Intel recently announced it would offer an extra two-years warranty on its 13th and 14th gen Core CPUs, but it now seems like not all PC makers will follow suit. The Verge contacted 14 major PC makers and got a very mixed response when they asked if these companies would offer extended warranties on systems sold with said processors. It's important to keep in mind that OEM CPUs only come with a 12-month warranty, whereas retail box CPUs from Intel come with a three-year warranty. As such, most PC makers ought to extend the warranty in their systems by a further two years, as per Intel's new warranty terms and some are indeed doing this, while others appear not to.

However, a few companies appear to be offering up to a five-year warranty for the CPU in their system and these companies include Digital Storm, Falcon Northwest iBuyPower and Maingear, so kudos to them for going the extra mile. Corsair and Origin PC—which belongs to Corsair—are offering four years warranty, which is still pretty decent. This is followed by Puget Systems which will offer three years and finally we have Asus and HP which both will offer another two years of warranty, which is in line with what Intel has promised. Dell and its Alienware subsidiary hasn't promised any extended warranties, but will replace faulty CPUs under Intel's extended warranty and will cover any costs related to replacing the CPU, suggesting that they are offering a two-year extension as well.

A fleet of recent reports have highlighted stability issues affecting Intel's 13th and 14th-generation desktop processors, raising concerns among consumers and industry professionals. The problem, which has gained significant attention over the past few months, is related to the processors' physical degradation over time. Custom PC builder Puget Systems has shared insights from its experience with these processors, revealing a nuanced perspective on the issue. While it has observed an increase in CPU failures, particularly with the 14th-generation chips, its failure rates remain notably lower than those reported by some game development studios and cloud gaming providers, who have cited failure rates as high as 50%. An interesting observation is that Puget Systems recorded a higher failure rate with AMD Ryzen 5000 and Ryzen 7000 series than Intel's 13/14th generation, with most failures happening at Puget's shop rather than the "field" in customers' hands.

Puget Systems attributes their more modest failure rates of Intel processors to their conservative approach to power management settings. By adhering strictly to Intel's specifications and developing their own power settings that don't hurt performance, they've managed to mitigate some of the stability issues plaguing other users. Intel has acknowledged the problem and announced plans to release a microcode patch by mid-August, with extended warranty program. This update is expected to prevent further degradation but may not reverse existing damage. Despite the elevated failure rates, Puget Systems' data shows that the issue, while concerning, still needs to be at critical levels for their operations. The company reports that failure rates for 13th and 14th gen Intel processors, while higher than ideal, are still lower than those they experienced with Intel's 11th gen chips and some AMD Ryzen processors. In response to the situation, Puget Systems is taking several steps, including maintaining its current power management practices, promptly validating Intel's upcoming microcode update, and extending warranties for affected customers. Below, you can see failure rates by month, by Intel's Core generation, as well as by "shop" vs "field" testing.

A screenshot from Puget Systems benchmark database reveals a new upcoming desktop processor model by AMD, the Ryzen 5 7500F. The screenshot details the 7500F as a 6-core processor, and the machine features an ASUS ROG Strix X670E-F Gaming motherboard, along with an RTX 4080 graphics card. At this point it's hard to tell what the "F" brand extension means in AMD nomenclature. On Intel, it denotes a lack of integrated graphics.

There are two possible theories on what the 7500F could be. One holds that it's a down-rated "Raphael" MCM with a disabled iGPU; while the other holds that it could be based on the 4 nm Phoenix-2 monolithic silicon. Detailed in an older article, the Phoenix-2 is a 137 mm² monolithic silicon that physically features no more than 6 "Zen 4" CPU cores, and an iGPU with just 4 RDNA 3 compute units, besides I/O that's identical to that of the regular 178 mm² 8-core/12-CU Phoenix silicon. Phoenix-2 on AM5 might just end up with a lower bill of materials than a single-CCD "Raphael" MCM.

Update 06:13 UTC: A Korean retailer has posted the first picture of the Ryzen 5 7500F in the flesh. They claim a street price of around $170-180 (KRW equivalent), and availability slated for July 7.

Thanks to the attribution of Puget Systems, we have a preview of Intel's latest Xeon W-3400 and Xeon W-2400 workstation processors based on Sapphire Rapids core technology. Delivering up to 56 cores and 112 threads, these CPUs are paired with up to eight TeraBytes of eight-channel DDR5-4800 memory. For expansion, they offer up to 112 PCIe 5.0 lanes come with up to 350 Watt TDP; some models are unlocked for overclocking. This interesting HEDT family for workstation usage comes at a premium with an MSRP of $5,889 for the top-end SKU, and motherboard prices are also on the pricey side. However, all of this should come as no surprise given the expected performance professionals expect from these chips. Puget Systems has published test results that include: Photoshop, After Effects, Premiere Pro, DaVinci Resolve, Unreal Engine, Cinebench R23.2, Blender, and V-Ray. Note that Puget Systems said that: "While this post has been an interesting preview of the new Xeon processors, there is still a TON of testing we want to do. The optimizations Intel is working on is of course at the top, but there are several other topics we are highly interested in." So we expect better numbers in the future.Below, you can see the comparison with AMD's competing Threadripper Pro HEDT SKUs, along with power usage using different Windows OS power profiles:

Puget Systems has recently performed a variety of tests to determine if Windows 11 or 10 is the fastest for content-creation tasks such as photo and video editing. The tests were each conducted on four systems with an AMD Threadripper 5995WX, AMD Threadripper 5975WX, AMD Ryzen 9 5950X, and Intel Core i9 12900K each paired with an RTX 3080 and 64/128 GB of memory. The benchmarks were primarily taken from the PugetBench suite of tests with each test run multiple times.

The video editing tests were conducted using Premiere Pro, After Effects, and DaVinci Resolve where Premiere Pro saw a small performance improvement in Windows 10 while the other programs performed similarly on both operating systems. The photo editing tests used Photoshop, and Lightroom Classic with average performance equal across Windows 10 and 11. The CPU rendering benchmarks featured Cinebench, V-Ray, and Blender where once again the results were all within the margin of error. The GPU rendering tests using Octane, V-Ray, and Blender showed some differences with V-Ray and Blender both performing best in Windows 11. The final section was Game Development in Unreal Engine where a small advantage could be had by using Windows 11.

Puget Systems is a company that specializes in workstations and servers that are popular with the scientific community. The company just revealed that a majority of its systems shipped are now powered by AMD processors. These include Ryzen desktop or Ryzen Threadripper HEDT/workstation processors. "AMD has made enormous improvements to its CPU line year over year. In fact, more than 50% of our recommended systems are powered by AMD Ryzen
or Threadripper CPUs!," the company tweeted. The Ryzen Threadripper lineup has dominated the HEDT and workstation scene as all models support ECC memory, and the chips come in core counts of up to 64.

Historically, system builders have been very good indicators of the market situation and demand for the latest processors available. Today, we have the report coming from Puget Systems, a system builder making PCs and laptops for any task needed. Having been present in the PC building business for 21 years, the company was able to notice some trends and look at the market like no one else could, simply by analyzing its orders. Today, we have the report that showcases just how much the CPU market has fluctuated and how dominant forces have shifted. The two main players, AMD and Intel, have been present for lots of years and we now get to see the latest trends in the consumer marketplace.

Back in 2015, Puget Systems quietly dropped AMD processors from their offerings, amid the very low demand the company saw for them. The sales of AMD processors accounted for a single-digit percentage of all of the total sales, and no one was interested in such systems. With the introduction of the Ryzen generation, Puget Systems re-introduced AMD processors back in their offerings. As the company analyzes its processor sales, it has concluded that, currently, AMD processors account for over 50% of the total CPU sales. That is quite a comeback for AMD, as the latest generation Ryzen 5000 series processors have taken the performance crown, and consumer demand is showing the need for new high-performance processors. You can take a look at the graph representing processor sales in the last five years below.

Puget Systems have recently released performance and testing data from their quad NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3090 workstation. Puget Systems has paired the four Gigabyte RTX 3090 TURBO 24G cards with a 10 core Intel Xeon W-2255, 128 GB 3200 MHz DDR4 memory, and an EVGA SuperNOVA 1600W P2 power supply. The power draw hit 1717 W being drawn from the wall when running DaVinci Resolve, this prompted the installation of a second EVGA SuperNOVA 1600W P2 power supply.

The performance of this system is extremely impressive for enterprise applications that natively support multiple GPUs as NVIDIA has limited SLI support to two cards with the RTX 3090 ruling out running any of the few games which still support the feature. Puget Systems noted that they had very few issues getting the four blower-style cards working in a desktop workstation with temperatures staying below 80°C even under full load.

In a sign of just how arid the DIY retail channel has become for Intel, Tom's Hardware reports that the new socket flagship LGA2066 HEDT processor model Intel sneaked into its product-stack, the Core i9-9990XE, is restricted to the OEM/SI (system integrator) channel. Even to OEMs, ordering a tray of i9-9990XE chips isn't as simple as ordering other chips, such as the i9-9900K. Apparently, Intel has been running secret online auctions that are OEM-only, for these chips. OEMs get to bid on the per-chip price in n-unit tray quantities.

Workstation integrator Puget Systems was able to score itself some i9-9990XE inventory at USD $2,300 per chip. Puget Systems last week received its first batch of chips from Intel, and released performance benchmarks. At this price, the i9-9990XE is being sold at a 21% premium over the retail-channel SEP price of the i9-9980XE, and a whopping 65% premium over the i9-9940X. Intel can't shake off comparisons between the i9-9990XE and the i9-9940X because both chips are 14-core/28-thread with 19.25 MB shared L3 cache, with the i9-9990XE only offering significantly higher clock-speeds, but at an astounding TDP of 255W. The i9-9990XE was shown beating the 18-core i9-9980XE in a variety of HEDT-relevant benchmarks.

Puget Systems has been providing quad socket workstations for years now. Today, we refresh that product with a new duo of quad socket workstations that offer even more capacity, better cooling, and quieter operation. The new Peak Quad CPU workstations come in both Intel and AMD varieties. Our intention with this refresh is to take some of the highest performance workstation configurations available today and make them something you can put in your lab or office. Most workstations and servers of this caliber come with a prohibitive noise level but the Peak line of workstations solves this problem while still providing excellent cooling and long component lifespan.

In addition to supporting four CPUs, these workstations also support other high performance options such as large SSD arrays and accelerator cards including Intel Xeon Phi and NVIDIA Tesla. Most importantly, we have designed these workstations to be flexible. With systems at this level, it is typical for us to plan, design, implement and test a custom solution for each customer and use case. If you are unsure whether Peak is right for you, just ask! We have dedicated staff on hand for HPC, parallel and cluster computing.

Puget Systems is excited to announce the launch of four new models of our Traverse laptops, which include the new NVIDIA 800M series graphics. These graphics cards bring higher performance, greater efficiency, and new features such as Battery Boost. That balances performance and power consumption by assessing characteristics of the load your laptop is under and adjusting performance on the fly. As a result these new NVIDIA GPUs are 15-60% faster than the previous generation.

Our Traverse V Series features an NVIDIA GTX 860M video card, making it an excellent general purpose laptop. When not under load the dedicated GPU is disabled via NVIDIA Optimus technology, allowing the integrated Intel graphics to take over. This provides lower power draw, longer battery life, and quieter operation. When that video power is needed, the NVIDIA graphics enable and seamlessly take over.

Puget Systems, a boutique integrator of custom PC systems for enthusiasts, gamers, consumers and SMB markets, today announced availability of Intel Sandy Bridge-E to its line of workstations and servers.

Sandy Bridge-EP incorporates improved memory bandwidth, more PCI-E lanes, and uses Intel's Turbo Boost Technology 2.0, providing even more performance when needed. For more information, a full Sandy Bridge-E technology primer is available from Puget Systems.