Coffee Lake Not Supported by Intel’s 200-Series Motherboards
by Ian Cutress on August 2, 2017 5:12 PM EST- Posted in
- CPUs
- Intel
- LGA1151
- 200-series
- Core 8th Gen
- Coffee Lake
- 300-Series
In a stunning bit of Twitter, a tweet from one of the leading motherboard manufacturers has stated that Coffee Lake, Intel’s 8th Generation Core processors, will not be supported on the current generation of 200-series motherboards.
No，Coffee Lake CPU is not compatibilble with 200 series motherboards.
— July 31, 2017
Information like this is usually kept under wraps until an Intel reveal, but it seems to have been mindlessly posted to Twitter on July 31st, an account that last tweeted on April 11th before this tweet occurred. This tweet has since been deleted.
At this point, due to the similar microarchitecture to Kaby Lake being used in Coffee Lake, most of the technology press were under the impression that the Coffee Lake processors would be compatible with LGA1151 socket motherboards, namely the 100-series and 200-series. With the above tweet essentially confirming that Coffee Lake will not be supported, it means that either the new CPUs will not be LGA1151, or that the motherboards will lock-out the processors by firmware, or the CPUs and sockets will use a different notching system to ensure the wrong processor cannot be put in the wrong board. It does mean however that 200-series users hoping to upgrade to a Coffee Lake processor (which early reports are suggesting might be up to six cores, but this has not been announced) will not be able to.
There are many potential reasons for the change if the socket is still LGA1151. The obvious one would be product segmentation on Intel’s part, which would stick in the craw for a number of the user base. The second one that it might actually be a physical requirement for the processor – if previously unused pins are required for power and/or control for different elements of the DVFS in the chip. This would depend on new features on the chip, which could extend to different power management, different graphics, or different IP blocks that require separate pin-out connections. Intel might also be using a different power system for voltage regulators, which might not be compatible with current 200-series motherboards.
At this point, nothing has been made official. The fact that this was stated on Twitter so far from any launch date that we know of is an interesting development.
*The name of the manufacturer has been removed by request after this news was published.
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jjj - Wednesday, August 2, 2017 - link
Knowing Intel, they are likely to price the flagship 6 cores at 499$ and try to upsell customers.There isn't much of a point in doing more than that, from their perspective.
Gothmoth - Wednesday, August 2, 2017 - link
yeah and intel has done all that for years... and for what a 5-10% performance bump... give me a rest.it´s pure marketing scheme to milk the customers....
ddriver - Wednesday, August 2, 2017 - link
They've done two things all those years:1 - mercilessly milking consumers
2 - sitting on their hands
I am so glad I can finally buy a different brand high performance CPUs, with both performance and value being superior to intel.
ddriver - Wednesday, August 2, 2017 - link
Forgot 3 - coming up with unnecessary new chipsetsAlexvrb - Wednesday, August 2, 2017 - link
My main issue with their chipsets is locking out overclocking on all but the highest end chipsets, which are deployed in high-end boards. I'm a budget overclocking kind of guy, and the reason the unlocked Pentiums and i3s are a no-go for me is total platform cost. Even a locked i5 is often a better deal at the end of the day than an unlocked i3 and "Z" board. I might build a Ryzen 3 system and upgrade to a Zen+ with more cores down the road.haukionkannel - Thursday, August 3, 2017 - link
The owerclocked 6 core may require beefier electricity system than old 4 cores, so that may explain the new chipset also. You would need new MB in anyway. Otherwise there could be problems burning old MBs to crisps...All in all there Are not new features that would require it. Pci4 is not ready, no new memory system is ready yet. USB 3.2 is not yet ready. So no new features...
Lolimaster - Friday, August 4, 2017 - link
Considering a 1800X octacore barely needs more power than a i7...LMAO.
milli - Thursday, August 3, 2017 - link
Overclocking requires a Z-platform, okay. But what really annoys me, is that they even limit memory speed on the non-Z boards.Alexvrb - Thursday, August 3, 2017 - link
Running above the IMC's rated speeds is... overclocking! All overclocking should be opened up to mid-range chipsets, like AMD and their B-series.Lolimaster - Friday, August 4, 2017 - link
Ryzen 5 1400 is a better value than Ryzen 3, SMT works way better than intel HT.