Yet another law firm says it's investigating a potential class action lawsuit against Intel as Raptor Lake CPU owners increasingly complain about chip instability and failure.

Warning that "Intel 13th and 14th Gen CPU damage could be permanent," Kaplan Gore announced that it might open up a class action suit on behalf of Intel customers. The firm is opening its inbox to owners of Raptor Lake-based 13th and 14th Gen chips to determine whether enough are impacted to justify litigation.

It's the second known law biz to publicly announce it might bring Intel to court over issues with the company's desktop CPUs. Abington Cole + Ellery similarly said last week it was looking into a suit against Chipzilla.

The key problem is over Raptor Lake's microcode, which was configured to deliver excessive voltage to CPUs. Kaplan Gore points out that "elevated voltages causing the processor to operate outside of safe boundaries can cause irreversible degradation." Voltage-induced damage can cause crashes at clock speeds that were previously stable, or even turn a CPU into a paperweight.

To make things right, Intel says it's updating its micocode to be less lethal and is extending the warranty on all Raptor Lake CPUs by two years. But Kaplan Gore argues this isn't enough, saying the extended warranty only applies to those that bought an Intel CPU standalone, and skips over those that bought a prebuilt PC from an OEM. And even for those who enjoy an extended warranty, it might not matter if replacement chips take long to arrive.

Indeed, Intel customers are making noise over the Return Merchandise Authorization (RMA) process. One Reddit user claims Intel told them that their two Core i9-14900K chips were possibly "re-marked" or fake, and claimed they were told that if they went ahead with the RMA, the company might not replace, refund, or even return the broken CPUs if it decided the processors were in fact re-marked.

However, the user has since updated their post after intense media reporting over the weekend appeared to have convinced Intel that the CPUs are actually genuine, and that the user can get their replacement chips. The user also added that they've made contact with Abington Cole + Ellery for its potential suit.

Another user similarly complained about their RMA requests for their Core i9-12900K (an Alder Lake, not Raptor Lake CPU) and Core i9-13900KS processors getting denied because of "challenges in validating the proof of purchase."

The Register has asked Intel for comment on these user reports.

Rush for higher performance likely root cause

That Intel's microcode was delivering too much voltage to Raptor Lake CPUs is likely a consequence of the processor firm chasing the out-of-the-box highest clock speeds the industry has ever seen on a desktop CPU. Raptor Lake's debut flagship, the Core i9-13900K, has a boost clock speed of 5.8 GHz, 100 MHz above AMD's current fastest Ryzen 9 7950X.

Subsequent members of the Raptor Lake family pushed speeds even further, with the Core i9-14900KS hitting a record-breaking 6.2 GHz.

However, to push those frequencies, which are only achieved under lightly threaded workloads, it's usually necessary to increase the voltage. This is the reason why overclocking is often seen as dangerous, since hitting higher clock speeds may require a higher voltage. Readers should note that Intel explicitly does not cover overclock-caused damage in its warranty.

According to one PC builder, Puget Systems, had Intel not chased ever-higher frequencies, none of this might have happened. The company has claimed its customers saw barely any CPU failures at all, and stated this was probably because Puget manually set Intel's recommended power limits on all of its PCs.

Motherboard vendors don't always adhere to Intel's official power guidelines, and instead use their own. In many cases, these custom power configurations allow the CPU to consume far more power than it's technically supposed to, which offers greater performance. That's how the Core i9-14900K can consume 300 or more watts without changing any settings, even though the chip is rated for 253 watts.

Intel previously identified high default power limits on certain motherboards as a potential cause for Raptor Lake failures.

But cranking up the power draw might not even substantially boost performance, Puget claimed. "Our approach has always led us to be conservative with our power settings, especially when we have shown that the real-world performance impact to be a small 1-2 percent range," the boutique PC builder said.

Of course, leaving any performance on the table would have made Intel's CPUs look worse compared to those of its rival, AMD. The performance gap between Raptor Lake-based processors and AMD's current Ryzen 7000 series is very small overall, and giving up even a small amount of speed could have cost Chipzilla.

The Register has asked Intel for comment on Puget's claimed failure and performance data. ®

https://www.theregister.com//2024/08/05/another_law_firm_piles_on/