Intel’s latest Devil’s Canyon processors are among the most advanced ones offered by the chip company but there is a catch – they have been designed to work in Intel 9th-series motherboards only. Starting now, however, the new Intel chips can work in a large number of older 8th-series motherboards with a simple BIOS update.
The older 8th-series chipsets that support the new chips are H81, B85, H87 and Z87. Users of such boards can find a list with supported motherboards on Intel’s web site with most Z87-based motherboards being on the list. This is great news especially for people who purchased expensive Z87 boards last year.
The Devil’s Canyon processors feature specifically selected dies based on the latest Haswell architecture, unlocked multipliers and better thermal paste that sits between the processing die and the integrated heat spreader. The family currently includes the Core i5-4690K (3.50 GHz/3.90 GHz Turbo, 4 cores, 4 threads, 6 MB L3 cache, USD 242) and Core i7-4790K (4.00 GHz/4.40 GHz Turbo, 4 cores, 8 threads, 8 MB L3 cache, USD 339).
Source: Intel