Intel's Coffee Lake CPUs have been with us since October of last year, and they put the blue team back on a competitive footing after AMD's Ryzen onslaught of multithreaded bang-for-the-buck. Today, Intel unveiled a range of new desktop and mobile CPUs that fill out much of its eighth-generation processor lineup, including several new locked desktop parts.

New chips with more cores are just one ingredient in a competitive recipe, though. Intel has so far required the use of its unlocked Z370 motherboards with every Coffee Lake CPU, whether those chips were multiplier-locked or multiplier-unlocked. For budget builders who wanted a cup of Coffee Lake, that fact forced them to pair relatively inexpensive and multiplier-locked Core i3-8100 and Core i5-8400 CPUs with costly motherboards designed for overclocking the top-end Core i5-8600K and Core i7-8700K. In contrast, AMD's Ryzen CPUs have long enjoyed a full range of compatible AM4 motherboards, from inexpensive A320 models to mainstream enthusiast B350 boards and on to the range-topping X370 chipset. Builders of every stripe could find an AMD motherboard to go with their budget largely from the get-go.