So in 1956 I won an apple pie at a church social by guessing the number of beans in a jar. That was followed by a long dry spell punctuated by two lotto tickets that paid slightly more than they cost, until I entered the i7 8086k giveaway and won one of these overhyped chips. My practice had been to build a DAW from of outdated parts, and I typically succeeded in getting adequate performance for total cost less than the price of a state of the art cpu. I had planned to wait until the chipmakers had come up with a hardware fix for the speculative execution exploits that keep turning up, but I am getting old, and the likelihood of that happening in my lifetime is beginning to seem remote, and besides a dedicated DAW is unlikely to be targeted. So now I am researching how to mount and interface this freebie for something less than the price of the chip itself. Total cost would include a case, at least two hard drives and a minimum of 2 x 8 GB of memory. Most of the other parts I have scattered around.
 
I have no interest in running WiFi on a DAW and see little use in gen 2 USB 3.1 since anything over USB 2 is unlikely to be useful for my humble audio interface (Scarlett 6i6) which is mainly used for MIDI-softsynth output and mixing. Hence waiting and paying more for a Z390 MB looks like a waste. I am not averse to air cooled OC'ing and would like the opportunity to try it at least if the need arises, but otherwise my requirements are humble. Most of these boards will have more than adequate USB, SATA, and memory capacity. The capability to run two monitors off the on chip graphics would be a plus. Dancing lights (other than diagnostic leds) and other decorative crap are a major waste. One consideration is that if I outgrow the motherboard, I will need another Win10 license to replace it adding significantly to the cost. 
 
Does anyone have experience with motherboards that they would care to share?

I'd start by going to a site like Newegg and pricing out components needed to build a system around that cpu.
 
I suspect you would be better off selling the cpu, and applying the proceeds towards building a system that's "more your speed".

ASUS builds a dozen boards with that socket and the differences between them for raw computing are not significant.

One idea would be to look at cyberpowerpc.com and pick a deal that is 8700k (basically your chip) and drop off everything you don't need. They have cheap options for most everything, so might come close to your goal, but sub-$400 would be a stretch.

BTW, the case colors is a strip that plugs into the MB, just unplug it if it bothers you.

Thanks mettelus, I am an old friend of Newegg, but there is a time savings in using a configurator to pick compatible components. I am more interested in finding out if anyone has had a bad experience with a good motherboard that works well for gaming but not so much for audio or a recommendation for a board that does well with audio.
 
JonD I expect I would take a bath on selling the chip, and certainly would not raise enough to build a new system with less than state of the art components. As for speed, running multiple instances of softsynths (not sample players) which are computing pretty much every sample on the fly is the most demanding of pure per-core speed of any DAW use. I build simple machines with no frills or features I will not need, not slow ones. A free state of the  art CPU leaves me a lot of room to assemble a budget machine. 

The 8086k is an excellent DAW performer.
Six physical cores (12 processing threads) that can be locked at 5GHz.
With the right cooler, it's near dead silent.
It's the perfect balance of cost/performance/quiet.

slartabartfast
I am more interested in finding out if anyone has had a bad experience with a good motherboard that works well for gaming but not so much for audio or a recommendation for a board that does well with audio.
 

The 8700K has been on the street for a while now, and I haven't seen any posts specific to issues running audio. Jim would be a better resource for board comparisons, but with ASUS they come down to "splitting hairs" rather than good/bad. The UEFI (BIOS) on ASUS boards is very user friendly and even downloads firmware updates from the internet directly these days.
 
Have to update previous post... the "dozen" was last year... ASUS now has 35 Z370 boards (was shocked to see that). If you select ATX, no Wi-Fi, and no USB 3.1 Gen 2, you get 13.

I always try to spend under $150 on a motherboard.  I don't need a lot of features.  I stick with AsRock, Asus, and Gigabyte.  Right now I think it is not a favorable time to build a PC.   Graphics cards and RAM are still high for me. 

kitekrazy1
Graphics cards and RAM are still high for me. 

 
Thank the Bit-Coin mining craze for the spike in RAM, as well as higher-end video cards and power-supplies.
GTX Video cards were up to ~ three times previous cost.
Demand was far exceeding supply.
They're still higher than prior to the Bit-Coin debacle, but costs have "normalized".