Modder Runs Coffee Lake CPU in a Kaby Lake/Skylake Motherboard

News
By Aaron Klotz
published

But the mod requires some tinkering with the BIOS and CPU pins.

ASRock Z170 Extreme6
(Image credit: ASRock)

According to a report from ComputerBase, one of its community members named "_Nordlicht_" created a compatibility mod that enables LGA 1151 V2 (8th and 9th Gen) compatible CPUs to function on older LGA 1151 V1 (100 and 200-series) compatible motherboards. With this mod, the user was able to get a Core i9-9900K to run successfully on an ASRock Z170 Extreme6.

_Nordlicht_ used a combination of UEFI/BIOS modding software and tape to trick the CPU and motherboard into thinking they were compatible with each other.  Despite the fact that both socket versions feature the exact same pin layout, some of the pins on the V2 variant perform different functions compared to their predecessors, requiring some of the CPU pins to be isolated from the socket. 

For BIOS modding, Nordlicht used an app called the Coffee Time tool to modify the board's UEFI/BIOS with another board's firmware so that the 8th and 9th Gen chips would be detected by the board. Afterward, Nordlicht bridged two pins near the top of the CPU and blocked two more on the lower right area of the chip to complete the mod.

The mod proves that Intel could have potentially made its LGA 1151 socket one cohesive ecosystem similar to AMD's very successful AM4 motherboard platform. But Intel decided to split compatibility between its 6th and 7th Gen Core CPU platforms and 8th and 9th Gen Core CPU platforms.

If Intel did make one unified ecosystem for LGA 1151, it would have enabled four generations of Intel Core CPUs to work on 100-series chipset motherboards, substantially improving the upgrade path of Intel's early LGA 1151 boards. If someone bought a high-end Z170 motherboard at the launch he/she could have upgraded from a dual-core or quad-core Skylake chip to a substantially higher-performing 8-core Core i9-9900K down the road.

Sadly, this mod lacks much relevance now that Intel has moved well past the LGA 1151 platform, but if you have an old Z170 board lying around and a newer 8th or 9th Gen chip, this mod could breathe some extra life into your previously incompatible components.

Aaron Klotz
Aaron Klotz
Freelance News Writer

Aaron Klotz is a freelance writer for Tom’s Hardware US, covering news topics related to computer hardware such as CPUs, and graphics cards.

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12 Comments Comment from the forums
  • dtemple
    This mod has significant relevance, 8th and 9th gen meet the minimum requirements for Windows 11 while 7th does not. If TPM2.0 compatibility is intact, this brings someone's 2016-2017 build into official compatibility ahead of Microsoft dropping Windows 10 support in 2025.
    Reply
  • edzieba
    This mod has been in the wild (and variants that use shunts elsewhere rather than on the CPU pads) for several years. The problem is that the socket specs (e.g. power delivery) are not the same between sockets. It is luck of the draw if a given motherboard - that is within spec for Kaby Lake / Skylake - happens to also be in-spec for Coffee Lake. To make the two sockets intercompatible would have meant either a "consult the manufacture" model-number-bingo buck-passing cluster-<Mod Edit>where it's random chance if your existing motherboard will accept an updated CPU or not, or hobbling the Coffee Lake board specs to allow the lowest common denominators of the existing boards to function reliably.
    Reply
  • Pollopesca
    But if 8th and 9th gen would work on a 6th gen board, People wouldn’t buy more motherboards for the newer generations! /s

    Engineering e-waste is more profitable. I’m very surprised to see 14th gen CPU compatibility for 12th gen boards. Hope to see more of this in the future.
    Reply
  • Amdlova
    Lol it's a old old news... Chinese mods put all kind of chipset on the lga 2011 and 2011-3 sockets.
    Long live to 2011 v1 v2 v3 v4
    Reply
  • setx
    It's hilarious how out of touch authors here are. The mod dates back to early 2018!
    I was using it myself some years ago but long updated since then.

    dtemple said:
    This mod has significant relevance, 8th and 9th gen meet the minimum requirements for Windows 11 while 7th does not. If TPM2.0 compatibility is intact, this brings someone's 2016-2017 build into official compatibility ahead of Microsoft dropping Windows 10 support in 2025.
    First of all, fTPM very often doesn't work with this mod as often you have to disable ME and that kills fTPM.
    Second, CPU itself (and fTPM) is irrelevant if you use TPM as separate chip. Many motherboards have such TPM connector and the module itself can be bought separately with no problem. This works as well with 7th gen and earlier.
    Also, "official support" is overrated – it just forces hardware manufactures, but have little benefit for end users if you don't trust Windows' encryption. (And why should you trust it?)

    edzieba said:
    The problem is that the socket specs (e.g. power delivery) are not the same between sockets. It is luck of the draw if a given motherboard - that is within spec for Kaby Lake / Skylake - happens to also be in-spec for Coffee Lake.
    That's not true in practice. Since you can set power limits in bios (and by software if it's missing), pretty much all boards are "compatible" with Coffee Lake by power, but might limit clocks for heavy loads like all-core AVX.
    Reply
  • bit_user
    setx said:
    It's hilarious how out of touch authors here are.
    This site is feeling more and more like a content mill.
    Reply
  • bit_user
    edzieba said:
    This mod has been in the wild (and variants that use shunts elsewhere rather than on the CPU pads) for several years. The problem is that the socket specs (e.g. power delivery) are not the same between sockets.
    I saw a news article on this site, several years ago, about and industrial board that officially supported all 4 generations. However, it was released after Coffee Lake and its updated power requirements - as opposed to the mods which apply to boards released before then. I'd try to find it, but the search feature of this site is almost unusable.
    Reply
  • slash3
    You folks reported on this five years ago, when it was first relevant.

    https://www.tomshardware.com/news/intel-core-i9-9900k-overclock-z170,38181.html
    Reply
  • edzieba
    setx said:
    That's not true in practice. Since you can set power limits in bios (and by software if it's missing), pretty much all boards are "compatible" with Coffee Lake by power, but might limit clocks for heavy loads like all-core AVX.
    That falls under the 'hobble Coffee Lake' category: either you set the new CPU power defaults to a clamped lower value and require user intervention to raise power limits to normal, or you set the power limits as intended and rely on users going into the BIOS and setting the lower limits to avoid in spec boards popping from overdraw. Or you tell new CPUs to refuse to even POST without a specific BIOS revision, and have to deal with nonsense like AMD did with AM4 and needing to mail out loan CPUs to users to allow BIOS flashing for fresh-out-of-the-box boards and publishing compatibility matrices with BIOS-version-dependant asterisking just to tell if a given CPU will POST in a given board.
    Reply
  • setx
    edzieba said:
    Or you tell new CPUs to refuse to even POST without a specific BIOS revision, and have to deal with nonsense like AMD did with AM4 and needing to mail out loan CPUs to users to allow BIOS flashing for fresh-out-of-the-box boards and publishing compatibility matrices with BIOS-version-dependant asterisking just to tell if a given CPU will POST in a given board.
    Or you do as Intel did and refuse to start the CPU in all the boards, even top ones where they definitely can work perfectly fine. It's an old tale, don't even start...
    Reply