There is no fix for Intel’s crashing 13th and 14th Gen CPUs — any damage is permanent
There is no fix for Intel’s crashing 13th and 14th Gen CPUs — any damage is permanent
We got some answers from Intel, and more are on the way.
People are freaking out about the lack of a recall but intel says their patch that will supposedly stop currently working cpus from experiencing the overvolt condition that is leading to the failure. So they don't really need to do a recall if currently working CPUs will stay working with the patch in place. As long as they offer some sort of free extended warranty and a good RMA proccess for the CPUs that are already damaged I feel it's fine.
If they RMA with a bump in perf for those affected it might even be positive PR like "they stand by their products" but if they're stingy with responsibility then we should obviously give them hell. We really have to see how they handle this.
A few years ago now I was thinking that it was about time for me to upgrade my desktop (with a case that dates back to 2000 or so, I guess they call them "sleepers" these days?) because some of my usual computer things were taking too long.
And I realized that Intel was selling the 12th generation of the Core at that point, which means the next one was a 13th generation and I dono, I'm not superstitious but I figured if anything went wrong I'd feel pretty darn silly. So I pulled the trigger and got a 12th gen core processor and motherboard and a few other bits.
This is quite amusing in retrospect.
Thankfully I haven't had any issues out of my 13700k but it's pretty shitty of Intel to not stand behind their products and do a recall.
I have a 13 series chip, it had some reproducible crashing issues that so far have subsided by downclocking it. It is in the window they've shared for the oxidation issue. At this point there's no reliable way of knowing to what degree I'm affected, by what type of issue, whether I should wait for the upcoming patch or reach out to see if they'll replace it.
I am not happy about it.
Obviously next time I'd go AMD, just on principle, but this isn't the 90s anymore. I could do a drop-in replacement to another Intel chip, but switching platforms is a very expensive move these days. This isn't just a bad CPU issue, this could lead to having to swap out two multi-hundred dollar componenet, at least on what should have been a solidly future-proof setup for at least five or six years.
I am VERY not happy about it.
Intel is about to have a lot of lawsuits on their hands if this delay deny deflect strategy doesn't work out for them. This problem has been going on for over a year and the details Intel lets slip just keep getting worse and worse. The more customers that realize they're getting defective CPUs, the more outcry there'll be for a recall. Intel is going to be in a lot of trouble if they wait until regulators force them to have a recall.
Big moment of truth is next month when they have earnings and we see what the performance impact from dropping voltages will be. Hopefully it'll just be 5% and no more CPUs die. I can't imagine investors will be happy about the cost, though.