from Hacker News

Intel confirms oxidation and excessive voltage in 13th and 14th Gen CPUs [video]

by tagyro on 7/24/24, 4:33 PM with 128 comments

  • by proee on 7/24/24, 6:11 PM

    The fact any modern computer chip works reliability is a pure miracle. The process variations are extreme, and you often end up with a lot of B-level engineers/technicians keeping things going. Having some experience in the semiconductor industry, it oftentimes felt like a lot of bubble gum and bailing wire was used to get the product out the door. Hats off to all the people keeping these systems alive and functioning.

  • by cuddlyogre on 7/24/24, 8:36 PM

    I had a 13900K blue screen at random for almost a year. Anything that used more than a certain amount of cores would either crash or blue screen, which was irritating considering I built the machine in part so I could do simulations and renders in Blender. I was also unable to use dual channel RAM. It just wouldn't POST no matter what settings I used.

    I went through 3 motherboards hoping it was that, and not the insanely expensive CPU that would be a pain to RMA. But as it turns out, the RMA process was very quick and painless once I provided my troubleshooting history. But due to it being my main computer that I make my money with, I had to buy another processor to fill the 2 week gap between sending the old one and receiving the new one.

    I probably spend $1500 or more on this problem, and by the sounds of it, my troubles might not be over.

  • by MangoCoffee on 7/24/24, 5:51 PM

    This is the reason why chip manufacturing is not just about buying an EUV machine and then starting to pump out chips to make it rain, as many people believe.

    This is craftsmanship. John Doe can use Python to create software, and so can you, yet John Doe's code runs better and faster while your code crashes all the time.

    People seem to forget that a craftsman's ability to use tools is a big factor in the final product.

  • by mzs on 7/24/24, 5:47 PM

  • by lofaszvanitt on 7/24/24, 5:43 PM

    Why there are so many errors with Intel cpus lately? CPUs used to be the most reliable parts of a computer. Are there too many "moving"variables to extensively test everything? Is it no longer possible to grab the speed crown without cutting corners?

  • by foft on 7/24/24, 7:54 PM

    The tricky thing here is that as this mostly affects unlocked CPUs it is going to be hard to prove when the fault is from this algorithm vs user/motherboard manufacturer overlocking. Unless there is any internal monitoring with fuses blown. Is there?

    As part of the bathtub reliability curve its usual for a large fraction of failures early in life, how much over the usual failure curve are we?

    It's still unclear what fraction of CPUs are impacted for both issues. Was oxidation a single fab just for a month and only 5% of produced CPUs? Is the microcode issue in TB 3.0 or TVB, so would only impact the 1[34]900s?

    It's also unclear if once degraded it can still reliably work at say 95% peak frequency. In the case of a partial recall it might be worth a discount option if that is the case.

    Anyway it's mostly speculation beyond Intel's post on their forum (+Reddit responses), it will be interested to see the next stages which will hopefully clarify some of these. This is just a discussion forum I'm sure the final detailed announcement will the made via their main communication channels.

  • by wmf on 7/24/24, 5:41 PM

  • by vaylian on 7/24/24, 5:30 PM

    You can check the generation of your intel CPU by running

      lscpu | grep 'Model name'
    On a Linux terminal

  • by nodja on 7/24/24, 9:13 PM

    >Intel confirms oxidation and excessive voltage in 13th and 14th Gen CPUs

    Title is ambiguous, it seems to imply 14th gen CPUs have oxidation issues, the video explains that the oxidation issues are only on an early run of 13th gen. If you own a 14th gen intel CPU you should be safe after applying the upcoming microcode update.

  • by sas369 on 7/24/24, 5:04 PM

    I was considering buying a Lenovo Legion 7i (i9-14900HX), time to move onto other options I guess.

  • by mihemihe on 7/24/24, 10:37 PM

    Does anyone know the list of CPUs affected. I have been running a 13700k for more than 9 months and I have not had a single blue screen so far. Has Intel released an official list of SKUs? Thanks

  • by OutOfHere on 7/24/24, 5:10 PM

    Besides Tuxedo, do any vendors sell AMD Linux laptops with 96+ GB of RAM?

  • by segasaturn on 7/24/24, 5:42 PM

    I dumped my intel shares just now, stock price has been sinking for the last week over this news but I'm predicting a recall or a big lawsuit will make the news from bad to worse.

  • by sqeaky on 7/24/24, 6:13 PM

    Intel is looking really skeevy on this. Won't them lying and downlplaying bite them harder? How is this level of misrepresenting and covering up not criminal?

    EDIT - Why the downvotes? I seriously don't understand why they are doing it this way.

    They have actively blamed other companies, like NVidia (not that I like them either, but they simply didn't cause this issue).

    There are multiple teams claiming denied RMAs during the period Intel knew about the oxidation.

    They didn't announce this until multiple outlets started talking about it.

    They did 2 different announcements with different explanations and the more mild one first.

    Their statements are contradictory at least in part.

    This just isn't how people acting in good faith behave. Using intel's past behavior as an example they have previously handled problems. With spectre they were way more transparent and just published findinds on problems without hiding them for years.

  • by MangoCoffee on 7/24/24, 5:37 PM

    This doesn't look good for Intel's IDM 2.0

  • by xyst on 7/24/24, 6:51 PM

    Intel recall, wen?

    Maybe after the quarterly results are latest. Got to time those puts

  • by heraldgeezer on 7/24/24, 9:11 PM

    Still on my 4790k... But eyeing an AMD system for sure. Maybe the X3D top one is enough.

  • by throw7 on 7/24/24, 7:45 PM

    Quick, we need another CHIPS Act to shovel more billions into Intel.