Intel's Coffee Lake launch has shown the telltale signs of a product that wasn't originally planned to launch as early as it did. Intel's decision to pull the release date of Coffee Lake based CPUs - and its accompanying platform - have translated into an overall lack of availability for the latest Intel core processors, and a staggered launch for their platform chipsets, with only the higher-tier Z370 being available for motherboard designs as of writing.

It's expected that Intel's lower tier chipsets, such as the B360 chipset, will only be released during the first quarter of 2018. However, a recent leak that has surfaced in Sisoftware's Official Live Ranker has revealed a SuperMicro C7B360-CB-M board. following SuperMicro's known naming scheme, it's a somewhat "in your face" statement that this is a B360 chipset test board, in the Micro-ATX form-factor. The fact that this board has surfaced already (and especially considering SuperMicro's Z370 board, SuperMicro's C7Z370-CG-L, surfaced just 85 days before the platform launch) could point towards an earlier than expected release time-frame for B360 boards. It's arguable that this Intel generation is the one that offers itself the most to budget chipset offerings, considering Intel's Core i5 8400's placement as one of the best bang-for-buck CPUs from the Intel field in a long while.

Intel is on the verge of launching its 8th generation Core "Coffee Lake" processor family with six SKUs, and its top-tier Z370 Express chipset, early next month. Those looking for cheaper motherboards and don't intend on overclocking their processor, will have to wait until the first quarter of 2018, with the company confirming Q1-2018 as the launch window of three of its client-desktop chipsets for 8th generation Core processors, in a leaked Desktop outlook slide, scored by GamersNexus.

Among the new desktop chipsets launched will be the H370 Express, B360 Express, and the H310 Express. The H370 Express offers essentially the same platform connectivity as the Z370 Express, minus CPU overclocking and NVIDIA SLI certification. The B360 Express has a slimmer connectivity loadout, and lacks SLI support, but its predecessors have been generally preferred by gamers wanting to build single-GPU rigs with CPUs running at stock speeds, which is why major motherboard brands have built gamer-centric motherboards on B-series chipsets. The H310 chipset has the lightest connectivity, and is designed to power entry-level motherboards.

It turns out that Z370 Express won't be the highest-end desktop motherboard chipset for Intel's 8th generation Core "Coffee Lake" mainstream-desktop processors, with the company planning a higher Z390 Express chipset for the second half of 2018, according to a leaked company roadmap on 300-series chipset roll-out. Intel is launching its first Core "Coffee Lake" processors this October, along with the Z370 Express chipset. The mid-range B360 Express, H370 Express; and entry-level H310 Express chipsets could launch in Q1-2018, which is also the time when Intel launches the Q370 and Q360 chipsets for corporate desktops.

Intel is rushing in its 8th generation Core mainstream-desktop (MSDT) processor lineup, codenamed "Coffee Lake," later within Q3-2017. The first four of these will be six-core SKUs, which while built in the "LGA1151" package, the same ones as the 7th generation "Kaby Lake" and 6th generation "Skylake," will not be compatible with motherboards based on the older 100-series and 200-series chipsets, for reasons unknown. Upcoming motherboards based on the 300-series chipset, could support not just 8th generation "Coffee Lake" processors, but also older LGA1151 processors. The chipset lineup consists of the Z370 Express, which features support for CPU overclocking and 2-way multi-GPU; and the mid-range B360 Express chipset, which could launch either in late-2017 or early-2018, alongside the first Core i3 "Coffee Lake" chips. The first wave of motherboards to go with "Coffee Lake" processors will hence be Z370-based. VideoCardz compiled a partial, but growing list of motherboards which could make up the first wave.

Naming schemes are pretty interesting nowadays, with AMD firing some warning shots across Intel's bow with their X399 HEDT chipset (thus superseding Intel's X299 by a whole hundred.) This may seem like nothing, and it actually should be nothing; naming schemes are not to be considered indicative of actual performance, especially in regards to competing companies' products. However, as we all know, there is power in numbers. Namely, there is power in bigger numbers, as an i7 will be above an i5, and a Ryzen 7 will be above a Ryzen 3.

AMD threw a curve ball towards Intel with their B350 chipset, which stands in the way of Intel's own historical nomenclature (after the B150 and B250 chipsets from Intel, a B350 would surely follow.) Now, reports say Intel will be upping AMD by releasing a B360 chipset, thus regaining footing in the "bigger is better" battle of wits over consumer's hearts. My Drivers, the source of the information, goes on to say that these chipsets won't be released in 2017 (only Intel's Z370 chipset is expected this year), and that despite using the same socket, Intel's Coffee Lake won't be a drop-in upgrade for Z170 and Z270 platforms, since Intel "changed the alignment of the design." This information had already been advanced by a motherboard maker's social media channel as well.

According to DigiTimes, sources among Taiwan-based PC vendors have indicated that Intel's upcoming Basin Falls platform, which includes Skylake-X and Kaby Lake-X processors on a new X299 chipset, will be unveiled at Computex 2017 (May 30th, June 3rd), in Taipei - two months earlier than expected. This move comes accompanied by an accelerated launch of the Coffee Lake microarchitecture, which still uses the 14 nm process, to August 2017 from an initial January 2018 launch. If true, this is big in a number of ways - that Intel would bring forward a product launch 4 months has some interesting implications - or at least, confirmations.

Remember that Coffee Lake is supposed to carry an increased number of cores in its mainstream designs. And we all know how Intel's line-up has almost been torn apart by Ryzen's aggressive core and thread-count, with AMD offering more cores and threads than Intel at virtually all price-points. And even if an argument is made regarding Intel's better gaming performance, that's one scenario out of many. Future proofing, professional work, multimedia, all of these assert AMD's dominance in a pure price-performance ratio. I, for one, would gladly give up some FPS in some games and accept an increased number of cores than go the other way around (especially with AMD's platform support and the number of patches that have increased game performance on Ryzen CPUs.)