Intel’s Skylake finally lifts off

For PC makers, Intel’s new Skylake platform has been a long time coming. Consisting of sixth-generation Core i CPUs and accompanying 100-series chipsets, the hype has slowly been growing for the platform, with leaked benchmarks pointing to great base performance and fantastic overclockability. The good news is that wait is nally over. Launching at the start of August are the enthusiast-oriented Core i5-6500K and Core i7-6700K CPUs and accompanying motherboards, based on the high-end Z170 chipset. Lower-end CPUs and boards are expected to start ltering through from September onwards. The Skylake platform has seen multiple delays. At Computex in Taiwan in June, most major motherboard vendors were already showing o Z170 products, but CPUs were nowhere to be seen. Australian PC vendors have told APC that even leading right up to the launch, test CPUs were hard to come by, indicating that retail chips may initially be hard to nd. Skylake should also launch on laptops before the end of the year, with some multinational vendors anticipated to release products as soon as October. Taiwanese publication Digitimes is also reporting that Intel’s NUC and Compute Stick product lines will see Skylake updates in Q4 2015. We’ll have a full report on the rst sixth-generation Core i CPUs and Z170 motherboards next month.