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Modders Get Intel's Coffee Lake CPUs To Run On Incompatible Motherboards (pcgamer.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the do-it-yourself dept.

Paul Lilly reports via PC Gamer: It took some time and a whole lot of tweaking, but modders have finally figured out a way to get Intel's Coffee Lake processors running on older motherboards based on Intel's Z270 and Z170 chipsets. Even though Coffee Lake is pin compatible with older LGA 1151 motherboards, the official word from Intel is that the power requirements differ, and as such Coffee Lake only works in newer motherboards based on Intel's Z370 chipset. [T]here is a forum post on Overclock.net that outlines how it can be done. It is a fairly involved process and specific to ASRock motherboards, which the modders claim "have proven to work well" with the steps that are outlined. In short, getting a Coffee Lake processor to run in an older motherboard requires making tweaks to the CPU's microcode, the iGPU's UEFI GOP driver, and some Management Engine bootstraps. The modders were able to get a Core i3-8300 processor to boot in a couple of older boards, but not a Core i7-8700 chip. That is a higher core chip, of course -- six cores instead of four -- which seems to suggest that the power issue is related to driving higher core counts.

2 of 83 comments (clear)

  1. Re:why? by SeaFox · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I know playing and hacking tech for fun is a thing. But really why even bother trying this?... Surely their are better projects to waste ones time on?

    Getting Linux to run on a toaster is of questionable value when a Raspberry PI is so inexpensive, but people still want to do it.

    It's called a hobby.

  2. Who is buying new Intel anything right now? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Who would buy flawed hardware from Intel at this point when new chips that supposedly fix meltdown issue are supposedly only months away?

    If I were in the market for new hardware right now I would seriously be looking to AMD.

    Personally starting to get tired of Intel's antics.

    - Failing to own up to Meltdown and false equivalences
    - ECC not available on normal non-xenon processors
    - Having to fuck with inf files to get "desktop" chipsets to work on server versions of Windows
    - Management engine comparatively nobody uses yet everyone gets to suffer thru vulnerabilities.
    - Stunts like TFA