Wednesday, February 10th 2021
Intel B460 and H410 Incompatibility with "Rocket Lake" Explained
Earlier this week, Intel shook the DIY PC market, particularly the vast mainstream segment, by revealing that its mid-tier B460 and entry-level H410 desktop motherboard chipsets will not be compatible with 11th Gen Core "Rocket Lake-S" processors, and that only its top-tier Z490 and H470, will. We have an explanation into what's going on, after consulting with people in the know, thanks to our friends at Hardware Zone Israel, who spoke with sources within Intel. It turns out, that some batches of B460 and H410 PCH dies are re-badged from older generations of PCH, and built on the 22 nm silicon fabrication process; whereas the Z490 and H470 are based on a newer generation that's built on 14 nm. This is similar to Intel's move to carve out the B365 chipset from the older H170.
In addition to being limited to an older version of Intel ME (Management Engine), the H460 and H410 PCH lack the ability to communicate with "Rocket Lake-S" processors over side-band, using PMSYNC/PMDN signals, a design change Intel introduced with the "Tiger Lake" and "Rocket Lake" microarchitectures. The chipsets faced no such limitation with "Comet Lake-S." Intel's decision to re-badge older 22 nm-class PCH silicon as B460 and H410 may have been dictated by the company's 14 nm node volume constraints. HotHardware reports that some motherboard vendors, such as GIGABYTE, found a clever (albeit expensive) way around this limitation, by creating "V2" revisions of their existing B460 and H410 motherboards, which actually use the 14 nm H470 chipset.
Source:
Hardware Zone Israel
In addition to being limited to an older version of Intel ME (Management Engine), the H460 and H410 PCH lack the ability to communicate with "Rocket Lake-S" processors over side-band, using PMSYNC/PMDN signals, a design change Intel introduced with the "Tiger Lake" and "Rocket Lake" microarchitectures. The chipsets faced no such limitation with "Comet Lake-S." Intel's decision to re-badge older 22 nm-class PCH silicon as B460 and H410 may have been dictated by the company's 14 nm node volume constraints. HotHardware reports that some motherboard vendors, such as GIGABYTE, found a clever (albeit expensive) way around this limitation, by creating "V2" revisions of their existing B460 and H410 motherboards, which actually use the 14 nm H470 chipset.
59 Comments on Intel B460 and H410 Incompatibility with "Rocket Lake" Explained
This is the biggest IPC improvement Intel has made since Sandy Bridge.
Well once Rocket Lake release you will know what I am talking about, although I will just wait for Ryzen 4 at this point.
How many people RAID their HDD's ?...data failure chance being higher in this case vs single drives.
And once again, the number of PCI-E lanes are not the main spot for those looking at the cheapest mobos.
If you're talking AMD, yes there are quite some differences between a B450 and A320 or the newer B550 vs A520.And I agree on USB ports, that would be the most wanted feature for the average user knowing an USB hub is not the same shit as the USB on the mobo itself.
And that isn't even considering that the VRMs on most H410 motherboards are pretty bad. Most are 4+1 or if you're lucky 6+1. Meaning if you put something like a 10400 in it, you're going to be loosing performance due to power limits. While most B460 board have good enough VRMs for a 10700/10900 to run at full boost.You have to be careful with that too. A lot of low end boards just integrate a USB hub in the board itself to get more PCI-E lanes. I've seen this done a lot in particular on AMD A300 boards since they only have like 2 USB ports from the chipset itself(well the chipset on the SoC).
Guess all that marketing about "new platform" was a BIG FAT lie.
Wtaf does new platform mean to these tools.
If I was just learning this about my motherboard I wouldn't be happy.
Firms like MSI sell these With an upgrade caveat ,totes ball's.
Am I to believe their bullshit next time, I think not.
@Dick your funny, seen your vitreal in many an AMD hate thread, no balance.
2. Lowering the chance is not better than eliminating the damage factor. So you may mind your own knowledge about these geeky things.
3. PCI-E lanes was what I was talking about too, sorry if it looked like a childish approach. So you're saying at the current state of MOBO advancement speed (getting higher end features on lower end boards), it's time to see two M2's on a sub 100$ board ? If some B460's have them, doesn't mean they're cheap and worth the extra $. The main cut (gamers) actually don't benefit a lot or not at all from NVMe speeds. The direct storage tech is gonna be next mainstream leap, but it looks like its adoptions will be much slower compared to SSD replacing HDD in avergage users' computer.
As I said earlier:
10600K/F or above - B460 or better
10400F or lower - H410
I don't know how many 10th gen Intels are gonna be on the second hand market a few years now; having the classic 'upgrade path' on AM4 may be worth it when prices go back to normal. But for now it's go the best CPU+cheapest (or uh, almost) compatible mobo you can afford. Not arguing on the weaker VRMs on B & H mobos, that's clearly the truth but hey the CPU support on the chipset sheet says you can do it, not you should do it. Like you can upgrade to a top-end CPU, but it may not be worth at all, especially after DDR5 gets to the masses!
Yeah, some A320's were utter crap. That's why they came with the A520's, which are decent to say at least.
I doubt you'd get some proof on this:
'Meaning if you put something like a 10400 in it, you're going to be loosing performance due to power limits' - 3% difference in Cinebench Multicore and I'm out learning the basics of computer hardware.
Check TPU's review. I need to check my brothers' 10400F next month. I'm pretty sure his H410M S2H mobo handles it just fine, no power limits playaround, no BCLK f___ing.
And bare in mind not everyone live in North America, so the price scaling on newegg might be a little off (cheaper, as iPhones go on MSRPs lol)
Enjoy your beefier mobo Ma Fren!!
But don't resell old crap from 4 years ago!
AMD with the lead will just keep the prices High, we all need lower prices and better performance, ZEN3 is the proof that AMD is not really all that consumer friendly.
if only Intel could stop pulling shit like this i might be more optmistic tho.
Basically lies believed to be true because they keep getting repeated.
Nvidia did not scalp their own GPU's, a small group of people took advantage of their position in the supply chain and tried to onsell GPUs.
SAM is supported on some previous Gen Motherboards and CPUs, it is GPU dependent.
This explanation only make things worst. It just proves that Intel have been rebranding old chipsets to use with "new" Sky Lake based processors, instead of allowing backward compatibility. So all the while, Intel have been recycling same processor and chipset, forcing people to upgrade motherboard if they want to upgrade to a newer CPU. All the more I won't be bothered about Intel as long as there are other alternatives out there.You are comparing apples with oranges. Not having SAM on older CPU does not stop you from using the system. LIkewise without PCI-E 4.0 enabled on older AMD chipset, you can still use your computer fine, and I would say that you won't even feel the difference in your daily usage of your computer. Here, Intel is denying you of the option to have a drop in processor upgrade on your B460/ H410 boards. You have to buy a new board to use it with the new processor. There is a significant difference between not having a non-critical feature vs completely not being able to use a less than 1 year old motherboard with a new processor. Its a show stopper in this case. And unfortunately, this is a common practice for Intel where people have proved otherwise what Intel claimed as incompatible.You know that there's a range of Rocket Lake processors right? Your average i3 and i5 won't be in the 600 bucks price range.
Had Intel chosen to call these chipsets B455 and H405, and stated right away that we should not expect full compatibility, that would be just fine and fair. The added value for Intel would be to have us all confused with ten different chipsets instead of only eight.