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Coffee Lake Not Supported by Intel’s 200-Series Motherboards

 by Ian Cutress on August 2, 2017 5:12 PM EST
134 Comments | Add A Comment
134 Comments

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.

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.

Gallery: Coffee Lake Not Supported by Intel’s 200-Series Motherboards

*The name of the manufacturer has been removed by request after this news was published.

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Source: Twitter

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  • PixyMisa - Wednesday, August 2, 2017 - link

    Just got my Ryzen system two days ago. Thanks for removing any risk of buyer's remorse, Intel.

    (Got the Dell Inspiron 27 AIO. It's pretty nice.)

  • theuglyman0war - Friday, August 4, 2017 - link

    to be fair...
    They have "all" practiced releasing limited chipset longevity.
    The first time I ever decided to buy into an awesome chipset with an eye towards future upgrades was with AMD's ( it's AMD after all? ) socket-939 in 2005!

    And I got AMD butt hurt with obsolescence. To this day I cringe when anyone touts AMD's upgradability legacy.

    With that said I am either going Coffee Lake ( if they up the lanes with that new chipset ) or 8 core Threadripper ( for the lanes Ryzen 7 lacked ).
    Neither motherboard of which I will expect to upgrade past Graphics, memory and storage! Just like my x58 I use and upgrade on with as much!

  • xrror - Wednesday, August 2, 2017 - link

    niiiiicccee... well, that pretty much kills *the* reason for people to have been excited for Coffee Lake. Bonus points if Intel also prices it same price as X299 6/12 core processors - cause I mean lets make it financially pointless to still consider socket 1151 v2 as it's for sure a dead end platform and in the end is only $30 less.

    Classic Intel really... but even I didn't expect them to be *this* dense, but sadly it doesn't surprise me.

  • xrror - Wednesday, August 2, 2017 - link

    And it just dawned on me what Coffee Lake is now positioned to do. It will give OEM's a marketable Intel 6/12 core option without the baggage of the x299 platform.

    The "new" socket is to discourage upgrades to existing 1151 systems to avoid completely nuking x299 out of the gate - although the only case where I could think "real money" loss for Intel would have been corporations bulk upgrading 1151 systems vs. buying low end x299 chips.

    But I'm not sure if enough corporate folks would bother and/or support that. "Mainstream Enthusiasts" Intel really couldn't care about - not profitable enough and dwindling in number I guess. They want those Extreme Edition whales to buy x299 =D

  • mapesdhs - Thursday, August 3, 2017 - link

    What would be great is if corps put on a smarter hat and just bought Ryzen Pro instead.

  • theuglyman0war - Friday, August 4, 2017 - link

    what 6 cores instead of 4? You mean they aren't releasing at 6? ( *the* reason to be excited for coffee lake )

  • Gigaplex - Wednesday, August 2, 2017 - link

    Do something about your ads, Anandtech. I've got my adblocker on and yet the "Ads by Revcontent" banner at the bottom of the article is trying to direct me to NSFW websites.

  • Spunjji - Thursday, August 3, 2017 - link

    If you are blocking their ads (and therefore their revenue) I doubt they care much about your problem.

  • Gothmoth - Thursday, August 3, 2017 - link

    you may learn to read or pay attention......

    "is trying to direct me to NSFW websites."

  • Gigaplex - Thursday, August 3, 2017 - link

    I normally have Anandtech on my whitelist for the adblocker but have turned it back on recently. The ads have been causing problems.
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