Coffee Lake could “theoretically” work on Z270 too; just needs a BIOS and ME update and Intel’s permission

ASUS ROG Motherboard Product Manager, Andrew Wu, has cleared the air regarding why the new Coffee Lake CPUs just won’t work on the Z270 platform despite sharing the same LGA1151 socket. Intel’s official statement mentioned some stuff like difference in the power delivery and what not, but according to this guy, all that you need is an upgrade from the Management Engine (ME) and a BIOS update to get the Coffee Lake CPUs to work on Z270 motherboards.

Why haven’t they done it though? Well, Intel has locked the compatibility. In an interview by Bit-tech, Andrew Wu shared that there are actual differences in the power delivery, but the difference is tiny. There are socket pins that were unused in the Z270 platform which are now actually put to use for power delivery, but based on Andrew’s statement, they should be a non-issue when dealing with the 6-core CPUs on the market now.

So the issue here is that Intel wants to make more money from a new platform, or wants to let its motherboard partners earn more. Or maybe Intel was planning on releasing the rumored 8-core CPU later on, which will probably require the improved power delivery afforded by the unused pins, and thus need new motherboards to work. Having a single CPU that works with a new platform would be even more ridiculous than locking out backwards compatibility across the Coffee Lake range, so it’s understandable for Intel to do the latter.

What do you think about this revelation? Let us know in the comments section!

Source: TPU

Pokdepinion: Socket longevity is a selling point that Intel is missing out on and one which AMD is definitely banking on.