A Z170 motherboard has been modified to support a Coffee Lake i3 8350K

A Z170 motherboard has been modified to support a Coffee Lake i3 8350K

A Z170 motherboard has been modified to support a Coffee Lake i3 8350K

Modders have found a way to get MSI’s Z170A XPower Titanium motherboard to function with Intel’s Coffee Lake i3 8350K CPU, delivering a form of LGA 1151 backwards compatibility that was said to be impossible.  

While the i3 8350K does not work flawlessly, lacking the ability to use its integrated GPU or the motherboard’s first PCIe slot, the CPU does boot into Windows. This CPU was able to boot on a Z170 chipset after unofficial BIOS modifications and microcode changes, which means that additional adjustments could be made to make this setup more operable.  

One question that remains unanswered is whether or not these BIOS changes can allow Intel’s new 6-core i5 and i7 series Coffee Lake CPUs to function on Z370, as these models are where Intel makes their most significant departure from the Skylake-S and Kaby Lake-S CPUs that 100-series chipsets already support. 

  

A Z170 motherboard has been modified to support a Coffee Lake i3 8350K

While these existing modifications are not fully functional, they do lay down the groundwork for other unofficial BIOS updates for Intel’s Z170 and Z270 chipsets, which could deliver unofficial Coffee Lake-S support in the future, though this is not something that we would recommend doing given the potential risk this poses to your hardware. 

What is clear here is that Coffee Lake backwards compatibility with older LGA 1151 platforms is not impossible, though that does not mean that adding this support will be easy. 

  
A Z170 motherboard has been modified to support a Coffee Lake i3 8350K

You can join the discussion on MSI’s Z170A XPower Titanium motherboard being modified to support Coffee Lake on the OC3D Forums. 

A Z170 motherboard has been modified to support a Coffee Lake i3 8350K

A Z170 motherboard has been modified to support a Coffee Lake i3 8350K

Modders have found a way to get MSI’s Z170A XPower Titanium motherboard to function with Intel’s Coffee Lake i3 8350K CPU, delivering a form of LGA 1151 backwards compatibility that was said to be impossible.  

While the i3 8350K does not work flawlessly, lacking the ability to use its integrated GPU or the motherboard’s first PCIe slot, the CPU does boot into Windows. This CPU was able to boot on a Z170 chipset after unofficial BIOS modifications and microcode changes, which means that additional adjustments could be made to make this setup more operable.  

One question that remains unanswered is whether or not these BIOS changes can allow Intel’s new 6-core i5 and i7 series Coffee Lake CPUs to function on Z370, as these models are where Intel makes their most significant departure from the Skylake-S and Kaby Lake-S CPUs that 100-series chipsets already support. 

  

A Z170 motherboard has been modified to support a Coffee Lake i3 8350K

While these existing modifications are not fully functional, they do lay down the groundwork for other unofficial BIOS updates for Intel’s Z170 and Z270 chipsets, which could deliver unofficial Coffee Lake-S support in the future, though this is not something that we would recommend doing given the potential risk this poses to your hardware. 

What is clear here is that Coffee Lake backwards compatibility with older LGA 1151 platforms is not impossible, though that does not mean that adding this support will be easy. 

  
A Z170 motherboard has been modified to support a Coffee Lake i3 8350K

You can join the discussion on MSI’s Z170A XPower Titanium motherboard being modified to support Coffee Lake on the OC3D Forums.Â