Intel Coffee Lake 8th Generation Core Family Detailed – 300 Series Chipset and LGA 1151 Socket Support, 6 Core CPUs With 95W TDP and 24 PCIe Lanes

The latest details of Intel's Coffee Lake 8th generation family have leaked out over at PCEVA. The new details give an insight into various features of the 300-series platform which will support Intel's 8th generation Core processors.

Intel Coffee Lake 8th Generation Core Family and 300-Series Platform Details Leak Out

The details start off with a desktop product roadmap which show that Intel plans to launch their Coffee Lake S series processors in late Q3 2017. The 'S' moniker stands for mainstream desktop chips which are going to launch on the 300-series platform. The roadmap shows that Intel will be making two product updates with the Coffee Lake S family. The first family will be arriving on the Kaby Lake refresh chipset which will be known as Z370 and the second family will be arriving on the Cannon Lake PCH which will be known as Z390 and will also include other SKUs (H/B/Q).

Now the most interesting part which we don't know as of yet, is whether Intel is only referring to a chipset update with Cannon Lake (PCH) or they are planning to do a refresh of Coffee Lake S chips as early as Q1. It can be seen that Coffee Lake S 6+2 (6 Core / GT2) and 4+2 (4 Core / GT2) will have a production window between the 34th and 41st week of 2017 which means we are looking at a launch planned around August - October.

Now, we are also looking at another lineup that is going to be produced between the 52nd week of 2017 and the 12th week of 2018. We are looking at the same SKU configurations (6+2, 4+2, 2+2) but the difference is that they are months apart from the initial core lineup that launches this year. It can only mean one of two things, either this is the chipset specific launch or Intel plans to refresh the entire desktop family within months of launch when they launch the Cannon Lake PCH. This will mean that we are looking forward to at least two generations of CPU support on the 300-series platform.

Intel Coffee Lake 8th Gen Desktop Core Lineup:

Intel Desktop Chipset Roadmap

The Intel desktop chipset roadmap is also an interesting one. It shows that Intel will be launching Z370 motherboards in Q3. This could mean as early as August and as late as September which is just a month away. The second part is more interesting as it shows the Coffee Lake-S platform chipset. This could be referring to the Cannonlake PCH which we were talking about earlier and the date inclines with it too. What's interesting is that the Coffee Lake-S platform chipset covers all segments such as Value, Mainstream and Enthusiast.

So it means that while we will get a new chipset replacing H270, B110 and H110, the enthusiast Z370 will also be replaced by a new variant. This might be referring to the new Z390 chipset that has been doing the rounds in the rumor mill for a while now.

Intel Coffee Lake S Platform Details - Up To 6 Cores, 95W TDP 'K' SKUs and 24 PCIe Lanes

Coming to the more juicy part of the leak, we are now going to talk about platform details. The Coffee Lake S series platform will feature new Core processors with up to 6 cores and 12 threads. Intel is saying that key features include:

• Increased multi-thread performance
• Enhanced IA and memory overclocking
• Intel Turbo Boost 2.0 technology
• Better media and encoding technologies
• Rec.2020 & HDR Support, HEVC 10-bit HW Decode/Encode, VP9 10-bit HW Decode
• Integrated USB 3.1 Gen2 (10 Gbps)
• Support for integrated Intel wireless AC (WiFi 802.11ac R2 & Bluetooth 5)
• Intel Optane memory support
• Intel Smart Sound Technology with quad core audio DSP
• Support for modern standby

One key detail mentioned in the leak is something I was talking about a few hours ago in my previous article. This is related to socket support and Intel has kind of confirmed the previous information in their own slides. The Coffee Lake chips will be supported on the LGA 1151 socket but they won't be compatible with 100-series or 200-series motherboards. You can find more details over here on this topic.

Moving forward, the power requirements for these chips are 95W for Enthusiast, 65W for Corporate and Mainstream and 35W for Low Power series. The platform will feature support for dual channel DDR4 memory with native speeds of 2666 MHz and beyond 4400 MHz with certain oc series motherboards. In terms of IO, we will be getting:

• Up To 30 Chipset High Speed IO Lanes
• 24 Chipset PCIe 3.0 Lanes
• 10 USB 3.1 Ports With Up To 6 USB 3.1 Gen 2 (10 Gbps) Ports
• Up To 6 SATA 3.0 Ports
• Intel Rapid Storage Technology 16
• PCIe 3.0 x4 Storage Support
• CPU Attached Intel PCIe Storage

Now coming to the Kaby Lake Refresh and Cannon Lake S (Coffee Lake S) PCH features, both will be virtually the same but CNL-H PCH will allow for certain feature support. We have all these features neatly listed in the following table:

Intel Desktop Platform Chipset Comparison

The Intel Coffee Lake lineup will be a very decent option that goes up against Ryzen processors that AMD has out as of right now. Arriving in two months, the Coffee Lake processors will provide users with formidable levels of competition against AMD's offerings.