Last month a leaked roadmap appeared online teasing several upcoming Intel chipsets slated for release early next year. The new chipsets were optimized for Coffee Lake processors and include H370, B360, and H310 in the first quarter and Q370 and Q360 (for enterprise customers) in Q2 2018. The most interesting chipset however is Z390 which was mentioned in the roadmap but with hardly any details at all about it. Thanks to a SiSoft database listing and a couple recent leaks there is now slightly bit more information on the upcoming chipset.
Specifically, the Intel Z390 chipset was spotted in a SuperMicro C7Z390-PGW motherboard along with an undetected 92W Coffee Lake 6 core / 12 thread processor (perhaps SiSoft is simply incorrectly reading a 8700K or it’s an unreleased slightly more power efficient SKU). More interesting though is the continuing tease of possible 8 core (16 thread) consumer Core processors being released for these new Z390 chipset-based motherboards. The rumor mill is going all in on salt futures on this one it seems. What we still don’t know is what architecture these rumored 8 core chips will use, whether Coffee Lake or Cannon Lake (I’m leaning towards CNL but an 8 core Coffee Lake chip, while large, is not out of the question.)
The Z390 chipset will reportedly add a SoundWire digital audio interface with quad core DSP, integrated Intel Wireless AC (Wi-fi + BT CNVi), integrated SDXC 3.0, and Thunderbolt 3.0 with DisplayPort 1.4 support (using the Titan Ridge controller). The chipset further supports C10 and S0ix
In the last bit of Intel chipset rumors for today, rumors are also spreading suggesting that Intel may be moving up the launch of the Z390 chipset to the first quarter of next year to better compete with AMD and its Pinnacle Ridge (Ryzen 2000 / Zen+) processors and Promontory X400 series chipsets (e.g. X470 and B450) which are allegedly coming in January. Basically, it’s going to be a crazy CES for motherboard and processor soft launches and product teases / announcements!
What are your thoughts on Z390 being spotted in the wild this early?
Long live your brand new,
Long live your brand new, ultra hi end Z370 motherboard.
I just want to know if we’ll
I just want to know if we’ll finally get more PCIe lanes with a 4core processor to match. Sure you can get motherboards with four 16x slots but if you only have 16-20 PCIe lanes available WTF is the point.
We use supermicro servers at
We use supermicro servers at work, pretty good stuff. I’d like to try out one of their PC boards.
It doesn’t surprise me that Z390 will be out sooner than April, I though the only reason we had Z370 as a stopgap was because they were working out the last details of the real 300-series top chipset. I’m betting since they’ll have additional features on the Z390, they’ll probably keep the Z370 chipset boards going concurrently so consumers will have more choices when it comes to unlocked builds. You won’t be bound to the one level of boards with your K CPU anymore if you don’t want to pay for the on-chip wireless or audio stuff. So the snide comment about the old boards you bought last month being useless now is just some good old fashion internet trolling. It kinda reminds me of the Weird Al parody song All About The Pentiums. Most of the lyrics still ring true today.
not out yet but the zen 2
not out yet but the zen 2 will be out in just a few days but I hope that add more PCi lanes as that a bottleneck on the z370