News Why Rocket Lake CPUs Won't Work On Most 400-Series Motherboards

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Sad ending for anyone who bought a 400-series motherboard thinking that the hype for 4.0 compatibility and CPU-powered NVMe x4 slot meant Rocket Lake was going to be compatible for sure. I bet many frequent upgraders are going to be real sore about this one.
 
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InvalidError said:
Sad ending for anyone who bought a 400-series motherboard thinking that the hype for 4.0 compatibility and CPU-powered NVMe x4 slot meant Rocket Lake was going to be compatible for sure. I bet many frequent upgraders are going to be real sore about this one.
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It's hard to fathom anyone having bought a 10th gen on a basic /budget mainboard was all hyped this soon get an 11th gen , just for PCI- 4.0 anyway...
 
mdd1963 said:
It's hard to fathom anyone having bought a 10th gen on a basic /budget mainboard was all hyped this soon get an 11th gen , just for PCI- 4.0 anyway...
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Not just 4.0. Many 400-series motherboards also have an extra CPU-fed NVMe slot which is unusable with Comet Lake due to last minute issues forcing Intel to disable the extra PCIe lanes along with limiting speed to PCIe 3.0.
 
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Typo in this sentence:

For reasons, which probably have to do with cost reduction, the RSVD pins for B460 and H410 motherboards are epty so there's no power going to VCCIO_1_2, which feeds the PCIe and other interfaces.
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I presume it should be empty instead of epty.
 
In my opinion, people buying an Intel system should have seen this coming. This should not be a surprise. Whether or not the power delivery is sufficient or not, this is typical Intel behaviour over the past few years.

Anyway, I don't believe Rocket Lake will sell well given that its a very bad time to buy a new rig or upgrade.
  1. Lack of GPUs
  2. High cost of components
  3. Alder Lake is really not that far away
Add on to the above fact that Intel is shutting some Comet Lake users out by not allowing Rocket Lake on cheaper chipsets, there is little incentive to buy a new yet an end of the road motherboard since socket 1200 is going the way of the dodo.
 
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watzupken said:
Anyway, I don't believe Rocket Lake will sell well given that its a very bad time to buy a new rig or upgrade.
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Rocket Lake will sell perfectly fine since the majority of PC sales go to institutions, not cost-sensitive end-users. For gamers, reusing an existing GPU is always an option, so the GPU shortage makes very little difference there. Alder Lake may be "just around the corner" but I doubt I am the only one who refuses to buy first-gen anything, especially when that first-gen comes with major changes like hybridizing the core mix on some SKUs which will likely take several months if not years before the scheduling between performance and efficiency cores gets sorted out.
 
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InvalidError said:
There is no shortage of Comet Lake CPUs and motherboards now and since those come off the same manufacturing lines as Rocket Lake generation stuff, there is very little reason to believe the situation will get worse for those.
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Also, Intel has far more control of their supply lines. This fact helps them to not run out of stock and the fact their process node is still the same should really help them keep up supply. If they were finally mass producing 7nm then maybe Intel would have supply constraint.
 
Soaptrail said:
You do not believe Intel will have supply shortages that are plaguing everyone else?
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Not to the same extent, no. We don't know how heavily Intel will have to bin chips to find usable 11900K's, but I would assume those will be in short supply at release. We're what, 3 months into the 5000 series release? I don't think supply will be an issue for Intel that far into release, especially at the lower end. Intel has significantly more wafer capacity for their CPU's than AMD is getting from TSMC and now that some Xeon capacity and almost all mobile chips are moving to 10nm, that will create even more capacity at 14nm for Rocket Lake.
 
spongiemaster said:
World wide chip shortage. Intel setting revenue records with 6 year old architecture. Can't find AMD 5000 series here. Yea, Rocket Lake isn't going to sell well. Brilliant prediction.
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My opinion is that the chip shortage is due to the start of the pandemic and people rushing to get a desktop/ laptop, enterprises buying up systems to support employees working from home. Record revenue is largely contributed by the surge in hardware sales from the lockdowns and not specific to just Comet Lake processor sales. While there will still be demand, the demand is unlikely to continue as strong as last year. Most OEMs are struggling because they have expended a lot of their inventories amidst the limited supply due to lock downs and surge in demand through the year. Now, most of them should be buying to replenish their inventory. From a gamer/ retail perspective, the lack of GPU makes little sense to upgrade their CPUs either since its really the GPU that will contribute to the bulk of the performance improvement. In addition, we are not forced to upgrade whenever there is a new generation of processors. If I can't get a Zen 3 processor, it does not automatically translates to a buy Intel chip decision. You always have the option to postpone buying a new rig.
 
InvalidError said:
Rocket Lake will sell perfectly fine since the majority of PC sales go to institutions, not cost-sensitive end-users. For gamers, reusing an existing GPU is always an option, so the GPU shortage makes very little difference there. Alder Lake may be "just around the corner" but I doubt I am the only one who refuses to buy first-gen anything, especially when that first-gen comes with major changes like hybridizing the core mix on some SKUs which will likely take several months if not years before the scheduling between performance and efficiency cores gets sorted out.
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I am also a gamer, and at least for me, I don't think it makes sense to upgrade the CPU if there is no GPU upgrade. Conversely, I feel gamers are more likely to upgrade GPU than CPU as you can tell some are still using processors a few years old now. As for institutional sales, these are really just the usual business, so we may not see an increase in demand given the panic buying last year.
 
Soaptrail said:
You do not believe Intel will have supply shortages that are plaguing everyone else?
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Its hard to tell, but since Intel owns their own fab and almost as good as the only user for the fab, they have complete control over how they want to allocate resources. Having said that, the fabs still require "ingredients"/ components to churn out the chips. So if the supposed substrate supply issue is impacting both Samsung and TSMC, then Intel cannot be immune to it.
 
watzupken said:
My opinion is that the chip shortage is due to the start of the pandemic and people rushing to get a desktop/ laptop, enterprises buying up systems to support employees working from home. Record revenue is largely contributed by the surge in hardware sales from the lockdowns and not specific to just Comet Lake processor sales.
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It's called covid-19 because it started in 2019, and at the end of it at that.
Intel has been making the same revenue and net income since the start of 2018.
 
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