Intel compatibility

Drat61200 · January 2, 2020

i have a i5 8400 in my desktop but i am wanting to upgrade to a i7. Could I use a 8th 9th or even a 10th gen CPU without buying a new motherboard?

Authentic Man · January 2, 2020

12 hours ago, Drat61200 said:

i have a i5 8400 in my desktop but i am wanting to upgrade to a i7. Could I use a 8th 9th or even a 10th gen CPU without buying a new motherboard?

Yes you can use any of the 8th, 9th or 10th gen CPU with i7 processor.

Mira Yurizaki · January 2, 2020

14 hours ago, Drat61200 said:

i have a i5 8400 in my desktop but i am wanting to upgrade to a i7. Could I use a 8th 9th or even a 10th gen CPU without buying a new motherboard?

To any 8th gen CPU, yes. To anything later, it depends on the motherboard and if there's a UEFI update that makes it compatible with it.

melete · January 2, 2020

Intel's 10th gen desktop CPUs will be on a new chipset with a new pin count (We're calling it "Z490" so far). So that will be totally incompatible.

"9th gen" was just Coffee Lake Refresh, so you could use something like an i7-9700 so long as your motherboard has a BIOS update that supports that processor. Retail motherboards should; I'm not sure about OEM specific motherboards like HP and Dell.