Intel Extends Warranty of Boxed 14th & 13th Gen CPUs By Two Years In Light of Instability Issues

Intel has announced that it will be extending the warranty periods of its 14th & 13th Gen CPUs by an additional two years due to instability issues.

The instability issues affecting Intel's 14th & 13th Gen CPU seem to have no end with new reports and cases emerging on a daily basis. While the company has tried to mitigate the issues through a range of updates which include BIOS fixes, patches for the eTVB, & an upcoming microcode BIOS update that will roll out around mid of August, there's no permanent solution as Intel itself stated that there's no reversal for the chips that have already been degraded through elevated voltages.

In its official response, Intel stated that it won't issue a recall for its 14th and 13th Gen CPUs and it won't stop the sales either. However, the company did state that it committed to making sure that its customers get heightened support through its customer support service. All affected users are said to be offered a replacement chip if they are affected by this instability issue and the company has now extended the warranty period of its chips by an additional three years.

Intel is committed to making sure all customers who have or are currently experiencing instability symptoms on their 13th and/or 14th Gen desktop processors are supported in the exchange process. We stand behind our products, and in the coming days we will be sharing more details on two-year extended warranty support for our boxed Intel Core 13th and 14th Gen desktop processors.

In the meantime, if you are currently or previously experienced instability symptoms on your Intel Core 13th/14th Gen desktop system:

For users who purchased systems from OEM/System Integrators – please reach out to your system manufacturer’s support team for further assistance.

For users who purchased a boxed CPU – please reach out to Intel Customer Support for further assistance.

At the same time, we apologize for the delay in communications as this has been a challenging issue to unravel and definitively root cause.

Intel's 14th & 13th Gen CPUs come with a 3-year warranty and with the 2-year extended warranty, you will now have 5 years of warranty support on your chip. It's a decent gesture from Intel and the company has also stated that all customers who are facing instability issues are supported through the exchange process. The warranty covers owners of a boxed Intel 14th & 13th Gen CPU and since the company has already revealed that chips rated at 65W & above TDPs are in the list of affected parts, all of those will be covered.

These are challenging times for Intel as it faces trust issues not only with its customers but also with its partners. We have heard recently from multiple partners and vendors that given all of the issues affecting 14th & 13th Gen CPUs, there will now be a marketing push towards AMD and its Ryzen CPUs which can affect the sales of not only existing chips but also the upcoming Intel Core Ultra 200 "Arrow Lake" Desktop parts which are expected to roll out in Q4 2024 (October). A class-action lawsuit is also in the works which we reported a while ago.

[Dec 2022] The first instances of "Out of Video Memory" issues on 13th Gen Core i9 CPUs were reported back in 2022. (Source: Reddit). This is a few months after the release of Intel's 13th Gen CPUs & RTX 40 GPUs.

[Throughout 2023] Several users have started reporting game crashes and issues in high-profile AAA titles such as Callisto Protocol and Hogwarts Legacy (among many others). Both tiles are based on Unreal Engine (released in 2023) and feature a shader compilation process at the start. There are currently thousands of such issues reported on Steam Community Forums and Reddit.

[February 2024] A post by Sebastian Castellanos brings the issue to the limelight, highlighting the "worrying trend" of stability issues affecting 14th and 13th-gen CPUs.

[February 2024] Our editor along with various other tech outlets start reporting the issue and bringing the matter on to the mainstream media. Quickly, it is pointed out that underclocking and undervolting the chips can result in better stability.

[April 2024] NVIDIA Issued a formal statement that the stability issues are not related to its GPUs but rather Intel CPUs.

[April 2024] Intel announces its investigation of the reports of instability issues affecting 13th and 14th Gen CPUs.

[April 2024] Motherboard makers quickly roll out "Baseline" power profiles in new BIOS, which lower power limits on high-end 14th & 13th Gen CPUs but also lead to significant performance drops.

[May 2024] Intel releases a statement, recommending motherboard makers to ship "Intel Default Settings" in BIOS by default rather than customized settings.

[June 2024] Intel discovers a bug within its eTVB microcode while investigating the root cause of 14th and 13th Gen Instability issues. This doesn't fix the instability problems. Board makers quickly roll out BIOS with a new microcode fix.

[July 2024] Intel denies an RMA to HardwareTimes editor who already RMA'd at least two CPUs which produced instability issues.

[July 2024] Wendell from Level1Techs & Steve Burke from GamersNexus are the first big tech media outlets on YouTube to further highlight the instability issues, diving into additional details such as OEM frustration with the matter and a possible recall.

[July 2024] GamersNexus highlights a potential "oxidation" defect being a problem with a certain batch of Intel 14th & 13th Gen CPUs that might lead to instability problems.

[July 2024] Intel says the 14th & 13th Gen Mobile CPUs are not affected by the same instability issues as the desktop CPUs.

[July 2024] Intel issues a statement confirming that they have found the root cause of the instability issues which happen to be elevated operating voltages and will be issuing a new microcode fix to its partners by mid of August

[July 2024] Intel confirmed that oxidation issues existed in a previous batch and that there's no solution for CPUs that are already degraded.

[August 2024] Law firm initiates a possible class action lawsuit against Intel CPUs facing instability issues.

[August 2024] Intel extends the warranty of its boxed 14th and 13th Gen CPUs by an additional 2 years.

To Be Continued...

With the microcode patch expected to be available around the same time frame as the launch of AMD's high-end Zen 5 CPUs, it will be interesting to see if Intel finally has a solution to the issue or if we have to wait for further updates down the road.