News Puget says its Intel chips failures are lower than Ryzen failures — retailer releases failure rate data, cites conservative power settings

[TheHerald]

Quick search in intel offical forum about 13900k frequent crash

https://community.intel.com/t5/Processors/i9-13900K-very-frequent-crashes-Windows-11-with-apps-games-and/m-p/1527297#M65490?wapkw=13900k unstable

That was from Sept 2023, and the problem is acknoledged for unlimited PL appears in... May 2024 and the microcode patch is announced still waiting to arrive... maybe our week is different

If I go to amds or any other forum I won't find crashes? Great data you got there, someones cpu is crashing.

 

[stuff and nonesense]

As an engineer and someone who is a professional, the question is not about a conflict of interest, the question is about the APPEARANCE of being in conflict of interest.

You cannot work for a site doing reviews and being part of a subreddit part covering one manufacturer. On that, Steve is 100% right and that's the reason why he doesn't accept any kind of financial support from any companies for any events.

Like it or not, it just demonstrate a BIAS. Basically, you need to choose one or the other, so choose which one is more important for you.

Moderation actions do not infer an agreement with any party, author or company.
Actions taken are to ensure that the forum rules are followed.
As the example referenced in the twitter post states that the intel ama was for Lunar lake then closing down the off topic “thread” makes sense.

It would be interesting to see intel face the rabid hoarde regarding 13/14th gen in an open ama.

 

[Gururu]

As an engineer and someone who is a professional, the question is not about a conflict of interest, the question is about the APPEARANCE of being in conflict of interest.

You cannot work for a site doing reviews and being part of a subreddit part covering one manufacturer. On that, Steve is 100% right and that's the reason why he doesn't accept any kind of financial support from any companies for any events.

Like it or not, it just demonstrate a BIAS. Basically, you need to choose one or the other, so choose which one is more important for you.

I would argue that this would only be true if he was receiving direct or indirect benefit or compensation from Intel. If it is volunteer work and he is supporting a medium as a professional, it wouldn’t matter what product channel he was moderating. For any forum moderator, I am pretty sure the standard is that the moderators are fair. However, if manufacturers are handpicking moderators for Reddit, then you pretty much have to dismiss all of Reddit.

 

[jlake3]

As an engineer and someone who is a professional, the question is not about a conflict of interest, the question is about the APPEARANCE of being in conflict of interest.

You cannot work for a site doing reviews and being part of a subreddit part covering one manufacturer. On that, Steve is 100% right and that's the reason why he doesn't accept any kind of financial support from any companies for any events.

Like it or not, it just demonstrate a BIAS. Basically, you need to choose one or the other, so choose which one is more important for you.

I'd be careful about holding up Gamers Nexus as the authoritative voice on right and wrong in the tech industry. He's broken some good stories, but he does journalism by his own rules and not by any widely agreed convention.

He stated in the past that GN has a policy of NOT asking companies or individuals involved in a story for comment if he believes they may engage in PR spin to try and get ahead of the story, if he doesn't think he personally trusts any statement they might give, or if he doesn't believe that it's necessary to get their side. He could present their statements with comment, but he feels that some subjects don't deserve a chance to comment and he gets to pick who is worthy.

He took down a video in the past where he says he does not believe in responsible disclosure. He said that if he discovered a 0-day in an online service and it was his belief that the service would attempt to fix it quietly and get out ahead of the expose and deflect, he'd drop the exploit into the public space without warning them so as to not undercut the impact of GN's story.

Gamers Nexus DOES in fact take money from categories of products that they cover. Maybe not for events, but reviews and news are sponsored by cases and power supplies and CPU coolers all the time. I've been told in the past that the way they do this is that they review the product, then go to the manufacturer and say "Hey, we liked this, do you want to pay us to advertise it?" which they consider to be more appropriate than having an editorial firewall where the video writer and host are blind to what ads will be cut into the video. I disagree.

Regarding bias; Steve has expressed a belief in the past that if you previously worked for any company in the tech industry, you cannot work for any tech journalism that covers your past employer in any capacity at any point in the future, because that previous employment creates an appearance of a conflict of interest that is so sticky it attaches to the entirety of any future employer. That feels quite unreasonable as a base assumption without proof.

Edit: Also, the guy has (or had, at least) a thing for wanting everything to be incredibly overbuilt, even when the return on that for the customer is... dubious. I remember him saying he couldn't recommend a PSU that met or exceeded every ATX spec and checked out to it's 80+ rating because it didn't exceed the specs by enough, and him going on and on about how Arc has better PCB design and more power phases and better cooler build quality relative to Radeon... only to have the equivalent Radeon stomp it in the actual performance testing (with then-current drivers).

 

[YSCCC]

If I go to amds or any other forum I won't find crashes? Great data you got there, someones cpu is crashing.

7800X3D released on 6th April, 2023, the AMD burning issue, with the first appeared on tom's HW on April 23, 2023, and The Verge, on Apr 27, 2023 reported the fix was already enforced, it was 4 days, so even assuming the CPU burnt in the first minute of release, it took them 21 days to issue the fix. The 13900k crashing, was the same symptoms as the degradation now well known, and in the first post after intel official in the intel forum link, there are ppl asking about issues of 13900k in also, a reddit post:

Reddit - Dive into anything

www.reddit.com

And till July 2024, the microcode was finally admitted to be having an issue and a patch will come along mid August, and how on earth is that intel patched within weeks of the issue?

 

[fla56]

If Puget's statistics are true, then where's the AMD customer posts and outrage then.

Since 1995, I've never had an AMD or Intel CPU fail on me. Had a few GPUs, hard drives and PSUs break though.

Well let’s look at again at Pugets figures -the last 3 months they’ve seen a mass spike in 14th Gen failures

In other words, just as predicted BIOS tweaks delay the inevitable, they don’t prevent it

Only a very foolish person buys Intel at this point

 

[fla56]

Oh wow, actual data instead of internet rumors, anecdotes and conjecture.

Look at the data -the last 3 months they’re having mass Intel 14th Gen failure

Ie even all these tweaks just slowed the deaths of Intel CPUs

 

[gruffi]

I think most of the problem is people are pushing their CPUs way beyond what they are designed to do.

It doesn't look like that's the case. Most people I heard of had problems at stock settings. Intel and their board partners themselves pushed the CPUs too much. But the root cause is that 13th gen has not been sufficiently validated. The engineers knew about possible problems back then. But 13th gen had to be rushed out. 14th gen just suffers the same problems because it's the same silicon.

 

[Gururu]

It doesn't look like that's the case. Most people I heard of had problems at stock settings. Intel and their board partners themselves pushed the CPUs too much. But the root cause is that 13th gen has not been sufficiently validated. The engineers knew about possible problems back then. But 13th gen had to be rushed out. 14th gen just suffers the same problems because it's the same silicon.

They definitely made promises the product couldn’t live up to. If they had validated to those promised specs, the products would have been binned differently and the problems would have been greatly avoided. The current reports of failures still don’t make an arguable case that 95+% of sold product won’t survive their intended life cycle.

 

[XxDarkMario20xX]

It doesn't look like that's the case. Most people I heard of had problems at stock settings. Intel and their board partners themselves pushed the CPUs too much. But the root cause is that 13th gen has not been sufficiently validated. The engineers knew about possible problems back then. But 13th gen had to be rushed out. 14th gen just suffers the same problems because it's the same silicon.

Yeah CPU are coming out nearly every year and 14900k is really pointless and such waste off intel money to make because has same specs as 13900k with higher ghz speed. Think Intel should not keep rushing to get things out.

 

[YSCCC]

They definitely made promises the product couldn’t live up to. If they had validated to those promised specs, the products would have been binned differently and the problems would have been greatly avoided. The current reports of failures still don’t make an arguable case that 95+% of sold product won’t survive their intended life cycle.

Actually the first part is bad enough, you know usually it's the most extreme hobbists who bought the most expensive and profitable parts and set records using that, thus providing free advs for Intel so they can sell more of the lower tier stuffs, and market dominance also makes software tend to optimize them more, a positive cycle if done right.

And you don't need to have 95%+ out there failing, it's that when this spirals in the negative side, the consumer confidence is collapsed and that is all that matters. Imagine a chip finally dies, 4 years since it's purchased, a pristine reputation would not cause any customer dissatifaction and they likely just blame luck and move on, buying another intel.

But now even if say, only 10% of the highest end chips have some issue but not completely dead, let's say, losing some 10-20% performance after the patch, the most advocate group is going to complain to hell, which they are perfcetly rightful to, will make any death at 4 years mark CPU causing massive rage on the brand and avoid intel, or to say the least, higher end intel, which isn't good for profit and future product development, a death sprial. It's a brand image rescue mission at this point of time

 

[TheHerald]

7800X3D released on 6th April, 2023, the AMD burning issue, with the first appeared on tom's HW on April 23, 2023, and The Verge, on Apr 27, 2023 reported the fix was already enforced, it was 4 days, so even assuming the CPU burnt in the first minute of release, it took them 21 days to issue the fix. The 13900k crashing, was the same symptoms as the degradation now well known, and in the first post after intel official in the intel forum link, there are ppl asking about issues of 13900k in also, a reddit post:

Reddit - Dive into anything

www.reddit.com

And till July 2024, the microcode was finally admitted to be having an issue and a patch will come along mid August, and how on earth is that intel patched within weeks of the issue?

Man I don't want to argue back and forth but it's obvious that an issue that freaking LITERALLY melts your CPU and the mobo alongside it will take priority in fixing than an issue that might eventually lead to some apps crashing some months or years down the line. I mean come on, they are not equivalent.

 

[YSCCC]

Man I don't want to argue back and forth but it's obvious that an issue that freaking LITERALLY melts your CPU and the mobo alongside it will take priority in fixing than an issue that might eventually lead to some apps crashing some months or years down the line. I mean come on, they are not equivalent.

one is fixed in DAYS and one frustrated the customer(s) for 2 freaking YEARS, be it melts or just crashing more and more and causing more downtime+worktime loss, of course they arn't equivalent, I took this timeline out just because, we haven't seen major, consistent AMD issues in Zen 4 vs RPL which dies slowly, and on the advantage of Intel, counting this only major incident which is afterwards, identified to really be the board throwing too much voltage in, yet AMD admitted they've missed that protection enforcement and rectify it right away, versus some market dominating Giant being very dodgy on the issues, you can ask which one is better for consumers.

Edit: You don't even need to try ask what's the reputation damage to Intel have been done by their own response, look at their stock price and you will get a glimpse of the general opinion of the non geek general public

 

[Pierce2623]

Long time Intel user with a 13700K and now a 14900K, I have always dropped the vcore down from auto as the motherboards are pushing absurd voltage if left to their stock settings. Always fixed or adaptive with a 1.325v limit.

I cannot believe that there was a 50% failure rate as if so the internet would have blown up a long time ago with way to many 13th and 14th gen enthusiasts running to scream at Intel which is not what happened. This is something that would have hit the message boards and the likes of reddit a long time ago.

And the major vendors all have had problems from AMD, Intel and Nvidia in the past remember when AMD CPU's were not hitting there boost clocks!....they all have had problems in one way or another and it is how they deal with it that will matter. If Intel do not move fast and give refund or replacements to those that have issues then it will cause a lot of lost good will with people changing over to AMD and deservedly so as Intel should be held accountable! The extended warranty is a start but very quickly we will hear from those that are going through the RMA process.

Also the motherboard manufacturers have been pushing these CPU's a bit too hard with excessive voltage and that is all of them as I have used ASUS and now MSI with both pushing 1.4 to 1.5v on auto setting which is absurd. As an enthusiast I have always manually set the voltage and never let it go above 1.35 which is my limit and to be honest it does not need any more than that to get full boost and speed out of these CPU's. My 14900K will boost to 6Ghz on two cores and a 5.6GHz all core with a 41K Cinebench R23 multi core test with temps in check in the low 90's...though with a 360mm AIO though only when testing and under normal conditions I will not go over 253w with the vcore even lower.

The reason it’s just now blowing up is because it initially only showed as instability in UE5 and is only now starting to actually kill the chips. The chips take time to get damaged enough to become problematic.

 

[Ogotai]

well, cause of these instability issues, and crashing, i know 5 that were looking to upgrade, 3 were lookimg at intel,2 at amd ( i think it was ) and well, cause of this, all are going with amd now

 

[tamalero]

Its clear that most of the big OEMs have the same strategy of using conservative settings to avoid support costs.

I wonder if Intel has known that they were pushing things to levels that weren't stable in the long term but didn't do anything about it because it wouldn't really affect Dell etc.

Dell's standard $1800 14700 system has a single 32GB stick of DDR5 RAM.
This is just insane given that the 2x16GB config is a zero dollar option and it should be 10 percent faster.
I suspect that the systems are more stable with a single stick of RAM

I'd also suspect that Dell's BIOS also has conservative settings and the user can't even pick many of the options that MB vendors have that could increase support costs.

Let's not forget that DELL loves to overengineer ANYTHING to prevent repairs.
Their weird sketchy proprietary motherboards are an example.
And if I remember correctly, some of their motherboards even only have a single slot for RAM even when its recommended to have dual channels.

Steve from Gamernexus has had a riot reviewing the stupidity surrounding the poor destroyed name of Alienware.

 

[tamalero]

7800X3D released on 6th April, 2023, the AMD burning issue, with the first appeared on tom's HW on April 23, 2023, and The Verge, on Apr 27, 2023 reported the fix was already enforced, it was 4 days, so even assuming the CPU burnt in the first minute of release, it took them 21 days to issue the fix. The 13900k crashing, was the same symptoms as the degradation now well known, and in the first post after intel official in the intel forum link, there are ppl asking about issues of 13900k in also, a reddit post:

Reddit - Dive into anything

www.reddit.com

And till July 2024, the microcode was finally admitted to be having an issue and a patch will come along mid August, and how on earth is that intel patched within weeks of the issue?

Even the "bios" that lowered the power limits and sent to many motherboards.. took months.

Yeah CPU are coming out nearly every year and 14900k is really pointless and such waste off intel money to make because has same specs as 13900k with higher ghz speed. Think Intel should not keep rushing to get things out.

You need to remember that people in this forum... specially those with vast IT knowledge... are a rarity compared to the mass of people with little knowledge buying these chips.
"bigger" numbers always have sound better and both intel and AMD have exploited the naming convention to manipulate uneducated customers.

So, most of them wouldn't have a clue that the 14900k was a waste unless they tried to make minimum research online.

 

[Gururu]

Let's not forget that DELL loves to overengineer ANYTHING to prevent repairs.
Their weird sketchy proprietary motherboards are an example.
And if I remember correctly, some of their motherboards even only have a single slot for RAM even when its recommended to have dual channels.

Steve from Gamernexus has had a riot reviewing the stupidity surrounding the poor destroyed name of Alienware.

Which is fine if you are responsible for replacing 200 PCs in an office and demand stability.

 

[tamalero]

Which is fine if you are responsible for replacing 200 PCs in an office and demand stability.

It's not fine if your cpu loses 40% of performance by default because of ineffective and cheapened cooling solution for the sake of aesthetics and engineering.
Some of the Dell Alienwares were consistently throttling thanks to badly designed cases and cooling solutions.
So not sure how consistently going 100C is "stability" while at the same time taking a massive performance hit.

 

[stuff and nonesense]

Man I don't want to argue back and forth but it's obvious that an issue that freaking LITERALLY melts your CPU and the mobo alongside it will take priority in fixing than an issue that might eventually lead to some apps crashing some months or years down the line. I mean come on, they are not equivalent.

Melted, the fault was found in a timely manner and the customers affected received replacements/refunds whatever the remedy was.

You are drawing a false equivalency. One problem was fixed within a reasonable timescale, the other has dragged on for many months.
One, to be honest, mainly didn’t affect businesses as intel held/holds a firm grip on the workplace, intel with random crashes has the possibility of greater financial loss for its customers. It is potentially far more expensive in time, “wasted salary” etc. etc.

Had intel been seen to be doing something, anything then this would be a non-issue. What they did was to publicly blame software, publicly blame bios settings and eventually admit that is is a problem with their microcode.

The difficulty I have as an observer is that somewhere within intel there had to be a decision to act as they have, a senior manager? a lawyer? the board? Wherever the decision was that person needs to have a meeting with HR.

 

[senpaimaku]

wow puget is so disgusting at this point, how much did intel gave you to save their ass? amd should file a lawsuit to puget

 

[NedSmelly]

I never got a sense of Puget being disingenuous with their blog posts and disclosures. I think the conspiratorial angle that some have adopted here isn't justified.

Puget are simply adding a data point to the broader discussion - in the same way that Backblaze does with their hard drive reports. They have a specific market and build approach; this info doesn't claim to represent the entire worldwide 13-14th Gen cohort.

Postscript. I also wonder if the conspiracy theorists actually read the source article. As quoted from Puget:

Based on this information, we are definitely experiencing CPU failures higher than our historical average, especially with 14th Gen

 

[Albert.Thomas]

As an engineer and someone who is a professional, the question is not about a conflict of interest, the question is about the APPEARANCE of being in conflict of interest.

See, here's the thing: The "appearance of being in conflict of interest" was manufactured for clickbait. I have been moderating /r/Intel for seven years - long before I ever wrote a review of anything.

Anyone who has actually participated in /r/Intel in those years knows how I moderate, hell all you have to do is look at /r/Intel and anyone can see how much critical content has been posted over the past few months.

If I had a habit of censoring, don't you think that this would have been known before Steve's slanderous character assassination attempt?

You cannot work for a site doing reviews and being part of a subreddit part covering one manufacturer.

I do not currently review products from Intel. I am currently limiting my reviews to CPU coolers, SSD heatsinks, thermal pastes, and cases. While I do give my thoughts on a product, my reviews generally aim to give people the information they need so that folks can come to their own conclusions on whether the product fits their needs.

One of the reasons I've focused on these items is that I'm less likely to deal with toxic fanboyism. Or at least, they were until this weekend.

Like it or not, it just demonstrate a BIAS. Basically, you need to choose one or the other, so choose which one is more important for you.

I have to admit, my reviews are biased....

They're biased towards strong thermal performance and low noise levels 😉

 

[Albert.Thomas]

It would be interesting to see intel face the rabid hoarde regarding 13/14th gen in an open ama.

Ask and ye shall receive:

https://old.reddit.com/r/intel/comments/1ehv0v8/extended_warranty_update_on_13th14th_stability/

 

[YSCCC]

I never got a sense of Puget being disingenuous with their blog posts and disclosures. I think the conspiratorial angle that some have adopted here isn't justified.

Puget are simply adding a data point to the broader discussion - in the same way that Backblaze does with their hard drive reports. They have a specific market and build approach; this info doesn't claim to represent the entire worldwide 13-14th Gen cohort.

Postscript. I also wonder if the conspiracy theorists actually read the source article. As quoted from Puget:

Personally I don't think they are paid or something by intel, but TBF in their business position, it makes sense to promote what they are used to, and minimize any return products rushing in a short term.

Also noted from the source article:

"Looking at that chart, you’ll notice a few things. First, your attention undoubtedly is drawn to the recent spike of failures with Intel Core 14th Gen. Second, you can see that Intel Core 11th Gen CPUs had a failure rate at nearly the same level, even though it didn’t get as much press at that time, that I can recall. Third, I’ll draw your attention to a steady and elevated failure rate on 13th Gen processors."
"We do expect an elevated failure rate on 14th Gen while Intel finishes finding a root cause and issuing a microcode update."

It seems all those spikes comes right after half year mark, which coincidnetally matches with some of the early 13900k series reporting issues. It looks though with the downclocking of the shipped CPUs with the conservative profile lower than the "intel performance" recommended profile, they likely don't do undervolting to ensure stability, assuming that the intel binning should be safe and yet it still degrade the CPU somehow for the lower binned ones, sure this is all speculation, but time will tell, everyone is just speculating and projecting now.