I'm in the "very early" stages of considering upgrading to possibly an i7 6700 or 6700K.  I've been looking at Z170 motherboards and see a couple (an ASRock and an ASUS) with Thunderbolt 3.  I don't have a need, right now, for Thunderbolt and may or may not in the future.  But, I'm wondering if I should consider Thunderbolt or just go without it.?????
 
Thanks/Jack

I got some feedback from an internet friend that has an ASRock with the Thunderbolt 3 and he says lots of driver complaints with the ASRock.  That eliminates ASRock if I were to go with Thunderbolt.
 
Here is his comments
 

The Asrock Extreme7+ (which I have on the machine I'm typing on right now) has an add-in for Thunderbolt/USB typeC. It's the focus of a plethora of end-user driver issues and complaints. Methinks this technology isn't yet fully-baked. You can always add a PCIe device to support it anyway, and you may be better-served to purchase without and consider an add-in later on. IMHO, FWIW

curious what Jim will say about this topic - I hope he chimes in
 
having migrated to the MOTU AVB series I will definitely consider thunderbolt for the next DAW (which is still a while away as I'm nowhere near hitting the bounds with the current setup)

curious what Jim will say about this topic - I hope he chimes in
 
having migrated to the MOTU AVB series I will definitely consider thunderbolt for the next DAW (which is still a while away as I'm nowhere near hitting the bounds with the current setup)

yes, i think the technology is new and could use a cpu generation of experience before I invest in it... and while the bandwidth available is greater than other connections, music generation still has plenty of throughput using USB 2, so it would take a new generation of AD/DA conversion to make use of it.  I recently upgraded my interface to the mk4 (USB 2) because I don't think there will be much change for a couple of years at least.

Maarkr
I recently upgraded my interface to the mk4 (USB 2) because I don't think there will be much change for a couple of years at least.

I went with the AVB because of its extendability (chaining devices) and also because they promise even lower latency once you go with thunderbolt ...
 
however, i do also wonder whether using LAN ports to connect your audio device (like the AVB offers on the Mac) will come before thunderbolt is established in the win10 world ???

After several other exchanges and posts on this subject on the tenforums.com I've decided Thunderbolt won't be part of a new motherboard.  If I want/need it in the future a PCIe Thunderbolt card can be used.
 
But its still what M/B do I get.  I need lots of USB ports and some USB 2.0 ports as the MOTU I have doesn't "play good" with USB 3.0 (at least on my present system).  I could use Firewire with the MOTU but that would require using a Firewire PCIe card as none of the Z170 M/B's I've looked at have Firewire.

Thunderbolt-3 support is very early in development under Win10.
Right now, only MOTU has true "PCIe via Thunderbolt" drivers available (for the larger AVB units).
 
Thunderbolt-3 is working fine... but you've got to have all the above in place:

• Running one of the latest Z170x or X99p chipset motherboards that provide Thunderbolt 3 via USB-C port
• Win10 up-to-date
• Thunderbolt-3 (USB-C) to Thunderbolt-2 adapter
• MOTU AVB audio interface with Thunderbolt port

If I were getting a Skylake motherboard with Thunderbolt-3, it would be neither of the above.
 
Thunderbolt provides access to the PCIe bus.  Nothing more... nothing less
You (of course) have PCIe slots in a modern machine... if you need to run ultra low round-trip latency.
Thunderbolt will not out-perform PCIe.  Under the best of circumstances, performance will be similar.

I dumped the idea of the "cutting edge" motherboards.
 
I ordered (today) an ASRock Z170 Extreme 6+ motherboard and a 6700K
 
I only considered Thunderbird since I was getting a new/upgraded motherboard.  After posts here and on the tenforums.com I woke up and abandoned that idea.
 

Fireberd, pls post your opinion on your upgrade after you get it going.  I'm on the fence about upgrading also.