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.
Related Reading
- The Intel Core i7-7700K (91W) Review
- The Intel Core i5-7600K (91W) Review: The More Amenable Mainstream Performer
- The Intel Core i3-7350K (60W) Review: Almost a Core i7-2600K
- The Intel Skylake-X Review: Core i9 7900X, i7 7820X and i7 7800X Tested
- The Intel Kaby Lake-X i7 7740X and i5 7640X Review
- The AMD Zen and Ryzen 7 Review: A Deep Dive on 1800X, 1700X and 1700
- The AMD Ryzen 5 1600X vs Core i5 Review: Twelve Threads vs Four at $250
- The AMD Ryzen 3 1300X and Ryzen 3 1200 CPU Review: Zen on a Budget
Source: Twitter
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
134 Comments
View All Comments
nevcairiel - Thursday, August 3, 2017 - link
Coffee Lake and ThreadRipper target entirely different audiences. TR is not a mainstream gaming CPU.theuglyman0war - Friday, August 4, 2017 - link
Not necessarily different audiences? Coming from a 6-core i7-980x HEDT machine seeing no reason to upgrade over 6 years during these times of incremental ennui...an inexpensive unlocked 6 core replacement that gives me more faster renders per core and the features my aging ASUS REIII sorely lacks ( pci-e 3, usb 3.1, Sata 3 that doesn't suck, nvm-e etc.. )
Then 6-core coffee lake begins to look like a viable hedt solution ( as long as I don't miss the lane loss! )
If they significantly boost those lanes over 1151...
Then I am definitely all in!
theuglyman0war - Friday, August 4, 2017 - link
More importantly...That as a HEDT solution with the same amount of cores as my i7-980x it replaces...
It would most assuredly offer the highest single threaded performance ( for vrt pulling and z-brushing ) of any other current TR or SL-X CPU going on the market!
So not only more than 4 cores but the MOST powerful cores to date! How would that not be a HEDT consideration that overlaps? With a core increase such a consideration was bound to make things "interesting"?
Once again...
lane increase or lack thereof would be the determining factor?
edzieba - Wednesday, August 2, 2017 - link
For the past decade, Intel consumer sockets have been released on a two-gens-per-socket cycle (with the exception of the Lynnfield/Clarkdale split). 1151 spanning two generations (Skylake & Kaby Lake) before a refresh is in line with that standard cadence.As for why: Feeding an extra two cores, and upgraded video outputs (e.g. HDMI 2.0). These require physical changes in socket interface.
vegajf51 - Wednesday, August 2, 2017 - link
That would be true if one purchased a z170 board, but what about all the people like me that purchased z270?While I could have purchased a z170 for my kabylake you need a skylake cpu to update the bios before you can drop the kabylake in
edzieba - Thursday, August 3, 2017 - link
" but what about all the people like me that purchased z270?"The same as if you purchased a Z97, or Z75/Z77, etc.
nevcairiel - Thursday, August 3, 2017 - link
Intel could keep the chipset compatible for 5 CPUs in a row, and those that hop on at the last stop would still only see one of them. Can't really help that.smilingcrow - Thursday, August 3, 2017 - link
But that's an irrelevant aspect of the scenario really and only affects a small proportion.Of the 20%, say on average, that buy into the last platform for that socket, typically I understand that less than 10% of systems are upgraded which would mean that only 2% of all 5 platforms would be unable to upgrade to a newer CPU type.
But of those 2% many might be Celeron, Pentium or i3 owners who would be happy enough to upgrade to an i5 or i7 from the same platform so the number of owners who truly felt thwarted in the case you mentioned might well be 1% of the whole that bought into that socket.
Lolimaster - Friday, August 4, 2017 - link
You bought an obsolete z270 in 2017 when Ryzen existed, your fail.Lolimaster - Friday, August 4, 2017 - link
Skylake, KL and CL are the same damn chip, "new gen" was just a marketing gimmick.Years ago
Skylake
i7 6700K
KL
i7 6750K
CL
i7 6790K
i9 for the six cores