New Chipsets
So what is a B360? Well, you might actually be a little confused thinking this was the B350 AM4 chipset. In fact, there is a good chance I mess up while writing this and mix the two up at least once. Well B360 is one of Intel’s newly announced chipsets to complement Z370 that was launched last fall. Normally they launch them all together so this is a little unusual. But we now finally have lower budget options available. They launched the H370, H310, Q370, and the B360. Each has a few different features depending on what you plan on using them for. So H370 gets you u to 30 high-speed lanes and 20 PCIe lanes and has the highest number of USB ports. It also has support for 2 M.2’s. B370 is similar as well but more business focused with 30 I/O lanes, 224 PCIe, and 3 M.2s. B360 is the next closest with 24 I/O lanes but with only 12 max PCIe lanes and just one M.2. Then H310 is the budget board with just 14 I/O lanes, just 6 PCIe lanes and those can only be Gen 2 and zero M.2 ports.
All of the chipsets support integrated Wireless AC and with the exception of H310 things like Optane and Intel Smart sound are also supported. The only reason for so many chipsets is because a few of these are business focused, specifically the Q370 so you won’t see as many of those on the regular market. Its clear that even beyond PCIe lanes the lower I/O bandwidth can make a performance difference when dropping down to stuff like the H310 so keep that in mind before you plan on just getting the cheapest board available.
I can’t forget the new CPUs launched as well. Along with a long list of mobile CPUs Intel also slipped in a few more Coffee Lake CPUs for the desktop market. Only three were standard power options, now you have two more i5 models with the 8600 and the 8500 then another i3 with the 8300. It's easy to see how these fit into the current lineup, the 8400 fits right between the i3-8300 and the i5-8500. Both new i5’s are just above and below $200 and both have over 4GHz turbo clock speeds and 6 cores with no hyperthreading. The 8300 is a 4 core as well, just like the 8400, this might be a great CPU at a price point of $138.
