Intel has been putting itself in odd spots lately with regard to its product lineup and this latest piece of news is just adding fuel to the fire. Intel’s AIB partners ASRock have confirmed in a tweet that Intel’s next gen Coffee Lake processors will require an all new motherboard to work on. This means that the 8th gen Intel Core processors won’t be compatible with either the current gen 200 series or the older 100 series motherboards, which is a big bummer for not just Intel fans but PC enthusiasts in general. Intel’s 8th gen processors are supposed to bring high clock speeds and a higher core count to the consumer market.
The company was expected to win back the enthusiasts' attention from the currently popular AMD Ryzen chips, but that seems to be a lost cause now. This is especially a big blow for system builders and upgraders who were hoping to jump to a better Intel processor in the next year or so. On the other hand, AMD has declared that the company will support their current gen AM4 socket till 2020. This means all processors coming from AMD till 2020 won't require a current AMD user to change their motherboard to run it. One also needs to consider that with a new motherboard, PC builders may also have to buy a new compatible CPU cooling solution and other specific hardware.
Now, there could be many reasons for Intel to ditch older motherboards, as leaks suggest that to counter AMD, the company plans bring hexa-core processors to the mainstream consumer market for the first time. So, even though Coffee Lake will be based on Kaby Lake (14nm only), its physical requirements might be different.
We should also add, ASRock has deleted that reply since, but Tomshardware did get a screenshot of the lamentable tweet.