Intel has finally announced budget chipsets for its latest Core Ultra 200 series desktop processors. The B860 and H810 are aimed at the mid-to-entry price segment, and motherboards with these chipsets start at $99 and $129, respectively.
The B860 is the latest chipset in Intel’s B-series lineup, featuring 14 PCIe 4.0 lanes (not counting CPU lanes), four SATA 3.0 ports, 1Gb Ethernet, Bluetooth 5.3, and Wi-Fi 6 support. Memory support is supposedly limited to 6,400 MT/ With. USB-based I/O consists of 16 USB 3.2 ports and 12 USB 2.0 ports; however, the bandwidth of these 12 ports can be changed to power two 20Gbps USB ports, four 10Gbps ports, or six 5Gbps ports.
The H810 is the new entry-level chipset in Intel’s lineup, featuring fewer PCIe connections, USB, and memory. The chipset is equipped with four SATA 3.0 ports, Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.3, 1 Gb Ethernet, two eSPI ports and four SATA 3.0 connectors. Memory frequency support is 6400 MT/s; however, the DIMM slot capacity has been reduced to 1 DPC (DIMM per channel), meaning the H810 supports a maximum of two memory slots. The PCIe connection is rated at Gen 4 speeds with a total of 8 lanes (again, not including CPU lanes). The H810 supports up to 10 USB 2.0 ports, with the ability to switch ten USB ports to two 20Gbps ports or four 5Gbps ports, and up to four USB 3.2 ports.
As mentioned earlier, the H810 motherboard will start at $99 and the B860 motherboard will start at $129. Intel has named four suppliers for each motherboard series, with the H810 including Asus, Gigabyte ASRock and Colorful variants. The B860 was advertised with Gigabyte Maxsum, MSI and Asus ROG options. We’ll inevitably see H810 and B860 motherboards from all of Intel’s partners, but these four core board partners for each chipset will likely be the first to bring H810 and B860 motherboards to market, respectively.