Intel 8-Core Coffee Lake CPU Support Confirmed by ASRock

Over the span of past few weeks, manufacturers including Asus, MSI, and Gigabyte confirmed support for Intel’s upcoming 9000-series processors. The board vendors promised to provide BIOS updates for the new desktop chips, but it’s the first time some vendor has directly confirmed the existence of Intel’s 8-core Coffee Lake CPU.

This board maker is none other than ASRock which has created a new microsite detailing the new BIOS updates for its 300-series motherboards. Meaning, you should be able to upgrade your current board to support the new Coffee Lake CPUs. However, there has been a more interesting tidbit on the page from when it first went live.

ASRock promises 8-Core Coffee Lake Support for Z370, H370 and H310 Motherboards

“For every ASRock motherboard we’re currently selling that supports this new CPU will have a ‘8Core CPU Support’ sticker on the product box,” stated the page. Since this interesting bit of information surely did break the NDA, it has now been removed from the microsite – probably after someone at head office realized their mistake.

The new eight-core, 16-thread Coffee Lake CPU has already been spotted in the SiSoft Sandra and 3DMark databases, though Intel has at no point confirmed its existence.

Below is the image of the ASRock microsite before it was amended (via ComputerBase). The page also points towards another fact that the entry-level H310 chipset may struggle to deal with the new CPUs.

The bottom of the page, under the H310 BIOS updates, mentions that the “performance under heavy load may be compromise due to the higher power consumption of Intel 9000 series processor.” That is likely just going to be the case with the octa-core i9 processors, because the rest of the Coffee Lake refreshes are expected to feature the same general power draw as their 8000-series counterparts.

With all these leaks and noises coming out of board makers, the launch of the Intel Core 9000 series seems to be just around the corner. But, don’t expect it to happen at this month’s Gamescom as the company is not scheduled to appear at the convention.

Based on recent leaked docs, the new Coffee Lake refresh chips will arrive in Q4 of this year following the launch of the new Z390 motherboard chipset in Q3.