Intel 300-Series Chipsets Will Not Support 6th or 7th Gen Intel CPUs

We have some bad news for “Skylake” and “Kaby Lake” CPU owners that were planning to upgrade their motherboards to Intel’s upcoming 300-series; that is not a working combination. While the 6th generation “Skylake” and 7th generation “Kaby Lake” CPUs share the same socket 1151 configuration with the upcoming 8th generation “Coffee Lake” processors, according to a report from Hardware.info, who tested the cross-compatibility themselves, these generations are not compatible with each other.

HardwareInfo CoffeeLake KabyLake

Translated Quote:

“In short, despite the fact that they physically use the same socket, Kaby Lake and Coffee Lake are in no way compatible with each other.”

So while this is not a current motherboard upgrade path for “Skylake” or “Kaby Lake” owners, nothing says Intel can’t add support for these older CPUs via a BIOS update. Of course, this isn’t in Intel’s best interest when it comes to selling new hardware, but the pace they are moving at may sour the opinions of some users. Shelling out for a new CPU and motherboard just to have it one-upped less than 12 months later, is not a good feeling.