At the risk of sounding biased... I've felt (key word though) that the upper tier Raptor Lake CPUs have been a "potentially flawed" generation for a while now, and don't see them as completely viable solutions.
There's users going back half a year (or more) reporting stability issues on Core i9 13900 and 14900 systems, less commonly the Core i7s. Sometimes these issues arise right away, sometimes after months, and some users claim to have gone through three or four CPUs now and that the same cycle keeps happenings. Of course, not everyone is having issues, but double digit rates is very bad. And how high will that grow over time? These CPus are still relatively young in age. While anecdote doesn't make the best proof, it's pretty telling when there's a lot of it that aligns with what facts and results we do know/see.
Unfortunately, I don't expect Intel to own up to this, but I'd love to be wrong. The reason I don't expect them to is because it'd be a huge blow to their image (which is one of better stability) and also their financials. Trying to sweep it under the rug while hoping the owners of those CPUs either upgrade sooner (upper tier owners will be more likely to just replace it sooner) or just aren't noisy enough will be their best move from a business perspective.
So any real data on this to keep eyes on it is good. Not from a "let's ridicule Intel" standpoint (the last thing I want is a less competitive Intel!), but from a "there's clearly something going on here and facts should be found, and if it is that bad, Intel should own up to it". All we've heard from Intel is that the "limit it Intel baseline suggestion isn't the whole story/real fix" which is... pretty shocking and telling that there's more going on here.
AMD was grilled for a very small number of 7800X3D's that burned up (from SOC voltage spiking towards 1.4V to 1.5V). What was AMD's response? An AGESA update to limit to SOC voltage to 1.25V/1.3V (which doesn't impact performance much, if at all, as far as I know?), RMA's were offered for any CPUs affected, no blame was passed to motherboard manufacturers (although some review outlets/channels still "grilled" some more than others for it), and life moved on. It was a pretty mature response to the situation in my opinion. AMD stood to lose little by doing that though, which might be why it was easy for them. Intel, like Apple and nVidia, wants to maintain an image like the one they had in 2014 where it has top performance and stability, when instead I think it'd be far more apt to say things are closer to how they were in 2004. Like, almost exactly. Right down to the SNDS degradation, anyone?
Also, I might be somewhat miffed that I suffered from a flawed Intel NIC (I225-V, and the successor I226-V is flawed too!) and what was the response to that? Exactly what we're seeing here thus far; sweep it under the rug, silently offer hardware revisions, and do poor "good enough for most" driver fixes at best that still fail to always address the issues. Very poor form, Intel.
We need an Intel that will do right if there is an issue here, and also to repeat with a 2006-esque comeback (hopefully without the 2006-esque AMD fall from grace leading to complete dominance by either one though).
. That's how they should treat high end buyers anyways
