I wonder, if you go into the bios and disabled the on board video, if it would boot.

Well can think of a number of reasons why it might not work... biggest one being intel normally doesn't like you using old cpus with new MBs :P But could also be lack of bios support/ chipset support or different number of pins?

Ricepudding:

different number of pins?

There can't be a different number of pins if the number of pins is the same.

Very doubtful, but very disturbing if true. Might as well start soldering desktop CPUs directly to the mobos and be done with it.

What i want to see is a Coffee Lake running on a Z170 :P

Maybe just disable the IGP? It wouldn't surprise me if the only real difference between CL and KL is the GPU (and additional cores). Not like the IGP is of much value anyway. I understand why they wouldn't want a CPU backward compatible with older motherboards (though I don't like it) but I really don't understand why they don't allow their motherboards to be backward compatible with older CPUs. What do they, or the motherboard manufacturers, have to lose?

schmidtbag:

[...] but I really don't understand why they don't allow their motherboards to be backward compatible with older CPUs. What do they, or the motherboard manufacturers, have to lose?

Money hungry investors and sales.

RzrTrek:

Money hungry investors and sales.

But that's exactly it though - having the motherboard compatible with older-generation CPUs would not hurt sales, at all. If anything it would increase sales, because maybe someone wants a fancier board and doesn't yet have the money to upgrade their current CPU. If someone who currently owns Kaby Lake doesn't intend to get Coffee Lake, Intel is not going to make a sale no matter what. But, the new motherboard could offer something a KL owner's current board doesn't. So, the mobo manufacturer could at least get a new sale. Keep in mind Intel still has their own products soldered onto that board, so they'd still get a little something out of the sale too. To clarify, a CPU compatible with older motherboards would likely hurt sales; that isn't what I'm suggesting (but again, it is something I'd prefer).

schmidtbag:

But that's exactly it though - having the motherboard compatible with older-generation CPUs would not hurt sales, at all. If anything it would increase sales, because maybe someone wants a fancier board and doesn't yet have the money to upgrade their current CPU. If someone who currently owns Kaby Lake doesn't intend to get Coffee Lake, Intel is not going to make a sale no matter what. But, the new motherboard could offer something a KL owner's current board doesn't. So, the mobo manufacturer could at least get a new sale. Keep in mind Intel still has their own products soldered onto that board, so they'd still get a little something out of the sale too. To clarify, a CPU compatible with older motherboards would likely hurt sales; that isn't what I'm suggesting (but again, it is something I'd prefer).

Issue with that is what would be compatible with an older CPU, if they happen to use any new tech there might be nothing on the older CPU for it to work... Example of a new USB or DDR5 for example... someone who doesn't know much about computers might buy it thinking it might work and it wouldn't... That being said, i agree i don't think it would hurt sales too much nor do i see why this generation could not support it, as far as i know there is nothing new coming out beyond a new chipset. they just couldn't have older CPU's always working in newer motherboards. this to me seems to be the big reason they seem to often not allow older CPU's anyway, it seems to be more about compatibility than anything else. This might have the same Pin's but could be wired differently for example... only intel really know that answer. But they let skylake and kabylake cross over due to the fact there was almost no change, so maybe these new boards have a big change or maybe its greed or maybe it just wouldn't work. or be a bit of each. That being said i don't know many if any people get super excited about a new motherboard(if you take out the CPU) with it having USB 3.1 gen 2 !!!! Most people want big performance jumps not just a few extra features that depending on the board can be bloody expensive!!!

Ricepudding:

Issue with that is what would be compatible with an older CPU, if they happen to use any new tech there might be nothing on the older CPU for it to work... Example of a new USB or DDR5 for example... someone who doesn't know much about computers might buy it thinking it might work and it wouldn't...

Of course, but in that case a new socket is a functional necessity. So far, I have heard nothing about what makes Coffee Lake architecturally different from Kaby. Remember - Intel has had Coffee Lake planned for a while. There is no excuse for not future-proofing. And as stated before, greed can't be the only option because a backward-compatible motherboard isn't going to result in a loss of sales, for either Intel or the mobo manufacturers.

they just couldn't have older CPU's always working in newer motherboards.

Who says they have to release a new motherboard with a new chipset? The vast majority of Kaby Lake owners are very unlikely to upgrade to Coffee. What this means is any sales made by Coffee Lake will be from people with a CPU that is likely incompatible anyway. This in turn means Intel and associated mobo manufacturers will still get roughly the same amount of sales as though they made a new backward-incompatible board. Intel doesn't tend to drop prices too much of last-gen products, so even if someone bought a Kaby Lake after the Coffee Lake release, they're not really losing out.

this to me seems to be the big reason they seem to often not allow older CPU's anyway, it seems to be more about compatibility than anything else. This might have the same Pin's but could be wired differently for example... only intel really know that answer.

Possibly, at least for the GPU. After all, the PC in this article was bootable to some degree. Keep in mind that it is expensive to change designs. It wouldn't be within the interest of either Intel or the mobo manufacturers if the socket changes were too drastic.

Problem is with the chinese market. They are not buying motherboards, sales are terrible for ASUS, Gigabyte and others............so, what Intel is doing is helping his partners to get more sales somehow (and screwing customers). Like someone said before, is like we are buying new consoles every couple of years. At this point they can solder the CPU and 32Gb of RAM into a motherboard and sell it in a combo. It´s practically the same.

surprises me that it gets to a post code at all, i wouldn't be surprised if its lacking the correct microcode, testing a cpu with a fused off igpu may reveal more if it gets past that point in the post.

People just need to get used to the fact that if you're buying a new Intel processor, you're buying a new motherboard too. It's been this way for like 10+ years and still people complain like this policy just happened. Do I wish I could use my 5 year old CPU in a new motherboard? Sure the possibility would be nice, but TBH by that time I want the new features the chipset has and the new connectors the MB has just as much as I care about the new CPU. I don't upgrade any component ever year, GPUs maybe every 2-3, everything else until it dies. The CPU/Mobo/RAM gets a refresh every 5+ years. So yeah, I've never really been hit by the "omg I wish I could lug this CPU into the future" wish, and I've been building computers for 20 years. Hell it's just been in the past 7-10 years that CPU upgrades stopped being so noticeable (around the same time that Intel has been using the "new CPU, new mobo" rule). Also people keep saying t hat there's "no difference" between generations but there are. Kabylake has native HDCP 2.2 decode and USB 3.1 which Skylake did not (required Alpine Ridge controller) . I can't remember off the top of my head what Broadwell > Skylake was but there were several changes. Haswell > Broadwell was again very similar but I think one or two minor tweaks (and these had inter-compatibility I believe). Can Intel make a design so that minor chipset upgrades don't break compatibility? Probably, but they're not doing it and t hey're likely not going to. Again I wish Intel gave us the flexibility of an eternally compatible CPU/mobo would provide, but they don't. Tick-tock started in 2006...11 years ago...you haven't been able to carry CPU's forward from Intel for over a decade. Stop the never ending chorus ?

One issue with keeping sockets/compatibility with old/new is you get what happened with AM3. Very bad CPUs like bulldozer, it might have been better if they redesigned a new socket/chipset. I certainly don't think keeping a half dozen generations of CPUs on the same socket; limits them in so many ways.

Agent-A01:

One issue with keeping sockets/compatibility with old/new is you get what happened with AM3. Very bad CPUs like bulldozer, it might have been better if they redesigned a new socket/chipset.

I disagree. Socket FM1 obviously was different and revolved around the same CPU architecture, and that was still slow. Bulldozer was bad because it was an architecture designed for a world where software was written to be highly parallel with short pipelines; it was an unrealistic expectation and had poor foresight. I am sure there was some performance loss by retaining AM3, but remember, Bulldozer's IPC was significantly worse than its predecessor, despite being a completely new architecture. Surely, the socket couldn't hamper performance that bad. Though, now I'm a bit curious how a FX-4100 would compare to a similarly-clocked FM1 APU with the IGP disabled. That could be a good way to measure how much performance was really lost due to retaining the aging AM3 socket.