Intel Wanting to Keep Z87 as Only Overclocking Motherboard

In the past few months multiple motherboard manufacturers have been pushing BIOS updates and firmware codes so that Intel Haswell “K” processors (i7-4770K and i5-4670K CPUs) will be able to be overclocked using Intel H87 and B85 chipsets. While consumers of these chips love this because the H87 and B85 chipset boards are cheaper than the Z87 chipset, Intel is not amused by this. Intel is looking at pushing microcode to chipsets that will effectively restrict any overclocking by these chipsets. I haven’t found anything that Intel has truly commented on this but MSI released a statement about how Intel is revising their 8 series chipset code and how only using Z87 motherboards to overclock. The statement also goes into how other motherboard manufacturers, not mentioning anyone specifically, are using this tactic by saying,

It is with great pain that we see other motherboard manufacturers announce this a feature for short-term marketing gain, neglecting to mention that users would use this function in the near future. We want to urge the PC community to only chose Z87 based motherboards if they want to enjoy the benefits of overclocking since Z87 based motherboards, like the Z87 MPOWER are guaranteed to provide a great overclocking experience now and in the future, regardless of the use of special BIOS revisions or “features”.

While I understand that the Intel Z87 chipset is their best and they want their best processors on these boards it shouldn’t matter really. If someone is wanting to do some extreme overclocking I would and I assume they would go with the Intel Z87 chipset to get the best overclocking from their processor. I look at it that if someone were to get their hands on either the i7-4770K or i5-4670K and wants to do some minor overclocking they should be able to use a lesser board and have the ability to overclock since they got the better processor. Now having said that I sort of understand Intel’s position because they see a threat to losing some revenue. If Gigabyte, ASRock, ASUS, ect start making motherboards with stronger VRMs and cheaper chipsets than Intel could possibly lose money. Not a great reason but a feasible one.

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