Intel Coffee Lake Processors Can Work In 100- And 200- Series Motherboards (With Caveats)

When Intel released its 8th-gen Core “Coffee Lake” processors last fall, the most notable improvement brought forth was the introduction of 6-core models (eg: i7-8700K). At the time, it felt like Intel worked its magic quickly in order to counter some AMD Ryzen parts, but for the entire ecosystem, whatever caused us to move forward (probably AMD) is appreciated.

The upgrade in core counts on Coffee Lake did introduce a major caveat, however: Coffee Lake chips can’t work in last-gen chipsets, even though the socket pin count is identical. Intel said that due to power changes on the chip, the alterations were necessary – something that’s been fuel for a lot of skepticism.

But as it happens, Coffee Lake can work on older motherboards (via: TechPowerUp), something we find out through some enterprising and seriously skilled modders (it might be more appropriate to call them reverse engineers at this point) who found a handful of things that needed to be changed, and then changed them. They managed to get at least an i3-8100 running on H110 motherboard, which is all sorts of neat.

Does this mean that Intel was lying? Does it also mean that you should run out and purchase a Coffee Lake to shove in your 100- or 200-series motherboard? The answer to both questions is a resounding “Of cores not!”. That i3-8100 is a low-end chip, and it’s for a reason: higher-end chips could push the platform too hard and cause unneeded destruction.

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What’s become clear through this revelation is that some processors will run in older motherboards, but the higher-end ones are likely to draw too much power from the wrong places, and ultimately cause you a serious headache.

So, to Intel’s favor, since the entire lineup can’t work in older motherboards, it’s hard to argue that the company made the right decision here. However, I vaguely remember a motherboard release from GIGABYTE using an Intel chipset that allowed only a handful of chips to be used, but for the life of me, I can’t find it (I had only just seen it at CES 2018, but Google doesn’t help).

That all said, I don’t think Intel’s entirely off the hook here. AMD has shown that it’s possible to tool CPUs to retain the same socket for longer than a single generation (or maybe two). If Intel took certain things into account years ago (our want for cores is nothing new, by the way), Coffee Lake could have very well worked in last-gen motherboards.

Ultimately, hopefully with the renewed competition from AMD, this kind of thing will be less common going forward. Naive thinking? Who knows.