Newbie - What to expect for soon launching Intel Comet Lake Desktop CPUs?

[Steve77]

Hello fellow Forum members!
This is my very first post here, and i just started to read myself into the whole matter of Hackintoshes, so please tell me if there is any problem with my post!

Being pretty tight on budget, i am weighing the option to wait with building my Hackingtosh until Intel releases their new CPUs + MB platform in January/February 2020.
The current gen only has HT/SMT on the very top i7 SKUs, but the next gen will offer it throughout the whole range of Core SKUs.
So i could get a low level i5 instead of a top level i7 and still enjoy 6C/12T.

My question is: Will those CPUs and motherboards just work when they are released? Or will i have to wait for Apple to implement hardware support for it?
AFAIK for GPUs one would have to wait for official driver support (like now available with NAVI AFAIK), but as the CPUs are just a Skylake refinement, and chipsets also pretty much the same, i would hope this to be different, and support possible from the start.

Is this hope of mine correct or naive? What should i expect from that upcoming Intel CPUs and mainboards from your experience and past launches?

Sorry if the answer is obvious and i just dont see it; Thanks to any help in advance!

 

[trs96]

My question is: Will those CPUs and motherboards just work when they are released? Or will i have to wait for Apple to implement hardware support for it?

I'd estimate that it may take longer than you think to get support for that new Comet Lake-S CPU line and motherboard chipset. If you can't wait that long get a Coffee Lake CPU and Z370/90 motherboard and have Catalina support right now.
Apple has been refreshing the iMac often lately but I don't expect it to happen by March 2020. I'd guess that it's in a complete redesign stage now and will be released in the Fall of 2020. Smaller chin, thinner monitor bezels, better cooling etc. all takes time to develop. The new MP took about 3 years of work to get that to market.

Another Skylake based 14nm refresh is just a way to bide time. What they're offering is just more cores and hyperthreading. Do you really need a core i9 CPU with 10 cores for any reason ? More PCIe lanes ? Most people don't use up all they currently have unless they are "power" users. They're offering all this to compete with AMD but their prices will still be much higher than the AMD offerings.

Comet Lake-S chips will feature up to 10 cores, 30 PCH-H lanes, 40 PCIe 3.0 lanes, Intel Wif-Fi 6, USB 3.2 Gen 2×1 support, and Hyperthreading (from i3 upwards).

The family will run the gamut of chips, including Celeron, Pentium, Core i3, Core i5, Core i7, Core i9, and Xeon models.

 

[dfritchie]

Anybody who needs that kind of power has moved to AMD, you get all that plus PCie 4.0. Intel was caught napping by AMD and will take awhile to catch up. Nobody knows what Apple will do/support this next year, if you need a hack now with lots of power go with the coffee lake Z370/90 setup.