Intel Finally Responds to Ongoing CPU Issues – Promises to Release a Patch by Mid-August

Intel has finally admitted to having oxidation issues in its 13th-generation CPUs. The update was added to its earlier Reddit post that talked about the voltage issue (more on that later).

The company said that the issue was discovered in 2023 and that it was a manufacturing problem. The good news is that things have improved since then.

So, the question is, why did the company’s first statement not talk about this oxidation issue? Whatever the reason might have been, oxidation is not the only problem.

According to a video posted by Gamers Nexus, “It comes alongside a notification from Intel of microcode changes, which will bear with it some Motherboard Bios changes from motherboard vendors.”

These two factors together are believed to be contributing to the instability issue. There might be more underlying issues, but these are the ones (along with the voltage issue) that Intel has decided to announce.

What Is the Voltage Issue?

According to Intel, the main culprit behind the instability in its 13th and 14th-generation CPUs is elevated operating voltage caused by a microcode algorithm.

Intel’s Response

Intel first started investigating the issue in April, after it started receiving complaints from Intel Core i9-13900K and i9-14900K owners experiencing frequent game crashes.

However, before we talk about how Intel is handling the issues now that everyone knows about them, let’s talk about something that happened before the announcement.

Some customers, both B2B and B2C, reached out to Intel to request a return for their malfunctioning CPUs. However, the company rejected the return requests despite knowing about the manufacturing issues.

This is the reason why many industry experts are calling this Intel’s biggest failure ever. It’s not just the severity of the issue but also the poor management of the crisis that’s rattled people’s faith in the company.

What’s Next?

Now that the issue has finally been recognized, Intel has promised to offer a micro-code update by August this year. The patch will be distributed via BIOS updates from motherboard OEMs and via Windows updates, so the timing for end users might vary.

However, this time around, Intel has promised to grant RMAs to all impacted customers. RMA stands for return merchandise authorization.

Is This Really the Perfect Solution?

While Intel seems to believe that it has successfully resolved the issue, some tech experts are not so sure.

For example, Gamers Nexus said that a software patch won’t fix the oxidation issues. This is a hardware-level problem that happens during the fabrication process, so a micro-code update won’t help it. If not fixed, this problem will, over time, lead to corrosion, instability, and eventually chip failure.

He also feels that the micro-code update is not a foolproof fix to the voltage issue because there’s a chance it might affect the CPU’s performance. In that case, it won’t be fair to the customers to settle for subpar performance; they should get what they paid for.

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