MSI Confirms 8-Core Intel Coffee Lake Support For Z370 Motherboards Via BIOS Update
Confirmation of the support came courtesy of a news update posted to MSI's website that states, "MSI, the world leading gaming motherboard manufacturer, is pleased to announce new BIOS updates for MSI Z370 motherboards to support Intel 9000 processors. The new BIOS updates are all fully optimized for Intel 9000 processors."
The full list of supported MSI Z370 motherboards is seen below:
This is a more detailed account of 9th generation Core support than our last report in July, when BIOS updates for various MSI Z370 motherboards noted that they "Support New Generation CPU!"
The fact that the Z370 supports Coffee Lake Refresh processors isn't exactly earth-shattering news, as it's widely expected that these processors mainly include clock speed bumps and efficiency gains along with 8-core/16-thread support for the range-topping SKU. In addition, the incoming Intel Z390 chipset that is supposed to launch alongside these new processors isn't far removed from the Z370.
According to the most recent rumors that we've heard surrounding Coffee Lake Refresh processors, these are the three SKUs that are scheduled to launch:
- Core i9-9900K: 8 cores / 16 threads, 3.6GHz to 5GHz, 16MB L3 cache, 95W TDP
- Core i7-9700K: 8 cores / 8 threads, 3,6GHz to 4.9GHz, 12MB L3 cache, 95W TDP
- Core i5-9600K: 6 cores / 6 threads, 3.7GHz to 4.6GHz, 9MB L3 cache, 95W TDP
The latest leaked roadmaps suggest that these processors will actually arrive in October, instead of August as initially speculated. The processors will be joined by the Z390 chipset, and it's also presumed that Intel will launch a refresh of its Core-X series processors at this time. The 2018 Core-X family is expected to be capped by a 28-core beast that will go toe-to-toe with AMD's 32-core/64-thread Ryzen Threadripper 2990WX HEDT processor.
