Wow, what board did you use?
A bunch actually.
I tried the MSI x370 gaming carbon. The asus B350 prime and the gigabte B350 something or other.
I tried two different MSI boards with different results, and I tried two different asus boards with different results.
And the gigabyte board was shit from the ground up.
I agree with @MisteryAngel here...If you did not have the 7700 already i would say that you should consider the 1600x as for the workloads that you describe it will give you the same experience to a 1700. Especially if over-clocked. The multi-tasking habits that you describe should not be an issue for any of the 2 CPUs.
But since you already have the 7700 which is also a good overclocker there is no reason to do this now. It will need at least a couple of years (maybe more) for games to utilize enough threads to make 8 core CPU advantageous in gaming and the 7700 should handle chrome load just fine. So unless you want to save money and still get good value, which then the 1600x becomes a very good choice, keep what you have and you can consider a Ryzen in 2-3 years. The technology will be better and more mature then anyway.
I am likewise not interested in being a beta tester for AMD. Looks like the only board to consider is the Crosshair, and still that one has some issues. Constant UEFI updates, bugs in AGESA, RAM issues, updates to OS:es etc. AMD has promised more AGESA updates in May. So the platform will be in flux for months yet.
I'm happy that AMD is doing something good again, but as always a new platform has teething problems. In ~six months it will probably be a lot better. I already have plenty of performance, Ryzen will not be much of an upgrade. I want a platform upgrade, i.e. a better motherboard. So I need to find a motherboard that I like, and so far only the most expensive ones seems to be close to what I want. And even those have some interesting issues. I do not want a repeat of my last motherboard purchase, the GBT X79 I currently use have had many problems that took quite some time to work around. The work has been done, so now I have a stable platform (no thanks to GBT). I do not fancy another round of troubleshooting. Maybe next Black Friday or next January?
If I already had a 7700K and mostly played games and similar, I would not consider Ryzen an upgrade, 'cause it isn't.
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That doesnt really sounds like a huge supprise to me. 
i generally don't reply to these threads because it's often just people subconsciously wanting a pat on the head or a slap on the hand. confirmation bias is strong on the internet.
i will say though that the Ryzen hype might be leaking a little. it's hip right now to be all about Ryzen, but it's really just a cpu at the end of the day. i don't think you have to worry about being kicked off the cool kids table for buying something else.
It has nothing to do with sitting at a table. I just want to know I bought the most ideal thing at this tier.
Buyers remorse is always strong in me.
Again, my Asus Prime X370 Pro is completely fine and running my 1700 stable at 3.8GHz. "updates to OS" is a windows thing, kernel 4.10 patches were ready on day one.
Well, depending on the use case, maybe you did, maybe you didn't.
Anyway, now you would have to invest more money to switch.
So until you really have to for some reason .... don't.
I wouldnt though. thats why I made this thread. It would cost me nothing to return the 7700k.
And obviously you want to build a ryzen system because otherwise you wouldn't be asking permission.
Hey, I'm not against it. If you don't mind a little hit in some games, ryzen is killing it everywhere else.
If you weren't a gamer you probably wouldn't have gotten teh 7700k
So I'm gonna say you made the right choice
There are so few games out worth playing that take advantage of the extra cores (maybe none) and wont' be for the foreseeable future.
You not only need games to be optimized that way but games worth playing need to be optimized that way. Just any old game wont' do.
I find it hard to imagine a few chrome tabs (none of which will be eating resources but a video) is gonna push you below a ryzen CPU
Many game seem to scale well across cores. When Ryzen first hit the stores and the whole gaming debate started I was very surprised to see how well optimised some games and engines are.
An overclocked Kabylake i7 will make a really nice windows desktop machine and short term at least will deliver a performance edge in gaming. Ryzen will offer a little less performance in games but the PC industry is moving in the multi core direction and multicore processing power of Ryzen is clear.
I think I'd lean toward moving to AM4 while I could send the 7700K back and use the 6500 and board to build a NAS while the extra cost is a motherboard. That's just me though and a powerhouse desktop+NAS is much more appealing.
If gaming is the main task maybe look at what games you play and see how they scale with cores, then consider how much use having a NAS on the network would be.
While every board partner has had problems launching AM4, ASUS has been a Fail Cascade.
While their build quality as always is top notch, they just have been plagued with issues since Day One,---stay away from ASUS for AM4!
I am running an Asus board without any problems. For a month now. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
What is your experience?
My experience is to learn from other's horrible experiences with ASUS AM4 mainboards.
There are just too many bad reports of users, including pro-reviewers, to be ignored.
Now if these many issues have been satisfactorily resolved with updates, that is well.
However, you expect better from this company whose business model is to charge more than every other vendor and whose customers blindly chase after them like children following the Pied Piper.
This is just another reason why I went to ASRock taichi.
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So, "none" is your answer but you read a lot. Fine.
You don't like a brand? Cool, I don't like some companies, soooo....
I had shit fail from nearly every hardware vendor. MSI, Gigabyte, Zotac, ASRock, ... But so far my track record with Asus is pretty good. My dual Xeon is on an Asus board, my Skylake i5 build (that I sold to a friend) is still running fine. And now on ryzen .... same thing, running fine.
Maybe you should also consider how many boards Asus is selling compared to anyone else.
Also I don't know where you live but I can't say that Asus AM4 boards are overpriced, actually they are more on the reasonable side here in Germany. So could you link to a shop where you get your price information? I would like to see that for myself.
I would still get Ryzen 7 over an i7 7700K, the performance gap is marginal in terms of gaming. But I wouldn't regret the purchase since a 7700K is going to pack a lot of punch on it's own anyways, overclock that baby to heck and it will rival a stock, 6-Core i7 5820K in multithreading.
I guess the real value is at the 6-Core CPUs. Hopefully Ryzen 3 get's close to an i5 since I got to replace that potato A4 5300B.
I don't need to put my hand on a hot oven to find out if it burns flesh.
Now I'm not disputing that ASUS makes quality products, just saying that they have been ill prepared for AM4, and as a result should be avoided.
I understand now that you say you are in Germany that ASUS has the greatest market penetration over there, and the pricing may be very different.
@DrewSaga
I too, had thought the 1600 was the best value until I found out that unlike R7, only 2 Cores will get the top Turbo clock.
This is ominous for those intending to OC as the "All Core Boost" is a much lower frequency. This means your manual overclocks will be limited to the speed of the worst core which is only guaranteed to be 3700Mhz on the 1600X.
I disagree with that. I have read/heard horror stories about a lot of AM4 boards and absolutely not just about Asus stuff. That is what happens when something is actually completely new. People expect everything just to work perfectly. And when it doesn't "it is complete garbage, unusable and the worst".
And yes, here in Germany Asus AM4 prices are middle of the pack for some boards and actually on the lower end compared to other brand's offerings on similar spec'd products. Alternate and Mindfactory are two of the biggest hardware sellers around here. Can you link me a shop from your country for comparison?
Again, if you just don't like Asus, that's fine with me. But at least your claim about Asus being overpriced should be pretty easy to check.