Intel i5- 8400 chipset

[GearMic]

I'm looking to buy a new cpu and soon found the intel i5-8400 which is very cheap for it's performance. I looked for the chipset on intel's website and only found this: "However, they [intel 8th gen cpus] require motherboards based on the new Intel® 300 Series Chipset, such as the Intel® Z370 Chipset" https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/articles/000025694/processors/intel-core-processors.html As this did not answer all of my question I looked further and found this thread: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/answers/id-3544167/intel-core-8400-motherboard.html Here someone says that the only motherboards compatible with coffe lake are z370 ones. Now I'm wondering if this is really correct and why it says nothing more detailed on intel's website about the i5-8400's chipset (also on the page specific to that cpu).
Thanks for help in advance

[AbdulAPA]

You need a 300 series motherboard. Either Z370, B360, H370 or H310. Coffee lake uses the same socket as Kaby and Skylake however is not compatible with older motherboards due to different pins on the socket being used for different things (if that makes sense).

[Jurrunio]

You can use H310, B360, H370 and Z370. Pay more = more features.

[AskTJ]

H370, B360 and Z370. 

 

H370 = Lowest end chipset. Nothing wrong with it, just can't overclock. Normally cheapest or priced same as B360.

 

B360 = Cheap chipset that has more features and supports mild overclocking(<== quote me on that), great for locked processors.

 

Z370 = Fully fledged chipset. Has all the features you would want and supports very high overclocking (dependent on your CPU silicon quality, cooler and pure luck). Is a price to pay for though.

[GearMic]

Ignore this. I don't know how to delete comments on this Forum..

[GearMic]

2 hours ago, AskTJ said:

H370, B360 and Z370. 

 

H370 = Lowest end chipset. Nothing wrong with it, just can't overclock. Normally cheapest or priced same as B360.

 

B360 = Cheap chipset that has more features and supports mild overclocking(<== quote me on that), great for locked processors.

 

Z370 = Fully fledged chipset. Has all the features you would want and supports very high overclocking (dependent on your CPU silicon quality, cooler and pure luck). Is a price to pay for though.

Thanks, this was very helpful. What about the H310 @AbdulAPA and @Jurrunio mentioned though?

 

In general, thank you all very much for the answers!

[Jurrunio]

25 minutes ago, GearMic said:

Thanks, this was very helpful. What about the H310 @AbdulAPA and @Jurrunio mentioned though?

 

In general, thank you all very much for the answers!

@AskTJ is almost completely wrong.

 

Z370: The only chipset for 8th gen atm that supports overclocking your CPU and memory. Mind you that the 8400 is a locked CPU so you can't overclock it, but you can still overclock the RAM. It gets almost the full feature set, say 6 SATA 6gbps ports, 3 M.2 slots, 14 USB 3.0 and 2.0 combined (though some boards omit a few ports for some reason, but not a limitation of chipset), SLI/CF support, Intel Optane and hardware RAID.

 

H370: On the basis of Z370 chipset, H370 removes support for any overclocking, has only 2 M.2 slots, but gets native USB 3.1 support which Z370 lacks. It's a grade below Z370, and rarely used because it's hardly cheaper than Z370 boards.

 

B360: Compared to H370, it loses another M.2 slot, 2 USB connection, hardware RAID function and SLI/CF suppoort. Still gets the USB 3.1 that Z370 lacks though. This chipset is the common choice for those without unlocked CPU, as the price is noticeably lower with enough features to get by.

 

H310: compared to B360, it drops support for Intel Optane, another 2 USB connection, and USB 3.1 is gone. This is the absolute cheapest chipset, though hardly anyone bought it because it's only a tiny bit cheaper than B360.

[GearMic]

5 hours ago, Jurrunio said:

@AskTJ is almost completely wrong.

 

Z370: The only chipset for 8th gen atm that supports overclocking your CPU and memory. Mind you that the 8400 is a locked CPU so you can't overclock it, but you can still overclock the RAM. It gets almost the full feature set, say 6 SATA 6gbps ports, 3 M.2 slots, 14 USB 3.0 and 2.0 combined (though some boards omit a few ports for some reason, but not a limitation of chipset), SLI/CF support, Intel Optane and hardware RAID.

 

H370: On the basis of Z370 chipset, H370 removes support for any overclocking, has only 2 M.2 slots, but gets native USB 3.1 support which Z370 lacks. It's a grade below Z370, and rarely used because it's hardly cheaper than Z370 boards.

 

B360: Compared to H370, it loses another M.2 slot, 2 USB connection, hardware RAID function and SLI/CF suppoort. Still gets the USB 3.1 that Z370 lacks though. This chipset is the common choice for those without unlocked CPU, as the price is noticeably lower with enough features to get by.

 

H310: compared to B360, it drops support for Intel Optane, another 2 USB connection, and USB 3.1 is gone. This is the absolute cheapest chipset, though hardly anyone bought it because it's only a tiny bit cheaper than B360.

Thank you very much! Is this knowledge you just collected over time or do you have a specific source? if so, could you post a link?

[Jurrunio]

3 hours ago, GearMic said:

Thank you very much! Is this knowledge you just collected over time or do you have a specific source? if so, could you post a link?

Done by reading multiple posts and watching many videos. This data is widely available 

[GearMic]

On 6/23/2018 at 2:11 AM, Jurrunio said:

Done by reading multiple posts and watching many videos. This data is widely available 

Well, I could really have researched better. But I looked up the chipsets again and made a comparison on intel ark and now I'm really confused again.

 

Under "Expansion Options" it says that the B360 chipset only supports 12 PCIe lanes. From my understanding this means that a B360 motherboard couldn't even fully support a usual graphics card as those need 16 lanes each. That makes no sense at all to me.

 

I'm also unsure about RAM speeds. On intel's website it says DDR4-2666 but here people are saying that this is just a recommendation. In the chipset comparison it says nothing at all about RAM speeds but here people are saying that with B360 only speeds up to 2666MHz matter (if I'm understanding that right).

 

Could You or anyone else please clear up some more? I hope I'm not just being dumb here.

[maartendc]

2 hours ago, GearMic said:

Well, I could really have researched better. But I looked up the chipsets again and made a comparison on intel ark and now I'm really confused again.

 

Under "Expansion Options" it says that the B360 chipset only supports 12 PCIe lanes. From my understanding this means that a B360 motherboard couldn't even fully support a usual graphics card as those need 16 lanes each. That makes no sense at all to me.

 

I'm also unsure about RAM speeds. On intel's website it says DDR4-2666 but here people are saying that this is just a recommendation. In the chipset comparison it says nothing at all about RAM speeds but here people are saying that with B360 only speeds up to 2666MHz matter (if I'm understanding that right).

 

Could You or anyone else please clear up some more? I hope I'm not just being dumb here.

All modern motherboards support modern PCI-e GPU's, dont worry about that. The extra PCI-e lanes is more for expansion cards and such.

 

The ram speeds: the cheaper motherboard chipsets H370 etc. are usually limited to 2133 Mhz ram speed. If you want higher ram speeds you need the Z370 chipsets. The processor (either i5 or i7) has nothing to do with the Ram speeds, the chipset determines this.

 

Just get a Z370 and a i5 8600K  if you plan to overclock, and a H370 and i5 8400 if you don't. Everything else doesn't matter.

[badreg]

3 hours ago, GearMic said:

Under "Expansion Options" it says that the B360 chipset only supports 12 PCIe lanes. From my understanding this means that a B360 motherboard couldn't even fully support a usual graphics card as those need 16 lanes each. That makes no sense at all to me.

The chipset supports 12 PCI-E 3.0 lanes. The PCI-E 3.0 x16 slots bypass the chipset and have a direct connection to the CPU.

 

Watch this video from Gamers Nexus if you want a detailed explanation of what a chipset really does: 

 

[GearMic]

2 hours ago, badreg said:

The chipset supports 12 PCI-E 3.0 lanes. The PCI-E 3.0 x16 slots bypass the chipset and have a direct connection to the CPU.

 

Watch this video from Gamers Nexus if you want a detailed explanation of what a chipset really does: 

 

Thank you, that helped a lot.

[Jurrunio]

7 hours ago, GearMic said:

I'm also unsure about RAM speeds. On intel's website it says DDR4-2666 but here people are saying that this is just a recommendation. In the chipset comparison it says nothing at all about RAM speeds but here people are saying that with B360 only speeds up to 2666MHz matter (if I'm understanding that right).

If you use B360, then 2666MHz is the maximum frequency you can hit. Of course you can use even lower frequencies if you want to.

 

 

[GearMic]

On 6/27/2018 at 2:46 AM, Jurrunio said:

If you use B360, then 2666MHz is the maximum frequency you can hit. Of course you can use even lower frequencies if you want to.

 

 

Thanks. from what I read elsewhere you can still use higher frequency RAM which will just run at 2666MHz, is that correct?

[Jurrunio]

1 hour ago, GearMic said:

Thanks. from what I read elsewhere you can still use higher frequency RAM which will just run at 2666MHz, is that correct?

yeah. You can still benefit from lower timings if you use a high frequency kit, they are better sticks after all.