Is there a use case for you to buy 16 cores? Or to go for the X platform?
Because in terms of gaming with Intel, less cores + higher clockspeed on all cores, is going to give you better performance.
And the X platform is very expensive.
The 79*** CPUs are skylake based. I would get something at least Kaby Lake based. If not Coffee Lake. A. For better clockspeed B. Newer cpu features and the fact that the 4k cutoff for Netflix etc, is Kaby Lake.
An 8 or 12 core CPU is going to be a much better balance for gaming and still offer plenty of threads for most anything else.
In terms of motherboards: I tend to like Gigabyte. Their RMA process actually works. So, they back their product. And they usually have most of the features I like, at each price level. They are effective at releasing bios updates. And their boards are generally pretty happy with most RAM.
Their one issue for me is that they still sometimes make boards with layout issues.
ASUS, despite being basically the industry standard, have put themselves into a weird corner where they don’t seem to be good about ho honoring replacements on most but their top end boards and videocards. I have seen way too many posts suggesting this.
However, Asus boards perform the best (though we are talking about small margins), overclock the best, are consistently among the best in terms of exposing features for granular control of various things. Don’t usually skimp on fan headers. Dont usually have layout issues. Are usually good about bios updates.
But, I have known them to be a bit more picky about ram choice.
MSI is a lot better than they used to be. They are competing in nearly all aspects. However, they still seem to have a higher frequency of stability issues. At least in their more economically priced boards. Their high end stuff seema good.
Asrock pretty much goes model to model. Some are fine. Some are junk. They do tend to expose bios features, like ASUS does. But They do also consistently have the thinnest PCBs, to squeeze a few bucks and undercut competitors. YMMV
A minute with newegg reviews, will reveal boards with widespread issues.
Tomshardware seems to actually put their mitts on more boards, than other sites. But, if they have actually reviewed your specific hardware: Hardocp and Techreport.com are my two faves. Their individual testiing methodologies are superior, IMO. Techreport is especially great for GPU and CPU data. And If [H] tells you a board is good, it’s good. It’s not just another article pushed out.