It seems Raptor Lake instabilities are back for another round of woe. Despite attempts from Intel to curb problems stemming from the processor’s microcode, recent heatwaves across the Northern Hemisphere aren’t playing nice with 13th and 14th Gen Core CPUs.
Gabriele Svelto, staff platform engineer at Mozilla, shared that the company has seen a dramatic increase in the number of Firefox crash reports originating systems running Raptor Lake processors. Upon further investigation, Svelto noticed the crashes were predominantly coming from European countries currently under the thumb of Summer heatwaves.
The frequency of these crash reports became so severe, that Mozilla had to disable a bot responsible for automatically filing these crash reports. According to Svelto, the bot was almost exclusively finding crashes from users with Raptor Lake CPUs.
For those out of the loop, after numerous user reports of 13th and 14th Gen Core processors exhibiting instabilities, Intel disclosed the Raptor Lake architecture suffered from a problematic microcode. Without patches that have followed since their discovery, the CPUs run with “elevated operating voltage” which if left unchecked can cause chip damage and even death.
Even with the fixes, Raptor Lake CPUs continue to run hot. Core i9-13900K, for instance, remains difficult to tame even with high-end cooling options as we know first-hand from our recent MAG CoreLiquid A13 360 and Liquid Frezer II Pro 360 ARGB reviews. As such, it’s not entirely surprising that such processors are effectively tapping out under the strain of higher ambient temperatures.
It’s unclear whether these crashes are happening on Raptor Lake systems that have already suffered damage from improper voltage but it seems likely. Intel can’t patch out these problems, and has instead offered an extended warranty on all affects processors and operates a replacement program.
With issues like this continuing to haunt Intel, it’s no surprise that the majority of consumers are turning to AMD instead. Hopefully the company can turn things around come Nova Lake, as I don’t foresee Arrow Lake Refresh doing much to improve the company’s standing.
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