Intel's next-gen Z390: ready for Coffee Lake-S in 1H 2018

Intel is on a rampage of releasing new CPU architectures and motherboard chipsets to go with them, but if you thought we were another year away from a big release, you are wrong. Intel is ramping up for the next Z390 launch, something that should be revealed in early 2018.

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The new Intel Z390 chipset has been spotted in SiSoftware's database, and should launch side-by-side with a new range of 4/6/8-core processors that will need to compete with the new threat of AMD's upcoming next-gen Ryzen CPUs in the first half of 2018. Intel is building the new Z390 chipset to handle the new 8-core CPUs they'll unveil, which should fill out the Coffee Lake-S family of processors.

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SuperMicro is the board partner that the new Z390 chipset has been spotted on, with their SuperMicro Z7Z390-PGW motherboard spotted on SiSoftware's database. The CPU wasn't detected, which means that the motherboard is an early engineering sample that isn't capable of being detected by SiSoftware yet, or the board is so new SiSoftware is having problems with it.

Intel teases the new Z390 chipset in its roadmap for the first half of 2018, falling towards Computex which kicks off in the first week of June. Intel isn't shy from revealing new CPU architectures and chipsets during the fun in Taiwan, but this new Z390-based board from SuperMicro is packing quite the punch that could turn the game around in a few ways. It features 5Gbit Ethernet, up from the 1Gbit LAN we have as a standard now.