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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FAQ-Kiddall - Friday, August 4, 2017 - link
To your point, the CPU benchmarks here on the site corroborate that, in certain applications and games, a system with the Ryzen chip outperformed Kaby Lake. It's seems about 55/45, in favor of Kaby lake, and on about 20-25% of marks, they are within 5 % of each other, and more than half are well within 10%, a far cry from several years ago. AMD making a few steps in the right direction, but not for anyone beyond a general consumer.Old_Fogie_Late_Bloomer - Wednesday, August 2, 2017 - link
It wouldn't surprise me at all if Cannonlake chips are a direct drop-in replacement for Coffee Lake motherboards, since Cannonlake should be a straight process change and essentially the same architecture.HStewart - Thursday, August 3, 2017 - link
Maybe so - but I am expecting Cannon Lake, to allow more Cores because of new 10nm will allow it. Plus it be foolish to believe that Intel is not aware of AMD efforts.Also Intel has no monopoly, the bigger threat to Intel is ARM and lower power machines. Most customers like my sister don't need to power of multi-core desktop with separate graphics cards - and iPad works fine for her.
One is living in fantasy not to see that.
As for a longevity, I have dual Xeon 5160 system that I have for around 10 years and still runs - it actually still a pretty fast machine - about as powerful as original Surface Pro .
Spunjji - Thursday, August 3, 2017 - link
You're talking a different kind of longevity. Try thinking more along the lines of the ability to put an AM3 processor in an AM2 socket motherboard and still have it function... same for AM3+ CPUs and AM3 boards. Granted that AMD were barely competitive at that stage, but the point is that THAT is what platform longevity is about, not about how long you can keep the same old CPU and motherboard ticking over together. Intel have been forcing chipset changes for years now, over utterly trifling differences in CPU.mapesdhs - Thursday, August 3, 2017 - link
Especially annoying when some of their older low-core chips have far better PCIe connectivity than newer high-core chips, eg the venerable 4820K. I do wonder how well a revised 4820K would sell if it was available (it's only about 55 UKP used these days), 40 lanes, multi-GPU, etc. One could set one up on a decent board with three 780 Tis and a 960 Pro for a nice render box. This is the sort of idea AMD is going for with the 1900X, smart move.HStewart - Thursday, August 3, 2017 - link
Well I don't actually see having CPU upgradable too much. When I built machines, I built them has render nodes and I would usually build another machine. But things have change and I believe Intel has notice that changes - desktop market is much smaller than 10 years ago when I was doing render nodes - everything has gone mobile. What is important to me in longevity is that the Dual Xeon I built 10 years ago is still running - even though I have other machines since them. But that maybe primary because it is Xeon.Lolimaster - Friday, August 4, 2017 - link
A cpu is most reliable component of a PC, is not the Xeon, your mobo has a higher failuer chance past 5 years. My Athlon X4 620 is also running for 10 years so what?MagpieSVK - Friday, August 4, 2017 - link
How could new AMD chips use AM3+ platform that thing has it roots in socket 939 from 2004!! and FM2+ was newer meant as mainstream platform.DanNeely - Wednesday, August 2, 2017 - link
Outside of SOCs for laptops, USB for intel is in the chipset not the CPU package; so it shouldn't matter.Alexvrb - Wednesday, August 2, 2017 - link
Yeah I was just thinking that sounds pretty silly to me. Has more to do with the added cores. Back when this socket was introduced, I doubt they anticipated a resurgent AMD with a strong new platform.