Intel Z370 Chipset Could Support Kaby Lake - But Intel Will Not Allow It

by Hilbert Hagedoorn on: 09/22/2017 09:15 PM | source: | 52 comment(s)

Much has been said and spoken about Intel upcoming 6-core Coffee Lake processors. It will launch based on a LGA 1151 Socket. We’ve been able to confirm that Z370 will only support Coffee Lake processors. Here’s the shocker, they could support Kaby Lake, yet Intel doesn’t allow it.

Over the past few weeks I have been talking to many motherboard manufacturers, and the story is the same. There is no reason for the Z370 chipset to not be able to support last-gen Kaby Lake, it is merely firmware restriction. Intel is enforcing the motherboard manufacturers to only support Intel 8th gen processors, thus Coffee Lake on Z370.

We’ve seen it in the past though, a BIOS update all of the sudden might enable other processors. The board-partners are very tight-lipped about this, understandably. Earlier this week you have already seen our Dutch colleagues from HWI try out a 7th gen Celeron G3930 Kaby Lake based processor on Z370. That processor got in the BIOS post code up-to code 26 when it halted. Post code 26 is the graphics pass, all passes before that would have been valid including memory and CPU.

According to some board partners the extra pins used on Z370 are merely supported voltage pahs. Ergo, (but not confirmed) perhapsvice versa Coffee lake could have been supported on Z270 as well. But this last bit remains speculation of course. But the reality is, that other processors than Coffee Lake on LGA1151 could have been supported on Z370, yet Intel simply will not allow board partners to support them.

New info also shows that the new 6-core procs can do an all-core 5 GHz overclock on a proper air cooler / liquid cooling without too much complication.

11 pages 1 2 3 4 > »

Loophole35
Senior Member

Posts: 9800
Joined: 2011-09-21

#5474654 Posted on: 09/22/2017 09:42 PM

4.8 till it starts to have the same issues as the 7700k

That quote was pulled from the article that Hilbert wrote. Not something I pulled out of thin air. I will take 5Ghz to mean 5Ghz not 4.8Ghz.

nosirrahx
Senior Member

Posts: 400
Joined: 2013-04-05

#5474658 Posted on: 09/22/2017 09:49 PM

6 X 5.0 sounds great.

Would sound even better on our still very new Z270 boards.

zero_cool
Member

Posts: 57
Joined: 2017-08-22

#5474659 Posted on: 09/22/2017 09:53 PM

That quote was pulled from the article that Hilbert wrote. Not something I pulled out of thin air. I will take 5Ghz to mean 5Ghz not 4.8Ghz.

The chinnese guys that done it stated that the heat and the fact that it is not soldered prevents it to maintain 5.0 ergo 4.8 comment

Loophole35
Senior Member

Posts: 9800
Joined: 2011-09-21

#5474660 Posted on: 09/22/2017 10:00 PM

The chinnese guys that done it stated that the heat and the fact that it is not soldered prevents it to maintain 5.0 ergo 4.8 comment

So deliding will still be a thing. *sigh* -looks at 2600k/z77 rig and giver her a gentle pat on the back-

user1
Senior Member

Posts: 2008
Joined: 2016-01-29

#5474667 Posted on: 09/22/2017 10:14 PM

I think intel has lost the memo, I understand that they want to sell people new chips, but preventing people from using chips that are less than a year old for no techinical reason ,when they are facing stiff competition, seems like a very bad idea.
I would think they would want people looking to upgrade to stay with intel, much easier to do that if they don't have to upgrade the motherboard and cpu at the same time.

Only reason I can see for them doing this, is to prevent people from buying second hand chips and using them with z370 board, or they still want to sell z270 boards along side z370, both of which seem fool hardy.

11 pages 1 2 3 4 > »

Post New Comment

Click here to post a comment for this news story on the message forum.