Kabylake vs Coffee Lake LGA1151 Pinout Differences Revealed

While Intel‘s Coffee Lake CPUs are known to require new Z370 chipset motherboards, many fans on existing LGA1151 Kabylake held hope that it will be backwards compatible. That hope was dashed when Intel confirmed new motherboards were required due to new VRM requirements. However, some still hold hope that a firmware fix or hack will be done to enable support. At least on higher-end Z270 mainboards since they should have more than adequate VRM design for 6-core CPUs.

Kabylake vs Coffee Lake: The Same but Different

The latest information reveals that despite the same pin-count and layout, it seems that it will be impossible. Or even with firmware modification. This is due to the fact that the pins themselves are different between Coffee Lake and Kaby Lake. The VSS pins move from 377 to 391, with the addition of 14 pins providing that function. The VCC pin count move up from 128 to 146, adding 18. Some of the formerly reserved (RSVD) pins are used up, leaving 25 pins from formerly 46. It is not just the actual power supply on the motherboard, but the pin functions themselves that had to change in order to support Coffee Lake LGA1151 CPUs.