Intel’s 14th and 13th Gen CPU instability issues have been around for over a year, but while Intel hasn’t offered a solid reason for the problems yet, others have come up with potential causes for silicon degradation and crash issues associated with these chips.
Intel’s instability issues have evolved from being “software-limited” to potential silicon flaws, and the official answer is “wait.”
The crashes, instability, and performance issues found in Intel’s 14th and 13th generation CPUs are annoying many consumers to the point of becoming unbearable, and now the community has decided to turn to alternatives, such as the offerings from AMD.
So far, here’s a timeline of Intel’s 14th and 13th generation instability issues:
- [Dec 2022] The first instances of “out of video memory” issues were reported on 13th-gen Core i9 CPUs in 2022. (Source: RedditThis comes a few months after the release of Intel’s 13th Gen CPUs and RTX 40-series GPUs.
- [Throughout 2023] Many users have started reporting crashes and game issues in prominent AAA titles like Callisto Protocol And Hogwarts Legacy (Among many other issues.) Both boxes are based on the Unreal Engine (which was released in 2023) and feature a shading compilation process at the outset. There are currently thousands of these issues reported on the Steam Community forums and Reddit.
- [February 2024] Posted by Sebastian Castellanos This article highlights this issue, and highlights a “worrying trend” regarding stability issues affecting 14th and 13th generation CPUs.
- [February 2024] Our editor along with many other tech outlets Start reporting the issue and getting it to the mainstream media. It was soon pointed out that lowering the processor speed and lowering the voltage of the chips might lead to better stability.
- [April 2024] Nvidia Issue an official statement The stability issues are not related to their GPUs but to Intel’s CPUs.
- [April 2024] Intel has announced that it is investigating reports of instability issues affecting its 13th and 14th Gen CPUs.
- [April 2024] Motherboard manufacturers are quickly rolling out “baseline” power profiles in new BIOSes, which lower the power limits on high-end 14th and 13th-gen CPUs, but also result in a significant drop in performance.
- [May 2024] Intel has issued a statement recommending that motherboard manufacturers provide “Intel Default Settings” in the BIOS by default instead of custom settings.
- [June 2024] Intel discovered a bug in the eTVB processor code while investigating the root cause of the 14th and 13th generation instability issues. But that didn’t solve the instability issues. Motherboard manufacturers quickly rolled out a BIOS with a new code fix.
- [July 2024] Intel has denied the RMA request. Hardware Times Editor has already backed off at least 2 CPUs causing instability issues.
- [July 2024] Wendell from Level1Techs & Steve Burke of GamersNexus Major tech media outlets were the first to shed more light on the instability issues on YouTube, delving into additional details like the OEM’s frustration with the issue and a potential product recall.
- [July 2024] GamersNexus Highlights Potential ‘Oxidation’ Flaw There may be an issue with a certain set of Intel 14th and 13th Gen CPUs that may be causing instability issues.
- [July 2024] Intel says its 14th and 13th Gen mobile CPUs aren’t affected by the same instability issues as desktop CPUs.
- He follows…
We’ve seen game studios like Alderon Games and Epic Games raise this issue on their own platforms, along with tech content creators like Wendell from Level1Techsproviding their audience with awareness about the issue.
Despite the issue being widely reported in the mainstream media, the Blue team was unable to address the root cause. The company worked with AIBs and board partners to mitigate the issues while discovering several other issues such as the eTVB bug but otherwise there was no proper communication from the Blue team which tells us two things, either the company is worried about backlash from its customer base (customers, partners, and OEMs) or they want to drag the issue out as long as possible until something new comes along and people simply forget about it.
Now, GamersNexus has gathered field statistics on how the issue is affecting Intel’s 14th and 13th Gen consumers, and according to an “unnamed” Intel customer, they’ve seen 600,000 to 2 million CPUs experiencing instability issues. This only includes 13th Gen units and information surrounding 14th Gen SKUs is currently unavailable. Interestingly, one Intel customer revealed that the affected units have production dates from March 2023 to April 2024, which is over 12 months longer than the retail SKUs in the markets experiencing the issue.
From what we’ve heard, a third of all Intel Raptor Lake CPUs shipped are Core i9-13900K or 14900K units, or roughly 40-60 million units (estimates from Mike Bruzzone). If this is the case, Intel could face a massive recall, which could end up being a major disaster for the company and could be a possible reason for their delay in responding appropriately to the community.
Our editor, Well, it was mentioned in a post on X a while ago. It started experiencing these issues in early 2023, just a few months after the release of the 14th Gen desktop CPUs. While the BIOS easing has stabilized things a bit for it, one could easily argue that applying the current “power limit” fix will reduce the performance of your chip compared to what you originally had.
To the more interesting parts, Gamers Nexus The Intel team has pieced together possible causes behind the instability issues based on internal Intel documents and customer information. The new information claims that Team Blue may have encountered a “manufacturing” issue with the affected 13th and 14th Gen chips, where an “antioxidant” was not applied to the SKUs sufficiently, causing disruptions in the processors’ electrical connections.
Well, this logic makes some sense, considering that capping power levels didn’t solve the issue at all despite Intel releasing the exact code. While we won’t go into how the oxidation affected CPU functionality (see the GamersNexus video below for more details), the bottom line is that it may have affected individual layers, which is why the solution doesn’t lie in any kind of software-level mitigation.
It is important to note that the “power limiter” issue is not the cause of this story. It is not an “onboard power limit” issue. It is a chip issue and always has been. The power limit issue has been fixed with fine-grained code. We have no idea if it affects Meteor Lake or not. The current processors likely to be affected are [about] 8 million have been shipped as far as we know.
If you disable Turbo Boost, you can have “stability” until the corrosion/contamination causes the CPU to crash. We have reports of some CPUs that won’t even boot without a blue screen because the contamination/corrosion is so bad.
– Major Intel customer at GN
So what’s next? According to GamersNexus, vendors are finding intermediate solutions, with some moving towards capping clock speeds to 5.3-5.5GHz at the OEM level while others are waiting for Intel to come up with a solution. Intel has started working with vendors, hinting at offering refunds for affected CPUs, and there are rumors of a “widespread” reconnect, but nothing is confirmed at this point.
Furthermore, here are the failure rates broken down based on individual Intel SKUs. Interestingly, there are no thermal-related failures, suggesting that the instability issue is likely something more complex.
Intel 7-based Raptor Lake product failure rates, JESD94.
All tested at 80-85°C, 1.5V, except for the 14x01E kit which was tested at 100°C, 1.35V.
Other Raptor Lake formations have an ideal survival ability according to JESD94 standards.
No thermal failure.
Click to enlarge image. pic.twitter.com/SGeRbp3fbi
— Jaykihn (@jaykihn0) July 20, 2024
Meanwhile, leaker @Jaykihn also noted that reports of oxidation being the issue behind Intel’s 13th and 14th Gen processors seem unlikely. He also noted that the report doesn’t match reality as it has statistics on Intel 7th Gen (process node) chips tested as of June 2024.
The claim of oxidation makes no sense, both logistically and technically.
Events in manufacturing and packaging do not match the stated time frame. It would be impossible to ship such a problem.
The explanation used for the cause of oxidation also makes no sense. https://t.co/l2fCHLpVyj
— Jaykihn (@jaykihn0) July 20, 2024
There are a lot of things that don’t add up.
I have stats on Intel 7 series chips tested through June 2024.
Regardless of the impossibility of this happening, even taking all the claims seriously, there is nothing statistically significant to support these claims. Quite the contrary.— Jaykihn (@jaykihn0) July 20, 2024
Ian Cutris for More Than Moore also comments on the possible reasons behind these issues:
We are seeing an increase in high-performance CPUs due to the fact that these typically require greater mounting pressure, or may use boards without a mounting plate. The cooling requirements are higher, and the current draw is higher, so any skew or torque will be exacerbated over time.
— 𝐷𝑟. 𝐼𝑎𝑛 𝐶𝑢𝑡𝑟𝑒𝑠𝑠 (@IanCutress) July 15, 2024
Tantalum nitride lining problems. This is a new problem. Tantalum nitride has a well-thought-out performance/reliability curve, which makes it resistant to expansion problems and combats copper diffusion into the overall dielectric.
I may have something up over the weekend on this. GJ to GN about bringing it up as a possibility. https://t.co/rwugtRX8gl pic.twitter.com/eYbhXsrhID
— 𝐷𝑟. 𝐼𝑎𝑛 𝐶𝑢𝑡𝑟𝑒𝑠𝑠 (@IanCutress) July 20, 2024
We’ve published comprehensive troubleshooting guides based on Intel’s guidelines along with suggestions from third-party sources, so you can check them out if you haven’t implemented the above solutions. Additionally, we’ve spoken to several motherboard partners about this and they said they are taking extra care and spending more time testing and evaluating clock and power behavior, not just for current chips but also for upcoming CPUs like Arrow Lake.
For now, we have to wait and see how Team Blue will handle the situation. And with Arrow Lake-S desktop CPUs on the verge of launch, the whole debacle is starting to get interesting and unfortunate at the same time.
