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Back in March it turned out that Intel was prepping a new stepping of its Coffee Lake processors that was due to arrive in the second quarter. By now, all leading makers of desktop motherboards have issued BIOS updates for their platforms that enable support of Intel’s 9th Gen Core CPUs featuring a new stepping ID. The processors are reportedly due next month.

ASUS, ASRock, BIOSTAR, GIGABYTE, and MSI, have now released BIOS updates for most of their Intel 300-series motherboards that enable support of Intel’s 9th Gen Core CPUs featuring the R0 stepping ID. These processors are to be released in the second quarter with some sources indicating May as their launch timeframe (something not confirmed officially).

Intel’s currently available 9th Gen Core processors use the P0 or U0 silicon, whereas the 8th Gen Core processors carry the P0 stepping ID. At this pont no-one involved has revealed the differences between the P0 and R0 dies, typically a stepping indicates a new variation in the manufacturing process or new design mask, which may help tweak some function of yield and/or power.

What we do know from previous leaks is that Intel is prepping 32 processors that belong to its Coffee Lake Refresh family. At least some of these CPUs — for example the 35W eight-core Core i9-9900T — will carry the R0 silicon, according to GIGABYTE, which removed any mentions of CPU models featuring the R0 stepping ID from its website after it initially disclosed them.

Expanding the Coffee Lake Refresh family to 41 CPUs with energy-efficient and mainstream Core-branded CPUs, as well as reasonably priced Celeron and Pentium-branded products, will make the lineup generally more competitive. Moreover, the addition of 32 new processors may drive demand for Intel 300-series motherboards, which is why makers of mainboards are inclined to add support for CPUs featuring the R0 stepping ID as soon as possible.