Friday, July 26th 2024
Intel Will Not Recall Failing 13th and 14th Gen CPUs
It's official, Intel will not issue a recall for its failing 13th and 14th gen CPUs, despite the problem being much bigger than initially thought. The company was approached by The Verge and the answers to the questions asked, are not looking great. First of all, it appears that at least all 65 W or higher base power Intel 13th and 14th gen CPUs are affected—regardless of SKU and lettering—by the so-called elevated Voltage issue. To be clear, it doesn't mean all these CPUs will start to fail and Intel claims that its microcode update will solve the issue for CPUs that haven't shown any signs of stability issues. However, Intel is not promising that the microcode update will solve the stability issues of CPUs that are experiencing problems, but rather state that "It is possible the patch will provide some instability improvements", but it's asking those with stability issues to contact customer support. The patch is on the other hand expected to solve it for new CPUs, but that doesn't help those that are already experiencing stability issues.
Intel does appear to be swapping out degraded chips, but there's no guarantee that the replacement CPUs will come with the microcode update installed, as Intel is only starting to apply it to products that are currently being produced. The company has also asked all of its OEM partners to apply the update before shipping out new products, but this isn't likely to happen until sometime in early to mid-August according to Intel. It's also unclear when BIOS/UEFI updates will be available for end users from the motherboard manufacturers, since this is the only way to install the microcode update as a consumer. Intel has not gone on record to say if it'll extend the warranty of the affected products, nor did the company provide any details about what kind of information consumers have to provide to their customer support to be able to RMA a faulty CPU. Intel will not halt sales of the affected CPUs either, which means that if you're planning to or are in the middle of building a system using said CPUs, you might want to wait with using it, until a BIOS/UEFI with the microcode update in it, is available for your motherboard. There are more details over at The Verge for those that want to read the full questions and answers, but it's clear that Intel isn't considering the issue as anything more than a regular support issue at this point in time.
Source:
The Verge
Intel does appear to be swapping out degraded chips, but there's no guarantee that the replacement CPUs will come with the microcode update installed, as Intel is only starting to apply it to products that are currently being produced. The company has also asked all of its OEM partners to apply the update before shipping out new products, but this isn't likely to happen until sometime in early to mid-August according to Intel. It's also unclear when BIOS/UEFI updates will be available for end users from the motherboard manufacturers, since this is the only way to install the microcode update as a consumer. Intel has not gone on record to say if it'll extend the warranty of the affected products, nor did the company provide any details about what kind of information consumers have to provide to their customer support to be able to RMA a faulty CPU. Intel will not halt sales of the affected CPUs either, which means that if you're planning to or are in the middle of building a system using said CPUs, you might want to wait with using it, until a BIOS/UEFI with the microcode update in it, is available for your motherboard. There are more details over at The Verge for those that want to read the full questions and answers, but it's clear that Intel isn't considering the issue as anything more than a regular support issue at this point in time.
270 Comments on Intel Will Not Recall Failing 13th and 14th Gen CPUs
the news just blown out since few days ago, but before that not much people reporting problem with their 13th cpus ?
i believe there quite some people OCed their intel 13th cpus to this day, and those cpus still running fine ?
while what i am getting from the news is that cpu can get degraded fast within few month, if so normaly we should already getting many report/post from user way before now
considering intel give 3year warranty, people have those 13th cpus should have around 1+years warranty left
but intel respond is just bad, if they feel recall is to much, why not give extra warranty (like +2years), this should at least assure user for the cpus instead worrying about it, and thinking to ditch and replace asap
OEM customers will send the whole PC back for service. Don't expect that is going over well.
As I have opined many times; They let the wrong people go during those mass layoffs. Chased others away by canceling merit raises, halving 401K contribution, etc. Chickens are coming home to roost. I don't see any way they don't take a major L on this. They haven't even given a South Park BP oil "We're sorry". Wrong people are heading this up in legal and marketing IMO.
It's not that the CPUs are dead and no longer work in most instances, from my understanding. There appears to be a few ones that aren't even allowing the system to boot, but most are minor glitches, which people might've assumed was something else, as this kind of a thing has never happened before.And the person currently issuing statements is a lowly Communications Manager that has been with the company for a little over three years... Guess who will get the boot if the wrong message is delivered? I wouldn't want to be in his shoes right now.
The real question for me is if this microcode update will actually fix it long term. It’s pretty alarming that this fix is for anything over 65W—it’s like the whole dang lineup and covers more SKUs that we’ve originally been talking about. Now I’m really wondering if this patch might only be buying them more time so they can quietly axe Raptor Lake on a normal timetable, or at least help them fulfill warranty replacements. Raptor Lake was the last of its kind, out of necessity.
Intel should totally do a recall on the high end/ones with problems, not really fair leaving them in the lurch is it.
If it came to a class action suit it would probably end up costing Intel less is my guess from what they are doing.
I suppose there's also the bonus of all those CPUs essentially being ticking time bombs as well so it does guarantee a large number of people will need to upgrade in short order. Even if your CPU is stable now, if you shaved 8 years off it's life that's a small bonus to Intel.
The only way this turns out bad for Intel is if enough people educate the public about it to the point where people are assigning blame to Intel and not other parties.A portion of Intel's laptop chips are straight up power limited desktop parts. Alderon games confirmed that these parts are impacted although at a lower rate similar to SKUs lower than the 13900 / 14900K.Intel claimed that the voltage issue doesn't impact their laptop parts, which is partially true if you ignore the desktop variants they put in laptops with lower power caps. That said Intel did say their laptop parts do have an issue but they blamed that on other things. Hard to say what they meant by that in their press releases other then perhaps they are blaming others again.Fast degradation is only observed with heavy use like in servers. Most customers didn't start to see degradation until 9 months plus. This is why it's hard for any customer to know how much their CPU has been degraded, it depends on how much it's been used in what scenarios and under what settings. A recall would be the only true cure, otherwise a lot of people are going to be left out to try. Heck even a public notice to everyone potentially impacted that made a purchase would be a huge step. We are getting neither.
Also, it's hard to say customers weren't having issue before. Not everyone is going to make it public that they RMA'd their CPU. Just like the whole ASUS RMA debacle, a lot of people didn't come out with their Intel RMA experiences until after the news broke. Then we learned people have been through multiple CPU RMA's already.That's not guaranteed. Degradation might not show for them until after warranty and Intel never notified all of it's customers of the issue. Most customers are uninformed and the CPU is one of the last things people blame to begin with. The standard warranty for OEM laptops and desktops is a mere 1 year.If what Intel told us is true it should but you'd have to take Intel at it's word.
The real problem though is that it's impossible to fix CPUs already degraded by this issue and symptoms might now show within the warranty period at all. Even if they do, few people have the diagnostic skills to narrow the issue down to the CPU.Single users RMAing is not a remedy to a product level flaw that has caused permanent damage.
Mind you only retail CPU sales comes with a 3 year warranty. OEM systems are a different matter where standard warranty is only 1 year (in the US at least, people in EU have better remedies)
If Intel wanted to make the issue right without doing a full recall it could release a diagnostic tool just for testing for degradation where any significant amount would qualify you for an RMA. Intel knows the standards to which it releases it's CPUs so it should know how much headroom minimum their CPUs should have and any notable reduction in that should be cause for RMA.
Simply waiting for a CPU to start exhibiting crashing is not a fix, it's condemning a lot of uninformed customers to computer issues. It's not their fault in this instance that they are uninformed either when Intel has not and does not appear in the least likely to inform all potentially impacted customers. That's one of the benefits of a recall, everyone who is effected gets a notice.Particularly a flaw that has caused permanent damage to said product.
To put class action timelines in perspective, consider Apple got nailed for the battery performance throttling issue on the 6S, and by the time checks went out, they were selling the iPhone 14. It becomes a distant memory really quickly.
What we've seen so far indicates that a certain portion of such CPUs are unstable due to wear, predominantly 13900K/14900K models, but 13600/14600 and 13700/14700 and non-K models also affected. Recalling all of these and waiting for replacements would take and unreasonable amount of time vs. replacing actually worn out products as they show sympthoms, otherwise customers actually suffering with unstable/defective products will have to wait far longer for a replacement. (Not to mention Intel is now probably already flooded with returns of products that are either fully working or have been overclocked thanks to the news.) Demanding a recall like some have suggested is pretty much unheard of when electronics products are wearing out quicker than expected, so it's very unlikely that a lawsuit is going to achieve anything in that regard. In other industries, e.g. the car industry, the normal practise is to offer replacements for prematurely worn out products and potentially extended warranties.
So that would be my suggestion for Intel; extend the warranty to e.g. 5 years, replace any part prematurely worn out due to their fault, and potentially under some conditions offer refunds or replacement with a successor, Arrow Lake (which would alleviate some of the pressure on new i9s). This would be far more than most companies would offer in similar situations, and I don't think there is a legal president to demand more either.
Once in a while a company can make a huge mistake, that wouldn't change much. Intel will have to mess up with the next series of CPUs also to make people start losing their trust on them.
Don't worry guys, they got this :rockout:
Ooo Intel, your the best!
We are seeing a lot of this lately imho. Hot chips, limits being stretched and shitty power connector updates are all more of the same to me. They are frantic attempts to escape the reality shit wont keep scaling as it used to. Efficiency out of the box is key. Its the whole reason Nvidia won the GPU war so far and AMD now wins the CPU war.Why not they are happily raking in US taxpayer money for free. Pat G smells like old socks. Nothing good about his leadership honestly so far. He wears one crown; that of the most well-paid beggar on the globe.That would be true in the quad core era, but there are excellent competitor chips now.Good point honestly. Its just not helped by the tone of voice they put out so far. 'Here's a patch, deal with it' on halo product isnt the way to treat customers. If they had indeed used your argumentation backed by leniency things would look radically different.