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Z270 Platform Could Support Coffee Lake CPUs if Allowed


Guest_Jim_*

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This is a fairly interesting piece of news coming from a Bit-Tech interview with Asus, though Tweak Town has pulled out the more interesting points. This year both AMD and Intel have launched new CPUs and new platforms for them, but while AMD has gone to a completely new design for its processors, requiring a new socket, Intel's Z270 and Z370 platforms both use an LGA 1151 socket. One would somewhat expect then that the Z270 platform could support the newer Coffee Lake CPUs, but these are instead confined to the Z370 platform.

What Bit-Tech learned from its Asus interview is that this incompatibility is a decision of Intel's, and not a physical limitation. The Management Engine (ME) and BIOS would need to be updated, but if this were done, Z270 would be able to support Coffee Lake. The Asus representative also states the power delivery for the CPUs does make a "little bit of different, but not much." There were approximately 20 pins unused on Z270, which are now used for power control, but the representative suspects they are needed for future high-core count processors.

Following these answers, the Bit-Tech interview asks about who Z370 is targeting, and the representative says it is logical that those "on Z270 don't need to upgrade." Those with older systems looking for improvements to power efficiency, clock speeds, core counts, and storage could benefit from the upgrade. The target for the Z370 platform is "anyone that wants or needs to buy a new system."

Source: Bit-Tech and Tweak Town



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So, does this mean that Asus, Gigabyte, etc, may upgrade their BIOS to support Coffee Lake? Wonder just how serious of a BIOS tweak that we are talking about. If I have a Z270 with a 7700K, just how much will I gain by dropping in an 8700K? I am not sure it would be worth the upgrade just for the cores. Depends on the price. Anyway, I am dreaming as I own an older Gigabyte P55-UD3R MB and can not afford to upgrade. I can not as yet run DOOM - maybe next year.

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Intel would have to allow such BIOS updates, so it is on them. It would be a way to spread the Coffee Lake CPUs, but it could also risk undercutting Z370 sales in the future, so it is hard to predict.

Going from a 7700K to an 8700K I don't think would be worth it, but you can check out Frank's review to decide for yourself.

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Intel would have to allow such BIOS updates, so it is on them. It would be a way to spread the Coffee Lake CPUs, but it could also risk undercutting Z370 sales in the future, so it is hard to predict.

Going from a 7700K to an 8700K I don't think would be worth it, but you can check out Frank's review to decide for yourself.

I think you are right. Unless you are playing a game that uses all of the cores, it is not worth it.

And, if I decided today to build a new 370 rig, there are no 8700K processors for sale anywhere - at least not at the suggested price.

There is an outfit on eBay selling them for over $700. Go figure

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