bad guys will find a way around it, but it does make it a lot harder for something to take over the boot partition.

 

[ThrashZone]

Yep as far as I know it's uefi compatibility mode
These are the only usb settings and partial was the default for x99
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