This could be a Big Problem for Intel

my theory: Intel knew about the oxidation problem but hoped it would effect only out of warranty CPUs

Imagine 2nd hand market flood with faulty CPUs. Like socket 1700 will be a least popular platform for aware customers and at the same time a doom trap for unaware ones...

Intel's handling of the situation is becoming as big a story as the CPU issues themselves. Great work as always guys.

My 13900k nightmare continues. 🤬

Intel's three-year limited warranty should be immediately changed to 7 years.

"could be" is rather optimistic.

Intel wants people to forgot so they can deny future RMAs or be like, of you updated so must be something else. This is why recalls exist. There's no trust left.

intel: what?! you want us to go out of our way to help customers make their cpus last longer instead of buying a new one in a few years? having it die just out of warranty is what we call "the sweet spot" 😀

Something tells me " could be" is an understatement... When I worked for hp at one of they're dev' fabs we had contamination problems and we developed a plasma cleaning process to remove the contamination but had to scrap a lot of wafers ... Once contaminated the contaminants can diffuse into many insulating or conducting structures... there's no real going back ... Any contaminated CPUs will only get worse no matter how much intel adjusts the voltage/ power specs.

They sold defective cpus.

Oxidation would almost certainly have been caught in accelerated wear testing. The problem with the excess voltage is that it causes wear of the transistors themselves through a process called time dependent dielectric breakdown, and this is independent of current and less dependent on temperature than electromigration, it is therefore more likely to pass in the conditions of the accelerated wear tests. Why exactly they didn't properly monitor the voltages during operation to be within the intended range on the other hand is quite perplexing.

Disagree on one opinion: No matter what caused the permanent damage to CPUs (via oxidation alone or “faulty” microcode resulting in too high voltages or a combination) this should absolutely warrant a recall of every unit already in circulation.

Warranty in France is 20 years for hidden defects before sale, and 2 years from the discovery of the said defect. The Europe Warranty rules allow each members to implement hidden defects warranties. I don't know how widespread they are in other countries.

Easiest way to reach the majority of users with Intel affected CPUs is to contact Microsoft and display a message in widows if the system has a CPU with possible issues.

der8auer: Watch GN's videos about it. LTT: I have never heard of this man in my life

if it were just a slow decay from corrosion, they could "just" replace customers CPU with new ones. But if it's a fundamental flaw, you can't. You could give out 12th gen as a temp "solution" but if you, for example, change motherboard and chipsets every generation....

But it’s not just about approaching customers about a microcode update. I assume all >65w 13th and 14th gen CPUs are damaged to some extent, if they were being used at all.

Microcode updates can (and are) provided via windows update. Linux distributions also load updated microcode early in the boot process. As long as Intel talks with Microsoft and pushes that update to all supported windows versions, most users should have a patched system. The real issue is how they are going to deal with the early degradation of the CPUs. Extended warranty? Voluntary RMA? How about high performance laptop parts? They also have very high boost clocks and voltages for single core loads. How is the degradation there at high temperatures? There's still a lot of work to be done to understand how widespread this issue is. I don't believe that it affects just some higher TDP CPUs because other CPUs also have the same boosting behavior, with a little less voltage the lower you go on the performance tier scale

Intel: 🔥🔥🔥This is fine. 🔥🔥🔥

Regarding the oxidization issue. Intel said in a subreddit post "addressed with manufacturing improvements and screens". Does that mean none of the affected CPUs were released to the channel? If not why not provide a date code etc so that users can verify if they are using any of these affected CPUs? The lack of detailed information regarding this issue is frustrating as hell. I assume that the affected CPUs were all of the 13th/14th gen CPUs produced during some time period of 2023. The microcode fix is to be released to motherboard makers in mid-August. It is then up to the motherboard makers to release BIOS updates for their affected boards. Will all manufacturers release BIOS updates for all of their affected boards? I am not holding my breath on that. There is also no mention of whether this issue affects ALL 13th and 14th gen CPUs or just the higher-end ones.