Intel B460 and H410 Incompatibility with "Rocket Lake" Explained

[btarunr]

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.



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[nguyen]

wow just how incompetent can Intel be, screwing over customers like no tomorrow .
Now how can I explain to my friend that his 10400F + B460 combo (which I built) can't be upgraded to 11th gen.

 

[BSim500]

It increasingly sounds like Rocket Lake is going to be a "white elephant" generation. Given it's supposed short life of mere months before socket 1700 / 12th Gen, those who bought a cheap i5-10400F / i7-10700F + B460 are far more likely to just make it last and wait for DDR5 than swap a 1-gen B460 motherboard for another 1-gen B560 motherboard. According to this post, the "Rocket Lake" i3-11xxx's & Pentium's are also just Comet Lake refreshes, so no upgrade at all for budget users there either unlike the previous 2C/4T Kaby -> 4C/4T Coffee -> 4C/8T Comet. On the other hand with Ryzen 5000 CPU's still out of stock (and double the price in many regions vs their own 1600/2600/3600 former stable-mates), the 3300X pure vapourware and seemingly no low-end love from AMD either, the best upgrade budget gamers can do is stick with what you've got and upgrade everything else (monitor, SSD, etc) then return to the market in 6-12 months time when hopefully sanity will have returned.

 

[sepheronx]

wow just how incompetent can Intel be, screwing over customers like no tomorrow .
Now how can I explain to my friend that his 10400F + B460 combo (which I built) can't be upgraded to 11th gen.

Tell him that the importance of the upgrade is rather minimal. The 10400f will suffice and even upgrade to a 10c/20t would be a better deal since max rocket lake is 8c/16t. Probably end up cheaper too since you will probably find used units.

After watching about PCIE 4.0 tested against 3.0, the importance isn't really there.

 

[Cobain]

wow just how incompetent can Intel be, screwing over customers like no tomorrow .
Now how can I explain to my friend that his 10400F + B460 combo (which I built) can't be upgraded to 11th gen.

It can be upgraded to an 8 core i7 10700 or a 10 Core 10900, altho I Suspect most b460 VRMs arent even good to mantain high clocks all the time so.. plus idk about that many people switching CPUs every year.

 

[nguyen]

It can be upgraded to an 8 core i7 10700 or a 10 Core 10900, altho I Suspect most b460 VRMs arent even good to mantain high clocks all the time so.. plus idk about that many people switching CPUs every year.

Well for gaming built any VRM design is fine though, I still have a Gigabyte H87-D3H + 3570K build still kicking, also his B460 is not that cheap (Asus B460-I Gaming ITX).
Had a B450 or B550 ITX board available from my local retail I would have picked up the B550 + 3600 combo, Intel is kinda not worth considering these days.

 

[randompeep]

Intel is kinda not worth considering these days.

What are you talking about ? A 10100F (if you grab it at MSRP)/10400F & H410 mobo combos are by far the best entry level option ATM for gaming/light productivity workloads
Since Ryzens took the attention spot, the prices and stocks got worse day by day (after Zen 2 release)
If 3300X was still a thing, AMDs would be further kicking...at least on the gaming side

 

[nguyen]

What are you talking about ? A 10100F (if you grab it at MSRP)/10400F & H410 mobo combos are by far the best entry level option ATM for gaming/light productivity workloads
Since Ryzens took the attention spot, the prices and stocks got worse day by day (after Zen 2 release)
If 3300X was still a thing, AMDs would be further kicking...at least on the gaming side

Yup and the hidden cost from such budget offerings is that there is no upgrade path, as detailed in this thread.
Would be much nicer if people can pop in a 2nd hand 11900F into their B460 board 4 years from now isn't it.

 

[Chrispy_]

"some batches of B460 and H410 PCH dies are re-badged from older generations of PCH"

JFC. Intel go from bad to worse almost every news article, redefining a new lower standard for how much they can abuse consumers each time I read something.

Maybe if I just stop reading the bad will stop getting more bad?

 

[billEST]

wow just how incompetent can Intel be, screwing over customers like no tomorrow .
Now how can I explain to my friend that his 10400F + B460 combo (which I built) can't be upgraded to 11th gen.

to win what ?

what the interest to rebuy a processor to win 5 % max 10 % at the same level ?

during the same time the old processor lost 30 % price ...

Yup and the hidden cost from such budget offerings is that there is no upgrade path, as detailed in this thread.
Would be much nicer if people can pop in a 2nd hand 11900F into their B460 board 4 years from now isn't it.

to win what ? there is alway 10900 .. in game no must win

in 4 year 2 generation a DDR 5 processor

2generation of apple silicon

next console xbox anonce

for office since 2500k no difference since 10 year i have 2500 k 4770 S 1600 X 10400 F i can compare 10 year for office !!!

in game : only the graphic card is important

expert power ... dont by old thing

Well for gaming built any VRM design is fine though, I still have a Gigabyte H87-D3H + 3570K build still kicking, also his B460 is not that cheap (Asus B460-I Gaming ITX).
Had a B450 or B550 ITX board available from my local retail I would have picked up the B550 + 3600 combo, Intel is kinda not worth considering these days.

in itx amd is very , very bad and expensive B460i strix ( wifi 6 usb 20 gb ) with 10400 is terible combo for 320 euro

 

[randompeep]

Would be much nicer if people can pop in a 2nd hand 11900F into their B460 board 4 years from now isn't it.

Upgrading it's a dark path nowdays, we barely can talk about 2-2'n'a half years perspective.
Talking 'bout the upgrade path, I'm stuck with a Ryzen 1500X @4.15 Ghz (luckily enough, the silicon lottery saved me) - just because they boomed the prices on every Zen and absolutely killed the best budget option (3300X). Now I'm watching CPU+MOBO performance per buck, nevermind the generation. I'd happily upgrade to a i7 8700, but guess what, the cost is not worth it if I take in consideration how much I've spent on 1500x + B450M combo in july '19 - 130 bucks

Everyone is braggin around B460's. IMO, there ain't no feature on these boards to make it worth over an H410 if you're not paring with an 10600K and above.

Upgrading it's a dark path nowdays, we can barely talk about 2-2'n'a half years perspective.
Talking 'bout the upgrade path, I'm stuck with a Ryzen 1500X @4.15 Ghz (luckily enough, the silicon lottery saved me) - just because they boomed the prices on every Zen and absolutely killed the best budget option (3300X). Now I'm watching CPU+MOBO performance per buck, nevermind the generation. I'd happily upgrade to a i7 8700, but guess what, the cost is not worth it if I take in consideration how much I've spent on 1500x + B450M combo in july '19 - 130 bucks

Everyone is braggin around B460's. IMO, there ain't no feature on these boards to make it worth over an H410 if you're not pairing it with an 10600K and above.

 

[Wirko]

This is similar to Intel's move to carve out the B365 chipset from the older H170.

Well! So Intel had to make efforts specifically to make the B365 (chipset and motherboards) incompatible with Skylake CPUs.

 

[TristanX]

Intel way: overpriced and outdated

 

[TheinsanegamerN]

Gibberish

I can feel my brain cells dying reading this.

 

[Steevo]

Intel ; Do a barrel roll... Whoops we mean but a new motherboard. Now bark like a seal for your fish you dirty peasants.

 

[wolar]

To be honest, logically no one would upgrade their cpu that have a B motherboard to the immediate next cpu line, the reasoning is simple really, if you don't care for small bump in performance (and you shouldn't tbh) which most mid range users won't then it doesn't matter and if you do care then most likely than not you will already have top of the line motherboard.

Now, i am not supporting this by any means, but it kinda makes sense in my eyes to keep the costs of non-top of the line chipset lower without ensuring future compatibility instead of that extra premium being paid up front.

 

[1d10t]

Intel with repurpose chip 22nm node : Thanks Intel for giving me more fps.
AMD with fan on its chip : What kind of abomination is this?

 

[nguyen]

To be honest, logically no one would upgrade their cpu that have a B motherboard to the immediate next cpu line, the reasoning is simple really, if you don't care for small bump in performance (and you shouldn't tbh) which most mid range users won't then it doesn't matter and if you do care then most likely than not you will already have top of the line motherboard.

Now, i am not supporting this by any means, but it kinda makes sense in my eyes to keep the costs of non-top of the line chipset lower without ensuring future compatibility instead of that extra premium being paid up front.

In 4 years time, a RTX 5060 would be as fast as the current RTX 3090, and a 6 cores CPU won't cut it anymore. A cheap and easy upgrade to a second hand 11900F + RTX 5060 would be quite sufficient, plus you don't have to reinstall windows.
And from 10400F to 11900F would be a 50% performance upgrade (IPC + Clock speed + Core count) when paired with a RTX 3090 performance class GPU

 

[zmeul]

wow just how incompetent can Intel be, screwing over customers like no tomorrow .
Now how can I explain to my friend that his 10400F + B460 combo (which I built) can't be upgraded to 11th gen.

You did this to yourself as I do not recall Intel ever saying the b460 or H410 will take 11th gen

 

[nguyen]

You did this to yourself as I do not recall Intel ever saying the b460 or H410 will take 11th gen

Yeah like customers would know which batch of B460, H410 chipsets come from 14nm or 22nm production line, that is just sheer incompetence from Intel.
Oh well doesn't affect me one bit as I just did a budget build for a friend, probably stay away from any Intel product from now on though, Intel is a joke at this point.

 

[newtekie1]

Everyone is braggin around B460's. IMO, there ain't no feature on these boards to make it worth over an H410 if you're not paring with an 10600K and above.

I find the cost difference between the two very minimal and H460 definitely offers some benefits. There is Optane support, RAID 0-5 support, extra USB ports, extra PCI-E lanes. All of those lead to better boards for next to no price difference.

Yeah like customers would know which batch of B460, H410 chipsets come from 14nm or 22nm production line, that is just sheer incompetence from Intel.
Oh well doesn't affect me one bit as I just did a budget build for a friend, probably stay away from any Intel product from now on though, Intel is a joke at this point.

What does it matter? Do you people think Rocket lake is going to be a massive improvement over Comet Lake? Are you that insecure that you have to have the 11th gen processor? Is that 11th gen processor going to do anything that the 10900K can't already do? I never understood this need to upgrade to the latest and greatest for marginal performance improvements.

 

[nguyen]

What does it matter? Do you people think Rocket lake is going to be a massive improvement over Comet Lake? Are you that insecure that you have to have the 11th gen processor? Is that 11th gen processor going to do anything that the 10900K can't already do? I never understood this need to upgrade to the latest and greatest for marginal performance improvements.

Cheap upgrade path, don't you get it? an 11900F would be cheaper to buy than an 10900K since Intel never reduce their CPU prices.
For example going from 7600K from a few years ago to 9900K now would totally extend the life of your gaming rig for a long time and for relatively low cost (Z170 motherboard can be modded to support 9900K).
Plus it save you all the trouble of reinstalling windows.

 

[sepheronx]

Cheap upgrade path, don't you get it? an 11900F would be cheaper to buy than an 10900K since Intel never reduce their CPU prices.
For example going from 7600K from a few years ago to 9900K now would totally extend the life of your gaming rig for a long time (Z170 motherboard can be modded to support 9900K).
Plus it save you all the trouble of reinstalling windows.

cheap upgrade path in what sense?

The 11900F sounds good, yes. But its multicore is less than that of a 10900K. Intel has had reduced the prices of their processors or at least have done so over here. You will be paying close to the same either way between the two but once again, you have to weigh the options and benefit. And if one was going to buy the highest end processor, it seems rather silly to have cheapened out on the motherboard, especially since a lower end Z490 wasn't much more expensive than the mid range B460 boards to begin with (once again, at least here in Canada a cheaper B460 motherboard is roughly $160 CAD while a cheap Z490 motherboard (mine, MSI gaming Plus) was about $199 CAD). But regardless, I would rather just go with a 10900K for those extra cores than a 11900F. But that may just be me, as I am usually just happy rocking Xeon v3 processors as example.

 

[nguyen]

cheap upgrade path in what sense?

The 11900F sounds good, yes. But its multicore is less than that of a 10900K. Intel has had reduced the prices of their processors or at least have done so over here. You will be paying close to the same either way between the two but once again, you have to weigh the options and benefit. And if one was going to buy the highest end processor, it seems rather silly to have cheapened out on the motherboard, especially since a lower end Z490 wasn't much more expensive than the mid range B460 boards to begin with (once again, at least here in Canada a cheaper B460 motherboard is roughly $160 CAD while a cheap Z490 motherboard (mine, MSI gaming Plus) was about $199 CAD). But regardless, I would rather just go with a 10900K for those extra cores than a 11900F. But that may just be me, as I am usually just happy rocking Xeon v3 processors as example.

It's the performance sweetspot, right now a 6 cores CPU is all you need, in the next 4 years a fast 8 cores CPU will always be better than slow 10 cores CPU, at least in games. Also the single core IPC is more important than you might think, I set up a core i5 1135G7 laptop for another friend and the general usage experience like web surfing is much faster than a 9900K at 5.1Ghz

 

[sepheronx]

It's the performance sweetspot, right now a 6 cores CPU is all you need, in the next 4 years a fast 8 cores CPU will always be better than slow 10 cores CPU, at least in games. Also the single core IPC is more important than you might think, I set up a core i5 1135G7 laptop for another friend and the general usage experience like web surfing is much faster than a 9900K at 5.1Ghz

I dont really buy that for a second simply because web surfing uses so little of resources that I cant tell much difference between my 10500 ES and a older Celeron 1156 setup I got upstairs.

IPC gain may not be much as we will have to wait to see what the actual results are of rocket lake. But as stated before, getting the latest and greatest means very little. Actually, current Intel chips sit between the Ryzen 3000 and 5000 series in terms of performance and there is little bottleneck especially if one games at 1440p or higher.

But to each their own I suppose.