Law Firm Investigates Class Action Suit Over Intel's Unstable 13th/14th Gen CPUs

[Nomad76]

Law firm, Abington Cole + Ellery, is investigating a potential class action lawsuit against Intel due to instability issues in their 13th and 14th Gen CPUs. Intel has acknowledged the problem, stating that elevated operating voltage caused by a microcode algorithm is resulting in instability. While Intel promises a patch, it won't prevent damage already done to affected chips.

Intel has offered to replace damaged CPUs, which could potentially undermine the basis for a lawsuit if the company is honoring this commitment effectively. However, user experiences with Intel's RMA service vary widely, with some reporting smooth replacements and others facing delays or complications. Intel claims to support all affected customers, including those with tray processors, but advises contacting system vendors for pre-built systems.





Abington Cole + Ellery has launched a webpage highlighting the potential class action lawsuit against the computer chip giant. They are requesting affected individuals to submit their information through an online form here.

The effectiveness and value of such class actions for consumers remain questionable. A previous case against Nvidia over GTX 970 VRAM issues resulted in a mere $30 settlement per card for US residents. Meanwhile, users with affected Intel CPUs are advised to lower voltage and clock speeds until the microcode update is released, a less-than-ideal solution for high-end processors.

View at TechPowerUp Main Site | Source

 

[londiste]

They smell money.
Or blood in the water.

 

[_JP_]

Intel just needs to pull a crowstrike and give a voucher of some sort. There, settlement.

 

[Nomad76]

They smell money.
Or blood in the water.

The show must go on..

 

[Daven]

Intel has been continually deluding itself regarding the awful state of their company. Lawyers must be salivating over potential lawsuits since Intel won’t provide even a hint of culpability even in the face of clear evidence of its malfeasance.

 

[Chaitanya]

Took these vultures longer than expected.

 

[Bwaze]

Took these vultures longer than expected.

I honestly thought at this point they'd wait these two weeks for Intel "fix" and see if there are still enough customers - as far as I know users that are denied RMA are rare - but that could be just an appearance.

And I don't think Intel owes you anything even if you had to change your CPU every two weeks.

And after Intel releases this fix, the basis for class action suit could change, and you could be entitled to a compensation for a difference in performance of advertised and fixed CPU? $5 - $15 per customer, if you are US citizen, of course?

 

[ty_ger]

I honestly thought at this point they'd wait these two weeks for Intel "fix" and see if there are still enough customers - as far as I know users that are denied RMA are rare - but that could be just an appearance.

And I don't think Intel owes you anything even if you had to change your CPU every two weeks.

And after Intel releases this fix, the basis for class action suit could change, and you could be entitled to a compensation for a difference in performance of advertised and fixed CPU? $5 - $15 per customer, if you are US citizen, of course?

As I said in the other thread on this topic, this is not just an in-warranty period problem. You can't just say that if Intel accepts warranty replacements within warranty period that there is nothing left to litigate.
Problem is, as Der8auer pointed out, Intel has stated that degradation is continually occurring. According to Intel's own words, the damage is being done; even if not yet apparent. So, this hurts consumers when the product fails prematurely beyond the warranty period. As he said, this is a problem which opens Intel to litigation. If you accept fault for something which hurts consumers, with a big enough group impacted, it's kind of unavoidable that legal action will occur.
Intel said they won't recall the product or extend the warranty. They are now in a corner, if they don't concede.

 

[RedelZaVedno]

Intel is soooo f....ed atm. It's not only the retail being effected it's also big data centers that are having stability problems with last gen CPUs according to PC world sources.

 

[esserpain]

There we go. Took them a goddamn while.

Still dunno if this controversy is gonna crater Intel as a company, but hopefully, it doesn't. AMD needs competition as much as anyone else, after all.

 

[fevgatos]

As I said in the other thread on this topic, this is not just an in-warranty period problem. You can't just say that if Intel accepts warranty replacements within warranty period that there is nothing left to litigate.
Problem is, as Der8auer pointed out, Intel has stated that degradation is continually occurring. According to Intel's own words, the damage is being done; even if not yet apparent. So, this hurts consumers when the product fails prematurely beyond the warranty period. As he said, this is a problem which opens Intel to litigation. If you accept fault for something which hurts consumers, with a big enough group impacted, it's kind of unavoidable that legal action will occur.
Intel said they won't recall the product or extend the warranty. They are now in a corner, if they don't concede.

That might be the law (really don't know) but it kinda sounds absurd to me. Say you have a cpu that died prematurely (just after warranty), could you then claim that it's caused by the high vsoc voltage problem that occurred on its early days before the patches fixed that? How do you even prove such a thing?

 

[Klemc]

That might be the law (really don't know) but it kinda sounds absurd to me. Say you have a cpu that died prematurely (just after warranty), could you then claim that it's caused by the high vsoc voltage problem that occurred on its early days before the patches fixed that? How do you even prove such a thing?

Proof could be built but i think the process costs an arm and nobody can afford it.

 

[Bwaze]

By the time class action lawsuit about processors dying outside of warranty could be resolved you would be talking about years old product, and with the inflation now you would be arguing that fault caused that an outdated cheap product died outside the time period Intel guarantees it's functioning. Not really a strong claim.

I'm more interested, in two weeks time, how low can Intel actually bring the voltage, power to combat degradation, and still claim that that's all the performance you were sold, everything above that was motherboard maker's overclocking?

Reminds me a bit of: "Der8auer: Only Small Percentage of 3rd Gen Ryzen CPUs Hit Their Advertised Speeds" debacle. AMD has after a couple of months released the microcode that improved the situation, but we were told that advertised frequencies "depend", they are "up to", you're not really guaranteed any of the info printed on the product boxes, let alone published in various reviews.

 

[Daven]

That might be the law (really don't know) but it kinda sounds absurd to me. Say you have a cpu that died prematurely (just after warranty), could you then claim that it's caused by the high vsoc voltage problem that occurred on its early days before the patches fixed that? How do you even prove such a thing?

It's not a criminal case. It's a civil suit. And the key point from ty_ger's post, "If you accept fault for something which hurts consumers, with a big enough group impacted...". That's how class action suits get started. It's up to a judge or jury to decide what's absurd and if anyone is damaged significantly. By the way, civil suits do not require unanimous jury decisions. Just majority.

More information at Videocardz.
Intel's Raptor Lake CPU instability sparks class action lawsuit investigation - VideoCardz.com

Also it looks like GamersNexus will have an update and they don't look very happy with Intel judging by their tweet.

GamersNexus on X: "Intel is unbelievably slimy. Multi-part report soon." / X

 

[evernessince]

Intel just needs to pull a crowstrike and give a voucher of some sort. There, settlement.

It's going to have to be a big voucher to cover the loss of revenue as a result of failing CPUs.

I honestly thought at this point they'd wait these two weeks for Intel "fix" and see if there are still enough customers - as far as I know users that are denied RMA are rare - but that could be just an appearance.

And I don't think Intel owes you anything even if you had to change your CPU every two weeks.

And after Intel releases this fix, the basis for class action suit could change, and you could be entitled to a compensation for a difference in performance of advertised and fixed CPU? $5 - $15 per customer, if you are US citizen, of course?

Alderon Games is on record (they've made multiple posts on the Intel reddit as well) stating that Intel was very actively denying RMAs prior to the disclosure of the issue. RMA's in general are not a good remedy for an issue like this unless you are Intel. Individual customers do not have a lot of power and often are silent about their problems. By not doing a recall it allows Intel to have all the power over customers and it forces all failures and information about those failure through them. This is even assuming a customer is aware of said issues (or issues if you include oxidation problems) as Intel has not made any attempt to make a public announcement (reddit and forum posts are not nearly adequate).

 

[Steevo]

The more people that know about the issue the better, it's like the Iphone slow down, most people knew their phone was acting slow or weird but were probably blaming something else. Uneducated Intel users are probably blaming games, GPUs, windows, etc... when really it's Intel and their vendors selling faulty chips with bad settings.

 

[TumbleGeorge]

OK, but this is a deliberate flaw on Intel's part to present itself as a performance leader. This is not an inadvertent bug.

 

[TheDeeGee]

Intel just needs to pull a crowstrike and give a voucher of some sort. There, settlement.

Yeh! Give me that Uber voucher because i never use the taxi!

 

[lu1zp1]

the bad motherboard code that intel allowed motherboard manufacturers to release..... rapidly accelerated the CPU degradation of these chips!

 

[Deleted member 229121]

I'm sure owners of 13/14th gen chips will be giddy when they get their $4.38 check from this...

 

[Ferrum Master]

Intel stock is going down. Question remains, when to buy

 

[mkppo]

More information at Videocardz.
Intel's Raptor Lake CPU instability sparks class action lawsuit investigation - VideoCardz.com

Also it looks like GamersNexus will have an update and they don't look very happy with Intel judging by their tweet.

View attachment 357170
GamersNexus on X: "Intel is unbelievably slimy. Multi-part report soon." / X

Steve talking about Intel being slimy like it's a new thing. I was there selling PC's in the 2000's. I know just how unbelievably slimy and downright dishonest Intel is from those days. Sadly they haven't really changed.

I still bought their CPU's during the Centrino/Sandy bridge era and dusting off a 4790K as we speak, even recommended some 13600K's for some but if I can get equal performance/power from their competitor I wouldn't get Intel.

Before someone jumps in and says 'ohhh nvidia and amd are just as bad' then sure you're entitled to your opinion and none of them are saints. I'm just basing off what i've experienced myself. Intel were caught and charged with the same offense, only that they are still being slimy and not handing out the payouts. For decades.

Looking forward to this investigation.

 

[Rahmat Sofyan]

if those 13/14 gen can't be fixed by any possible way, intel must recall it all... but of course not only recall for RMA process instead refunding it all, and it will be impact for all of intel partner, cuz what for if customer still keeping their useless mainboard, it will be a really big dominno problem.

in bigger picture I think we might say the 13/14 gen is totally failed for now ?

 

[Jism]

This will only lead to 30$ refund and millions of dollars in lawyer fee's. Only winners? Lawyers.

 

[ZoneDymo]

funny thing is, I finally thought I had an upgrade path with Intel, currently on a 12600k....guess not.