Xeon vs i7 - Skylake: is there much of a difference?

Hardware Hub CPU
1

I'm looking into getting myself a new beastly PC to replace my nearly 9 year old i7-920 build and trying to choose between an i7-6700 (non-K) and the E3-1230v5 Xeon; mainly for super fast compilation speed, virtual machines and other computer science-y things.

The Xeon is $30 cheaper with a 200MHz lower turbo and no iGPU. However, I'll use a dedicated GPU so that doesn't matter and I don't think 200MHz should make too much of a difference. (Gotta love those Australian prices /s)

If I do get the Xeon, will I be able to use any LGA1151 motherboard or only certain chipsets/models? Since this may negate the $30 savings from the Xeon.

2

for the xeon you will need the c232 or 236 chipset. If wanting to SLI, 236 is only option due to requirements by nvidia. MSI makes boards for around $160 last I checked. Or if you plan on oly using one card ASRock makes a 232 board that will allow for BCLK OC for a performance boost.