Intel Extends Warranty by Two Years for 13th and 14th Generation Processors Amid Crashing Concerns

[decayo]

In 20 years of building PCs, I've always stuck with the lower end of the i7 chips. (6700 for example) This was the first year I decided to go to the i9 series with the 14900k.

What a frigging debacle. I put the PC together in December and was having issues by Jan. I swapped components, I installed new OS instances in new partitions, I poured over log files. The Intel test app came back clean. Despite that, my computer just kept crashing and it got worse over time. Finally, I found a thread discussing the motherboard CPU limits not being properly set for these CPUs and potentially damaging the chips. After struggling through a lot of BIOS config permutations, I decided to say "F it" and I just ordered an I7 (the chip I should have just bought to start with). Swapped it out and it immediately solved my problem.

It was a kind of annoying process that took longer than it should have, but I was able to get the RMA done. I've now got a new i9-14900k in a box and I'm still using the i7. Maybe when they get their shit in order and release this update and folks find it actually works, I'll use this thing in a new storage/VM server. As of now, it kind of feels like wasted money.

 

[SL2]

This is good news for those that build their own PC but what about the vast majority that buy pre-builts?

Well, at least there's a chance that those customers could go through with an RMA, like the text suggests, but in the end it probably depends on the brand.

What about tray buyers? Those people get nothing..

 

[Caring1]

Warranties are worthless if the company won't honour them.

 

[SL2]

Warranties are worthless if the company won't honour them.

That's why it can be a good thing to own a prebuilt desktop, they might be better at this than Intel itself. The question is which ones are the good ones..

 

[Daven]

TPU's 'Editor's Recommendation' Award for the 13900K and 14900K is looking a little ridiculous but they could not have known at the time of review. I wish there was a way to burn in CPUs rapidly to see how they might degrade over the years if at all.

 

[R0H1T]

Run p95 blended 24x7 I guess, on Intel "stock" settings?

Prime95 30.19 Build 20 Download

Popular system stability test program.

www.techpowerup.com

 

[LittleBro]

You can fact those tales about any company. Put company name on Google followed by RMA denied, you'll find hundreds. Doesn't mean a thing, cause even if it's true we don't know the details.

If it wasn't true, then probably a class action lawsuit investigation would not be real thing right now, eh?
I mean what stupid lawyer would take such already lost case to a court?

I take you're just trolling like in many other forum threads. How about you posted a proof about Intel honoring all the RMAs?

 

[Dave65]

Happy camper here

Nothing wrong with my CPU's and now just got 5 years warranty on them.

Happy Camper?

WOW: I salute you for being on the Titanic's deck being a happy camper just as you go under with smile on your face

 

[Daven]

If it wasn't true, then probably a class action lawsuit investigation would not be real thing right now, eh?
I mean what stupid lawyer would take such already lost case to a court?

I take you're just trolling like in many other forum threads. How about you posted a proof about Intel honoring all the RMAs?

At this point, I have no idea what motivates Fevgatos given everything happening with Intel. It will take several rounds of fired CEOs, attempted buyouts and major business model pivots before Intel's ship is righted again. In the meantime, it's risky business to buy Intel products. At best, you might lose support as Intel goes down. At worst, the chips will literally fail in your PC due to poor quality control as Intel cuts R&D staff and corners to get out of the red.

 

[esserpain]

This is a good move for sure, but it took weeks of public pressure and threats of a class-action to get here. It's much too late for Intel to regain customer trust when they're already being investigated by every party under the sun. The damage has already been done.

 

[Darmok N Jalad]

Not an Intel tale, but I remember MS denying a warranty claim on an XboxOne for me once. If I was playing one game on a DVD and then swapped it for another, the new game wouldn't load, claiming the disk wasn't loaded. When I was working with MS support, the "solution" was to completely power down the Xbox and start it back up again--something that took several minutes to do thanks to the spinning HDD. This worked, but that only meant that the Xbox wasn't really working as-advertised, because one of the selling points was that it had a suspend state so you didn't have to shut down and/or restart it all the time. I also had the Xbox controller start drifting on me inside of warranty, and that was considered normal wear. I try to have realistic expectations of my stuff, and to me, both issues were due to poor workmanship, based on my experience using similar products over the years. It wasn't long after that I moved to PS.

I'd have to think that something similar can be said here for Raptor Lake. How is it behaving relative to advertised claims, and how does it compare to previous CPU-ownership experiences?

 

[JustBenching]

If it wasn't true, then probably a class action lawsuit investigation would not be real thing right now, eh?
I mean what stupid lawyer would take such already lost case to a court?

I take you're just trolling like in many other forum threads. How about you posted a proof about Intel honoring all the RMAs?

The class action lawsuit isn't about the RMAs bud.

I don't need to provide evidence of something I didn't claim.

 

[b1k3rdude]

Thats all fine and dandy, but what if you bought the cpu from a system intergrator or not in a retail box, or used....

Can you post some actual evidence that Intel denies RMA of affected cpus?

Just do a search or check out any number of recent videos from any of the well know tech channels... Intel have already been caught numerous time rejecting warranties on non-retails CPU's which is basically B$.

 

[JustBenching]

Thats all fine and dandy, but what if you bought the cpu from a system intergrator or not in a retail box, or used....


Just do a search or check out any number of recent videos from any of the well know tech channels... Intel have already been caught numerous time rejecting warranties on non-retails CPU's which is basically B$.

I'm not in disagreement, I'm sure they are rejecting plenty, just like every other company does. Are they rejecting cpus that need replacing though?

 

[Darmok N Jalad]

Thats all fine and dandy, but what if you bought the cpu from a system intergrator or not in a retail box, or used....


Just do a search or check out any number of recent videos from any of the well know tech channels... Intel have already been caught numerous time rejecting warranties on non-retails CPU's which is basically B$.

Non-retail, OEM (tray) CPUs don’t have the same warranty coverage as retail (boxed) CPUs. For OEM, you go to the OEM, which is not Intel. The OEM manages the claim. This is why OEM chips are cheaper than retail, as the warranty coverage is usually less, or even non-existent. So if you do buy Retail, it’s not a bad idea to keep your original packaging. I actually got $90 for the iPhone 6S battery debacle, because I still had the box with serial on it. The phone was long gone at that point.

So basically, Intel is really only extending the Intel warranty coverage for a small percentage of Raptor Lake owners, those that bought Retail. Most of Intel’s sales are OEM, so this largely is an extension of those that built their own system with retail parts. Pretty strategic, really, as that’s the portion of the population that’s going to hammer Intel online the hardest.

 

[HD64G]

They are indeed trying hard to avoid a class lawsuit...

 

[mkppo]

I think if they put out a statement that even if their CPU's are bought from a system integrator, Intel themselves will honour the warranty then it would be something good. Extending it for two years doesn't do much at all for the small fraction of people buying individual CPU's. Most people that are stuck have no warranty because the usual 1 year warranty for systems have run out. And they represent the majority of PC's and consequently CPU's sold.

There are plenty of cases where Intel are saying they received tray CPU's when in fact they got sent a boxed one. I think given the unprecedented failure rate of the CPU's their RMA department must be working overtime and mixing stuff up in the process.

Also someone mentioned a intel diagnostic tool to check if your CPU is stable. Guess what, it does a terrible job of actually figuring out stability and many CPU's that have degraded actually pass that stability test but crash in games let alone ycruncher

 

[JustBenching]

T

I think if they put out a statement that even if their CPU's are bought from a system integrator, Intel themselves will honour the warranty then it would be something good. Extending it for two years doesn't do much at all for the small fraction of people buying individual CPU's. Most people that are stuck have no warranty because the usual 1 year warranty for systems have run out. And they represent the majority of PC's and consequently CPU's sold.

There are plenty of cases where Intel are saying they received tray CPU's when in fact they got sent a boxed one. I think given the unprecedented failure rate of the CPU's their RMA department must be working overtime and mixing stuff up in the process.

Also someone mentioned a intel diagnostic tool to check if your CPU is stable. Guess what, it does a terrible job of actually figuring out stability and many CPU's that have degraded actually pass that stability test but crash in games let alone ycruncher

The fun part is that there are CPUs that push 30min of ycruncher and fail at nvidia driver installation, which doesn't make sense.

 

[tfp]

They are indeed trying hard to avoid a class lawsuit...

You say that like they shouldn't?

 

[Dragokar]

A first step, not enough, though. They still should publish all timestamps with affected SKUs about the oxidization and also offer an easy RMA with updated Microcode-CPUs with no questions asked. As a customer, I don't want to wait if my CPU is impacted or will degrade faster over time. I want that fixed right after the new and “final” microcode solution is being delivered, and no, I wouldn't want to wait if I get impacted. I would want that fixed before it comes to issues.

But that's just my point of view as a tiny customer and tech enthusiast.

 

[thesmokingman]

Weren't some saying they'd never do this??

 

[tfp]

A first step, not enough, though. They still should publish all timestamps with affected SKUs about the oxidization and also offer an easy RMA with updated Microcode-CPUs with no questions asked. As a customer, I don't want to wait if my CPU is impacted or will degrade faster over time. I want that fixed right after the new and “final” microcode solution is being delivered, and no, I wouldn't want to wait if I get impacted. I would want that fixed before it comes to issues.

But that's just my point of view as a tiny customer and tech enthusiast.

I agree with that but this RMA is not lot different then how the auto companies handle things. Intel has an army of lawyers, I expect they will do what is legal and required and maybe just enough not to piss off most customers.

For example I just had a DEF system issue that cause me to have to replace the thing at great expense last fall. They replaced it and then did a software upgrade that I didn't know was needed. About a month ago I got a letter saying that I could submit a claim to get any fixes done paid for and an extended warranty for the DEF system. Because the software was upgraded after the fix they refused to pay for anything and I only got the extended warranty on the new HW. The DEF system has been a joke that since it was created because of all of the issues and yet there is no real recourse with any truck manufactures. My truck is stock, only has 49k miles on it over 7 years and just over a 1/3 of the time is used to pull a heavy trailer (heavy loads are almost required to prevent the exhaust system from being fouled up).

 

[Darmok N Jalad]

I think if they put out a statement that even if their CPU's are bought from a system integrator, Intel themselves will honour the warranty then it would be something good. Extending it for two years doesn't do much at all for the small fraction of people buying individual CPU's. Most people that are stuck have no warranty because the usual 1 year warranty for systems have run out. And they represent the majority of PC's and consequently CPU's sold.

There are plenty of cases where Intel are saying they received tray CPU's when in fact they got sent a boxed one. I think given the unprecedented failure rate of the CPU's their RMA department must be working overtime and mixing stuff up in the process.

Also someone mentioned an intel diagnostic tool to check if your CPU is stable. Guess what, it does a terrible job of actually figuring out stability and many CPU's that have degraded actually pass that stability test but crash in games let alone ycruncher

No doubt Intel will work with OEMs on recourse as well. Companies like Dell, HP, Lenovo stand to lose even more so than Intel. Do you think people will blame Intel for crashes? I think they are more likely to point their blame at the system builder, or perhaps Microsoft, since they are always an easy target (and do enough damage to themselves to earn some of that consideration). Intel knows the big risk is their system-building partners, who can get competitive products elsewhere and buy in low-maintenance volume. The challenge is that most OEM machines have one year warranties, and margins are slim. How are OEMs going to be able to afford extended support, even if it’s just for the CPU? They still have all the time and material expenses to bear just to service a failing Raptor Lake system, even if Intel sends them free replacements. It looks like an even uglier proposition than having to replace every single Retail CPU on year 5.

 

[HD64G]

You say that like they shouldn't?

Totally logical to fear that and act to protect themselves. I said that because that action in behalf of them is coming a day after some news about that class lawsuit were emerged.

 

[trparky]

Honestly, I think a two-year warranty is a joke. They should have made it a ten-year warranty.

They are indeed trying hard to avoid a class lawsuit...

Too late, there's already one in the works.
Law Firm Investigates Class Action Suit Over Intel's Unstable 13th/14th Gen CPUs | TechPowerUp Forums