Intel has been in some pretty hot water lately, almost as hot as the temperature Intel’s faulty micro-code allows Raptor Lake CPUs to get to. Gamers Nexus has released a pretty damning video that suggests Intel has known about these issues for at least 18 months, as a post on the AnandTech forums from Nov 2022 seems to note the start of the stability issues. Surely with Intel being as big and reputable as they are, they’ll do the right thing. Right?
The forum post mentioned issues with the Ring Bus, that it needed increasingly more power to run at a previously stable 5GHz all-core speed. This suggests that (at least in this case) the 13900K is degrading. Even if Intel missed this post, there was a later post on Overclock.net that noted Micro-code version 0104 has a strange interaction with Core PLL Voltage Trim, which caused strange temperature warnings and readings past 30mv.
This was just the start, and as we know, Intel still doesn’t fully understand what’s causing the 13th and 14th-generation instability and degradation issues. The most damning bit of evidence that Intel knew about this for a long time, was a post on r/Intel titled: Something wrong with 13900K. In this post, a user describes their issues with the 13900K, and in an edit on 27.07.2023, stated that it’s like a lottery whether your chip will be faulty or not.
This is a forum Intel uses to get feedback and host AMAs, the most recent of which was silently deleted by Intel from r/Intel a day after not showing up for it.
So what has Intel done about it?
Throughout Gamer’s Nexus’ investigation, they came across many instances that suggest Intel knew of issues on their platform, they may not have known the root cause, but they were aware of a problem. Instead of a reasonable response from Intel, Gamers Nexus found that Intel left users to “suffer in silence” as they spent weeks trying to find out what was going on with their $400 CPUs.
On September 5th, 2023, an article published by ExtremeTech noted that Intel was to blame for a recent sea of BSODs on Raptor Lake CPUs. It seemed that the micro-code labeled 0x119 pushed by Intel was causing issues on the June 2023 Windows update. The article noted that 0xB0671, OxBO6A2, and OxBO6A3 were all affected by this issue. (it’s fixed now, don’t worry) The only reason this is significant is this is the first time that Intel blamed motherboards for the issues that Raptor Lake currently faces, and it won’t be the last.
Intel changing statements
Instead of standing firm and owning up to its mistakes, Intel has been caught by Gamer’s Nexus changing public statements after the media has picked up on it. Steve reported that via Reddit, Intel posted the following statement:
“We can confirm there was a vis Oxidation manufacturing issue (addressed back in 2013) but it is not related to an instability issue.”
Intel via Reddit
The statement was then silently updated to:
“We can confirm there was a vis Oxidation manufacturing issue (addressed back in 2013) and only a small number of instability reports can be connected to the manufacturing issue.”
Intel via Reddit
Steve called this behavior “gaslighting, and corpo deflection 101 strategy” The language softening on this statement likely came from legal to avoid a definitive statement against the correlation where they could be open to a lawsuit.
Intel’s response to GN on what it’s doing to support its users
Gamer’s Nexus reached out to Intel recently to ask whether Intel is doing anything beyond the legal requirement to support its users instead of just following the warranty, and Intel replied with this statement:
“Intel’s standard warranty policy remains in place; however, Intel is committed to making sure all customers who have or are currently experiencing instability symptoms on their 13th and/or 14th Gen desktop processors are supported in the exchange process.“
Intel to GN
Intel went on to say:
“This includes working with Intel’s retail and channel customers to ensure end users are taken care of regarding instability symptoms with their Intel Core 13th and/or 14th Gen desktop processors For customers who are or have been experiencing instability symptoms on their 13th and/or 14th Gen desktop processors, Intel continues advising them to reach out to Intel Customer Support for further assistance. Additionally, if customers have experienced these instability symptoms on their 13th and/or 14th Gen desktop processors but had an RMA request rejected we ask that they reach out to Intel Customer Support for further assistance and remediation.”
Intel to GN
TLDR: Just keep submitting RMA requests until we eventually grant you one. Appalling behavior from Intel here.
Gamer’s Nexus full video
If you want to watch the full video and see everything that GN had to say, you can do so here. It’s a must-watch if you are interested in all the technical aspects of why Intel chips are failing.
What does this mean for Intel?
Our opinion is that Intel has had a stinker with the way it has handled these issues. The fact that there is evidence to suggest that Intel may have known about these issues for well over a year, and tried to deal with prerequisite issues silently, has ruined a lot of people’s trust in the brand.
Following Intel’s earnings call, Intel is proposing it sheds 10 Billion in spending by cutting some employee benefits and laying off a good number of it’s employees outside of fabrication. On the stock market side, Intel’s stock has dropped by a massive 31.64% over the past 5 days, according to Google Finance.
With chip issues, angry customers, stock plummets, and Gamer’s Nexus breathing down Intel’s neck, it’s a wonder how this is going to affect the sales of the yet-to-release Arrow Lake CPUs. We can’t imagine they will be very well received if Intel doesn’t start owning up to mistakes and starting to write some wrongs.
A scarier thought is what if this fault persists into Alder Lake, it managed to carry over from Raptor Lake to the Refresh, but they both technically belong to the same architecture. With some time left before the rumored release date, we at least hope that Intel is seeking to put this to bed with Alder Lake. But it’s about time they took responsibility.
We don’t usually give concrete advice, but if you’ve recently purchased a 12th or 13th generation unlocked K variant, and can return it. That would be wise. At least until all this is sorted out. There are “fixes that can be applied yourself, but you shouldn’t have to underclock your CPU to stop it from degrading, it shouldn’t degrade in the first place. Is it time to switch to AMD?
