Coffee Lake – What you need to know about Ryzen’s counterpart

Coffee Lake, the CPU generation that saw the most intense change from Intel. If it weren’t for rival AMD, we might not get to experience it. And without Ryzen with multiple cores, we would still be living in the 4-core/8-thread era. So today, we will learn about Ryzen’s counterpart.

A few words about Coffee Lake – the biggest change Intel has ever made

Coffee Lake was launched on October 5, 2017. This is the second refined version of the 14nm process, after Skylake and Kaby Lake. Along with that improvement comes a series of new features, typically:

iGPU supports HDMI 2.0, DisplayPort 1.2 and HDCP 2.2

Supports DDR4-2666 RAM on Xeon, Core i9, Core i7, and Core i5 models. The remaining models support DDR4-2400. Xeon supports additional ECC RAM.

The multiplier increased significantly. Core i3 increased to 4 cores, Core i5 and i7 increased to 6 cores. By the 9th generation, Core i7 was pushed to 8 cores

New 300-series chipsets: H310, B360/B365, H370, Z370, Z390, along with new Xeon E-specific chipsets C242 and C246

There are many improvements, but Coffee Lake still cannot avoid the anger of users. Typically, it is not compatible with 100 and 200-series chipset motherboards. That forces users to “spend money” on upgrading the mainboard.

In fact, we can mod the BIOS of 100 and 200-series mainboards to run Coffee Lake CPUs. However, Intel as well as mainboard manufacturers have recommended not to do this. I also advise you not to do it because the risk of the mainboard turning into a brick is quite high. Not to mention, many cases reported that cores were locked when used with Core i5 and i7. Finally, if the motherboard is still under warranty, some manufacturers will also deny warranty if you mod the BIOS. Therefore, we do not encourage this. If you intend to use Coffee Lake CPUs, it is best to use 300-series motherboards.

List of Coffee Lake CPUs

Before we start, I have a few small notes:

Because time is limited, I will only learn about PC CPU codes.

I will divide it into 2 generations: Generation 8 and Generation 9, equivalent to 2 Coffee Lake generations.

We will not include T-tail models because they are only for OEMs, not for mass sale

Order of appearance: Celeron -> Pentium Gold -> i3 -> i5 -> i7 -> i9 -> Xeon E

Generation 8

Celeron

Pentium Gold

Core i3

Core i5

Core i7

*: In some reviews, the TDP of the 8700K can be up to 110W when running full load.

​Xeon E

The Xeon E CPUs below are only compatible with C242 and C246 chipset mainboards. They are not compatible with 300-series motherboards, despite sharing the same architecture and sockets.

That’s all 8th generation Coffee Lake CPUs

Generation 9

Celeron

Pentium Gold

Core i3

Core i5

Core i7

Core i9

*: In some tests, the TDP of i9-9900K can be up to 140W when running at full load.

Xeon E

The Xeon E CPUs below are only compatible with C242 and C246 chipset mainboards. They are not compatible with 300-series motherboards, despite sharing the same architecture and sockets.