Do not trust Intel

So, this story's been percolating for a while, but it seems to be coming to a head all of a sudden, and is providing a number of object lessons is how not to do any of this in the process.

Long story short: Intel 13th and 14th gen processors (a.k.a. Raptor Lake, and including essentially all CPUs made and sold from October of 2022 to the present), have a degeneration issue. For details on the nature of the problem, your best bet is probably Wendell at Level1Techs, or Steve at Gamer's Nexus, or both.

The situation is developing rapidly, though, and Intel are failing to get ahead of it. The latest reporting comes from Ars Technica:

On Monday, it initially seemed like the beginning of the end for Intel’s desktop CPU instability woes — the company confirmed a patch is coming in mid-August that should address the “root cause” of exposure to elevated voltage. But if your 13th or 14th Gen Intel Core processor is already crashing, that patch apparently won’t fix it.

Citing unnamed sources, Tom’s Hardware reports that any degradation of the processor is irreversible, and an Intel spokesperson did not deny that when we asked. Intel is “confident” the patch will keep it from happening in the first place. [...] But if your defective CPU has been damaged, your best option is to replace it instead of tweaking BIOS settings to try and alleviate the problems.

And, Intel confirms, too-high voltages aren’t the only reason some of these chips are failing. Intel spokesperson Thomas Hannaford confirms it’s a primary cause, but the company is still investigating. Intel community manager Lex Hoyos also revealed some instability reports can be traced back to an oxidization manufacturing issue that was fixed at an unspecified date last year.

This raises lots of questions. Will Intel recall these chips? Extend their warranty? Replace them no questions asked? Pause sales like AMD just did with its Ryzen 9000? Identify faulty batches with the manufacturing defect?

This is bad. This is epic levels of bad, and may be Boeing levels of bad.

The best case scenario here, is that Intel had a production problem with Raptor Lake processors going back two years, which wasn't detected or fixed until recently, and didn't bother to inform any of their board partners, OEM partners, system integrators, or the public. This generous take is somewhat contradicted by Intel themselves, though, who claimed at one point that the manufacturing issue was found and fixed early, and only affected a small number of chips. 

Which brings us to the worse scenario: that Intel had a production problem, knew they had a production problem, but didn't tell anybody about the problem, and continued to make and sell defective product for two whole Raptor Lake generations (nearly two years now) and simply hoped that the problem hadn't affected too many of the finished units. 

Worse yet, Intel have done everything they can to deny the existence of the problem, deflect blame for the problem onto their customers, and delay taking action on the problem while the rest of the world figured out the nature and extent of the defect independently of them. They have completely failed to take responsibility for an issue which they knew damn well they had, and are still stalling as the story snowballs out of all control.

At this point, there is no reason to trust anything that Intel say about this issue which is short of a complete recall of Raptor Lake. Every 13th and 14th chip sold must be assumed to be defective, and Intel should be refunding everybody affected for both the processors, and the motherboards.

Because the replacement here is not another Intel processor, it's an AMD processor. If you have a system with an 13th or 14th gen Intel CPU, your system may already have suffered permanent damage as a result of this defect; if you're seeing a decrease in performance, or an increase in instability, this is probably why, and you should be demanding your money back.

It also means that Intel's chip fabbing business is DOA. There is no reason for anyone to trust Intel's ability to successfully make anything at this point, and no reason to use their fabs rather than Samsung's or TSMC's.

Finally, it means that Intel's reputation has been completely destroyed. Intel cannot be trusted to deal honestly, or fairly, or ethically. They will knowingly sell you defective product, while saying nothing, and then blame anyone and anything except their broken shit when their defective products fail.

Do not buy Intel. Do not recommend Intel to anyone else. Do not trust any claim made by Intel in the last two years at least, and do not trust any claim made by them for the foreseeable future.

Also, remember for a moment how many different uses are made of Intel's processors. How many lives depend on computers built with defective chips? If those computers inexplicably fail, how much real-life damage can result?

The class action lawsuits are coming, in 3... 2... 1...