Specifications of Intel H270 and Z270 chipsets appear online
Specifications of the new Kaby Lake chipsets have appeared online. According to that information, Intel has not changed the chipsets from their Skylake predecessors, other than making more pcie 3.0 lanes available.
According to the table published on BenchLife, the Z270 still supports processor overclocking, where the H270 does not, as it did in previous Z and H chipsets. There is also still support for six SATA connections and raid 0, 1 and 5. The motherboards continue to use the same 1151 sockets as their predecessors.
The biggest change according to this rumor is the increase in the number of pcie lanes on the chipsets. The H270 chipset supports up to twenty PCIe 3.0 lanes, compared to sixteen with the H170 chipsets. The number of PCIe 3.0 lanes has also increased for the Z270 chipset, from 20 to 24. The number of hsio lanes has increased from 22 to 30 for the H chipsets and from 26 to 30 for the Z chipsets. processors themselves only support 16 PCIe 3.0 lanes, so some lanes are shared if they are all in use.
New is support for Optane technology in both chipsets. Optane is a technology for SSDs, which Intel demonstrated in April. Furthermore, Intel Rapid Storage Technology, the company’s raid technology, is moving from version 14 to version 15. What this new version will add is not clear.
Motherboards with the new chipsets are expected to be available from January 2017. Then Intel can announce the chipsets during CES tech fair. Existing 1151 motherboards designed for Skylake processors will also support Kaby Lake with a bios update.
| Target audience | Consumer | Consumer | Consumer / Business | Consumer / Business |
| CPU PCIe Configuration | 1×16 or 2×8 or 1×8 + 2×4 | 1×16 or 2×8 or 1×8 + 2×4 | 1×16 | 1×16 |
| DisplayPort | 3 | 3 | 3 | 3 |
| Memory DIMMs | 4 | 4 | 4 | 4 |
| Overclocking | Yes | Yes | new | new |
| Intel SmartSound | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Intel Optane | Yes | new | Yes | new |
| Intel Rapid Storage | 15 | 14 | 15 | 14 |
| RAID 0、1、5、10 | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Intel Smart Response | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Maximum High Speed I/O（HSIO）Lanes | 30 | 26 | 30 | 22 |
| USB ports (max USB 3.0) | 14（10） | 14（10） | 14（8） | 14（8） |
| Max Sata 6.0Gbps Ports | 6 | 6 | 6 | 6 |
| Max PCIe Express 3.0 Lanes | 24 | 20 | 20 | 16 |
| Max Intel RST for PCIe Storage Ports （x2 M.2 or x4 M.2） |
3 | 3 | 2 | 2 |