Intel Desktop Kaby Lake Motherboards Could Arrive In October

Intel’s product roadmap pointed to the release of the company’s optimized Kaby Lake products sometime in 2016, but so far they haven’t shown up. According to Colorful, however, Kaby Lake motherboards may arrive this fall.

Specifically, Colorful plans to release it Z270 motherboards sometime in October. The company couldn't tell us when Kaby Lake CPUs would come out, though, and it's possible that we will see Kaby Lake motherboards show up on the market before the corresponding processors.

Kaby Lake should continue to use Intel’s LGA 1151 socket, which was introduced with Skylake. Because they use the same socket, all Kaby Lake chipsets should support Skylake processors, as well. This creates a market for Kaby Lake motherboards prior to the release of Kaby Lake processors, and could result in the boards showing up before the CPUs. Essentially the same thing occurred with Haswell and the Z97 Broadwell chipsets a few years ago.

Intel’s CEO said the company is already shipping Kaby Lake samples to its OEM partners. We also heard from ECS that it plans to ship a Kaby Lake notebook sometime in December.

We need to take all of this with a grain of salt, however, as Colorful made it clear that Intel could postpone the release of Colorful’s Kaby Lake motherboards. If no delay occurs, however, it seems likely we will see Kaby Lake motherboards this fall.

Michael Justin Allen Sexton is a Contributing Writer for Tom's Hardware US. He covers hardware component news, specializing in CPUs and motherboards.
  • Johnpombrio
    Will they have the Series 200 chipset?
    Reply
  • Johnpombrio
    Heh, that is what the "2" in the Z270 stands for.
    Reply
  • ern88
    Also the CPU's will work z170 boards as well.
    Reply
  • littleleo
    I don't think so or they wouldn't have to release a new chipet the Z270.
    Reply
  • IInuyasha74
    18464909 said:
    Also the CPU's will work z170 boards as well.

    Maybe, but we cannot say that for sure. It depends on OEMs to add support with new BIOS updates for existing boards.

    @littleleo: Sort of. The Z270 chipsets are mostly to add new features to the platform over time, not due to compatibility issues. It is true that all of the 100-series chipsets will need a BIOS update to work with Kaby Lake, but several of the higher-end boards can update the BIOS without a processor. So it does help a little with compatibility, but not a key factor.
    Reply
  • synphul
    As it is the longevity of intel boards are pretty short lived given that they only really support two generations of cpus (three if you count the interim refresh model) with little performance improvement from one to the next. It's already very close to buying a new board for each cpu.

    If they made it to where the bios couldn't be updated to support the following gen it would likely hurt them pretty bad. For instance z87 working with chips intended for z97 with a bios update. If this didn't continue with z170/270 it would literally mean buying an entirely new board for each cpu gen upgrade.

    That would further hurt sales I would think. For those who might upgrade from an i3 or i5 and choose to go with the newest i7 one gen ahead, they may decide the requirement of a new mobo wouldn't be worth it (buying a new gen cpu already isn't proving to be worth it unless it's a model upgrade not just a generational upgrade).
    Reply
  • josejones
    Any info about the 300-Series motherboard yet i.e. Z370? Will Cannon Lake be part of the 200-series chipset or the 300? If Z370, will Cannon Lake include PCIe 4.0 or not?
    Reply