Intel B365 Express vs Z170 vs B360: which one is better?

In line with the news related to Intel Architecture Day, this company has just presented its new chipset for motherboards for Coffee Lake processors, the Intel B365 Express. This new chipset would be manufactured in the 22 nm node, to decongest the already used 14 nm node and that, by characteristics, has all the appearance of being a rehash of the old Intel Z170 Express chipset that was used with the old Intel processors Skylake and Kaby Lake.

A couple of weeks ago we talked about the intention of the manufacturer Intel to stop manufacturing its current Intel B360 Express chipset, to replace it with a new chipset, which would be called Intel B365 Express. As we have said, this movement by the processor manufacturer would be aimed at relieving the bottling that the brand has in its 14 nm node. Traffic jam that has caused the prices of many of the processors of the brand, have shot up well above the price they had just a few months ago.

The new Intel B365 Express chipset, despite being manufactured in an older node, would still retain its old TDP of 6 W but, if on the one hand it would gain a greater number of PCIe ways to connect devices on the motherboards (such as solid storage of type M.2), on the other hand, would lose USB 3.1 connectivity of 2nd Generation, although it would keep 8 USB 3.0 ports (not 3.1 of 1st Generation, since it will not support the Fast Charge feature).

Intel B365 vs Z170 vs B360

If we make a comparison between the Intel Z170, B360 and B365 chipsets, it will be very easy to see that the new Intel B365 chipset is practically traced in specifications to the old Z170 that began to be used with the Intel Skylake processors. In fact, it looks more like this old chipset than the current Intel B360 Express chipset. Linked to the fact that it was manufactured in the old 22 nm node, it leads us to consider whether this new Intel chipset, it will not be a rehash of the Intel Z170 Express chipset, which has been removed the ability to overclock the processors that are mounted on the motherboards where they are equipped.

This opinion is perhaps stronger if we take into account that the version of the Intel Management Engine (IME) that uses the new chipset is 11, which already used the old Z170, compared to the fact that the new Intel chipsets use version 12 of this program.