All you need to know about Intel's 12th-Gen Chipset

All you need to know about Intel's 12th-Gen Chipset. The first chipsets of Intel's 12th-Gen line are now available and we take an in-depth look at what they are, how they perform and which ones you need to have to upgrade or build your next PC. What's new? We show you what to expect from Intel's new CPUs and chipsets, as well as comparisons to previous generations, benchmarks and everything else you need to know. Check out our guide now!

Key Features of Z390

A new chipset is launching alongside Coffee Lake, called Z390. It’s a high-end feature set that supports up to 28 cores and an overall 1 TB of memory. However, unlike other chipsets, it’s only available with 8 cores (and two RAM slots). This chipset also gets a new integrated wireless option for all devices that support 802.11ac Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 5.0 support for better range and speed than previous versions. If you have Thunderbolt 3 on your laptop or desktop, there are actually three ports built into Z390—one from EMIO and two USB 3.1 Gen 2 ports—so they can work together at full bandwidth at once.

Features of H370, B360, Q370, and H310

The two additional chipsets, H370 and B360 are also part of their Gen12 family. The H370 is a direct successor of last year’s H270 while B360 replaces last year’s B250. While they offer comparable features and performance, they both come with different sets of capabilities which are better suited for specific type of use cases. It should be noted that while each chipset comes with its own unique set of features, there will still be some commonalities between them because they belong to same generation. Although Intel has not officially disclosed what these commonalities are, we can expect similar list for all four new chipsets as well as other old chipsets too (H81).

Compatible CPUs for these motherboards

9th and 10th generation, Coffee Lake, Skylake, Kaby Lake and 7th generation, Kaby Lake Refresh. These chipsets will support CPUs from 6 cores with a TDP of 95W up to 8 cores with a TDP of 112W and up. One interesting addition is that one chipset can be used across multiple CPUs (like Z370 supporting everything from Celeron, Pentium Gold or Core i3). This means that motherboard manufacturers have more options on choosing boards without needing dedicated SKUs for different CPU generations.

Conclusion

The new chipset should give your motherboard more bandwidth and performance options. While it doesn’t dramatically change what we can do today, it does ensure that tomorrow’s technologies will be handled efficiently. Because who knows what our computers of 2026 will have in store? They might just end up needing all those extra lanes!