Guru 3D is confirming that Z370 will only support Coffee Lake processors, with a particular “shocker”: while the chipset could support Kaby Lake, Intel will not allow it. According to motherboard manufacturers, there is no reason the Z370 chipset cannot support last-gen Kaby Lake — it is merely firmware restriction. Intel is telling them to only support Intel 8th-gen processors, Coffee Lake, on Z370.



We’ve seen it in the past, though: a BIOS update, all of the sudden, might enable other processors. The board partners are very tight-lipped about this, understandably. Earlier this week, you have already seen our Dutch colleagues from HWI try out a 7th-gen Celeron G3930 Kaby Lake-based processor on Z370. That processor got in the BIOS post code up to code 26, when it halted. Post code 26 is the graphics pass; all passes before that would have been valid, including memory and CPU.

Discussion

Source: [H]ardOCP – Intel Z370 Chipset Could Support Kaby Lake, But Intel Will Not Allow It