Intel's CPU flaws (Spectre / Meltdown) gets discovered and Intel is forced to reveal.
These Intel products with the flaws were designed in a certain country that you need to look up yourself.
A certain hedge company, also located in the same country, spreads information equivalent to "the sky is blue" as "the sky is falling!" squarely at Intel's competition. They also short sell the competition's stock.
Shortly thereafter, patches for the Spectre / Meltdown vulnerabilities are released by Microsoft, that wreak havoc with Intel's competition, and they don't seem to exist in Linux.
Disclaimer:
In no way am I am implying that Spectre/Metldown is an NSA back door.
There is absolutely NO proof of collusion between CTS labs and Intel.
Radeon black screens, strange voltage regulation problems on systems, and system instability are entirely coincidental in Windows 1709 and Spectre/Meltdown patches.
These instabilities may not occur with opensource drivers in Linux performing the same tasks, but hey, Linux is hard and it's only a matter of time until they get fixed.
For example, perhaps these problems START to go away in Windows 1803, as long as you update to the latest drivers and bios from AMD.
Also, old hardware tends to fail. Sandybridge, Ivybridge and AMD hardware failures are just bad luck combinations of legacy hardware, new hardware, old software and new software.
I have NOT decided if I am getting an AMD system next.
But let me reiterate, I don't feel Intel let me down. My Intel Ivybridge motherboard is not getting a BIOS patch because it is old, not because they want me to buy new Intel hardware.
I am also sure that the new lidless Intel CPUs DO NOT have a shorter lifespan than CPUs like the i7 3xxx and 2xxx series. There is PR everywhere about the reasons for this.