New kaby lake build. motherboard advice

[Mark_1]

Hi, after many years of running Linux on old hand-me-down machines I'm finally going to bite the bullet and build a new rig, primarily for audio work. Ardour, hydrogen etc.

The Z270 boards are all quite new so I don’t expect there is much direct experience yet, but on a general note are there any motherboard brands that are known to work well with Linux, or are there any particular features or issues I need to be aware of?

The plan is to run the Intel Core i5 7600K, S 1151, Kaby Lake, Quad Core, 4 at the base clock speed of 3.8GHz and disable turbo.

16GB (2x8GB) Corsair DDR4 Vengeance

There are a few new Z270 boards out now and the ones I’ve been looking at are

ASUS ROG Strix Z270I Gaming.

ASRock Fatal1ty Z270 Gaming-ITX/ac
MSI Z270I GAMING PRO CARBON AC, Intel Z270
Gigabyte Z270N-Gaming 5

Thanks

[Citizen229]

Are you a dedicated intel person? AMD's new ryzen line is very impressive. Their 4 and 6 core chips are due for release on 4/11. If you swing either way wait for those chips to be released and some benchmarking to be done. If you are a strict Intel guy, wait it out. The worst thing that can happen in Intel does price cuts. No matter what you buy patience will prevail for you at this time.

[Mark_1]

I guess I’m an intel guy because they have generally worked well for me in the past, but fair point, unfortunately I can’t afford to wait, not least because the pilot light keeps going out in this old PC!
I noticed that the price for that CPU went down for a few days after the Ryzen release but is now back up to where it was before. I think the exchange rate for the £ isn’t helping.

[mbod]

Hello Mark_1,

I switched to a Kaby Lake in February: MSI Z270 GAMING PRO CARBON with i7-7700K and DDR4 8GB 3200-16 Ripjaws

I changed the motherboard and CPU on an existing Mint installation. Works like a charm. The only thing I did extra was the installation of kernel 4.9 from backports before changing the HW.

Matthias

PS
I have to add that I am using LMDE