I think we are talking about different things, I am speaking about a prebuilt computer, where the manufacturer put in there own stripped motherboard, low wattage power supply, ect.  I guess you could put in a new motherboard and pwr supply , maybe a graphics card and of course the M.2, all this for a Skylake, but I'm sure it cost a bit more when new.
Carl2

Ok my mistake Carl, just wanted to clear that up.

It looks like Intel are dropping their CPU prices to compete with AMD Ryzen.

This is good 

Intel AMD price war

 I'd already answered this but that's not here so I saw the link but it didn't work then, checking the links again show Micro has cut some prices which are not cut at Newegg, the numbers seem to be off and you don't save as much money as stated, I also noted they sell z170 motherboards for the
Kaby which should have the z270.
Carl2

I think this is down to the retailers Carl, over here on Ebuyer as I'm posting this the i7 7700k has been reduced from £373 to £325, a saving of nearly £50 and interestingly the i7 7700k is now almost the same price as the Ryzen 1700, and to my mind the Ryzen 1700 is a far better CPU with more cores, more threads and lower power consumption.

http://www.ebuyer.com/766075-intel-core-i7-7700k-4-20-ghz-socket-1151-8mb-cache-retail-boxed-processor-bx80677i77700k

It's still early days and we might see more of this from more retailers.

Information was correct at time of posting.

 You tube has quite a few builds on both the AMD and Intel cpu's if anyone is interested. 
Carl2

AMD will be releasing it's Ryzen Threadripper 1920X & 1950X CPU's soon, that's a 12 and 16 core monster respectively.

Here's a bit of info about it, along with some info on the baby R3 Ryzen. 

  It seems I have already been to You Tube on CPU's, seems it didn't make enough of an impression more than likely it probably just confused me.  Right now I'll stay with Intel until AMD proves themselves,
Carl2

The thing here is that the $1,000 price tag they listed doesn't include the cost of the new MoBo you'll also need to get, so you'd be looking at $1,200 to $1,500 to upgrade, at least. Personally, I'd wait at least 6 months to a year before pulling the trigger. by then the price could well be half that, or less. And by then maybe I'd be in a position to upgrade myself. Freddy, can you imagine how nice that setup would be for 3D rendering?

Very nice for that yes Dave - although I tend to do my renders solely on GPU now, at least in Daz, as with Iray it is a great deal faster. The two combined might be cool though.

I almost replied to this earlier and was going to say that there is that idea that things double in price every ten years - I don't know if this is true for tech though.

My first PC plus some other stuff was about £1000, so now (if you follow that rule) I would be looking at £4000 ish.

I spent about £500 two years back on my MB + 6 Core.

It seems to me that AMD have really helped move desktop computing along here, these Threadripper CPU's have gone to a whole new level but kept the price reasonable compared to the opposition.

The R5 6 core CPU's seem to be the best mid range bang for bucks CPU's available, if I was going to build myself a new rig tomorrow it would be an R5 1600 with 16 GIG of 3000Mhz DDR4 and a Samsung M.2. That would come in at a far more reasonable price, for me anyway 

  There are lots of vids to look at, watched quite a few not that much info making that much sense to me, too much info.  like looking at the water with to many large waves, best to let the water settle down and maybe it will make sense.  Is Intel scared, god who thought of that one.
Carl2

2nd-gen Ryzen is coming soon, officially launching in April 2018.

Main features:

12nm. 

Lower power consumption.

Something around 10% performance gain.

Higher clock speeds.

No known security vulnerabilities.

Also AMD have dropped their prices again on Ryzen chips.

More info:
https://www.pcgamesn.com/amd-ryzen-2-release-date-specs-performance

A bit late for me since I've invested in Coffee lake and I'm very happy with it.  Nice to see Intel is using the Vega Radeon Video in it's latest version of chips, its a bit unfortunate that the latest processors use only 4 cores rather than staying with six.  It seems performance and economics are still the main factors used for decisions.
Carl2

Just so we all know, 2nd-gen Ryzen has arrived, I've been watching some benchmark videos, the performance is as expected, no huge improvements over the 1st gen but improvements all the same.

Better memory support.

Around 10% performance gain, give or take.

Slightly more clock speeds but only about 200 MHz.

A step in the right direction for sure but nothing ground braking.     

  I got some e mail from Toms Hardware on the Ryzen 8 cores and 16 threads at a reasonable price, high boost clocks above 4.1 Ghz.  New chipset for the mother boards for these Cpu's.
Carl2