Intel's Biggest Failure in Years: Confirmed Oxidation & Excessive Voltage

[Retro]

This is really bad news for anyone thinking of building a PC around Intel's 13th or 14th generation CPUs.

Gamers Nexus is one of the most thorough tech news channels out there and even they can't give definitive information on exactly which CPUs are affected and which aren't, so buying one right now is a lottery. According to Intel, the oxidation issue (hard CPU failure) is fixed in the 14th gen, but the overvoltage issue will take updates to microcode and motherboard BIOS to fix, which should happen aroind the middle of August.

In short, if you buy one now, keep an eye on stability and be prepared to RMA the CPU. One could try going AMD, but they have their own issues too, which is why I normally stick to Intel as they tend to be less glitchy.

This isn't a good time to be buying a CPU and if Intel doesn't handle this properly, it will turn into a scandal. It's pretty close now.

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[Retro]

The two things you should do before the microcode update comes is to update your BIOS to the latest and remove any overclocks, ie run it at stock and check that the voltages are correct.

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[Retro]

The scandal just keeps getting bigger.

This just released deep dive by Gamers Nexus explains the extremely shady behaviour by Intel over these two issues (oxidation manufacturing damage and overvolting) both leading to hardware CPU failures that can't be fixed with software patches, but require replacement CPUs.

The upshot is that GN can't recommend any Intel 13th or 14th gen CPUs at the moment. Once the microcode update comes out in the next couple of weeks, they'll investigate further and see if they change their mind.

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[Retro]

Intel's just released the bugfix microcode for their 13th & 14th gen CPUs and JayzTwoCents has taken it out for a spin. Gamers Nexus haven't released their video about this yet, but you can be sure that when they do, it'll be seriously detailed and thorough.

The tldr version is that it fixes everything with a performance impact so small that you can only notice it in benchmarks.

Wccftech did an article based on the video if you'd rather read about it than watch it.

It looks like Team Blue decided to solve the instability issue earlier than expected. Industry sources said we could have a new microcode drop by mid-August. Still, Intel agreed to be one step ahead, providing motherboard manufacturers with the new "0x129" microcode in the first week of August. ASUS and MSI became the first firms to offer the new microcode patch in their BIOS update, and fortunately, JayzTwoCents managed to benchmark 14th Gen CPUs with the new microcode, giving us a detailed look at how the performance has changed.

Intel's "0x129" Microcode Mitigates 14th Gen & 13th Gen CPU Instability Issues, Benchmarks Reveal No Performance Downgrades

Intel's new microcode to mitigate the CPU instability problems is finally out, and the first set of benchmarks reveals "minor changes."

wccftech.com

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[Retro]

Just when it looked like some sanity was coming to this situation, Tech YES City finds Intel's 0x129 microcode, billed as the solution to the overvolting problem, to not actually fix anything at all. This is at odds with the results that Jay saw in the previous post, so now I don't know what to believe. Perhaps a bit more Googling would help. And where is Gamers Nexus's update on this situation? I'd have thought they'd have benchmarked the update by now and reported on it like this channel did over two weeks ago.

At least, at the end of the video, he does list the manual settings to enter into the BIOS to run the CPU at safe voltage settings, so it's not a total dealbreaker. Just requires awareness of the situation to avoid slowly damaging the CPU and high temperatures.

It still royally sucks though. As he said, one should just be able to buy a CPU, run it at stock settings and it should just work properly with zero issues. These are premium parts from a market leader after all that often go into premium motherboards, so this crap shouldn't be happening. In the end, it looks like this situation is happening due to competition with AMD where they want the benchmarks to look better, so they overvolt and overclock their CPUs to dangerous levels out of the box to achieve competitive results. This is shady practice and unfortunately is something that AMD does too, but appears to have better quality silicon which takes that punishment more in its stride. They're not without their stability problems either though, which are generally more severe than Intel's so jumping ship is not a quick and easy solution.

Bottom line is that I badly need to upgrade my PC now and I'm talking expensive premium* components for the CPU, RAM, mobo, cooler and M.2 drive, so what do I do? I feel like I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place. I could wait for the next gen Intel to be released and then wait another few months for the prices to drop from their initial highs and teething troubles to be ironed out, but then they could have other similar problems and at this rate I rather suspect they will. It's just endless.

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*I've already got the very best PSU on the market, the Corsair AX1600i.