That’s no longer true as of October 2nd, 2024. Setting your BIOS to “Intel default settings” for the 14900k will fry your CPU and CONTINUE to enable premature degradation/oxydation.
See my previous posts for clarity.
I don't know what is not true when I said that the optimal solution is to lower the voltage to maintain lower power usage and heat.
If you update the BIOS to any of the last two microcodes, then it keeps the values at the "new safe" values.
The voltage is not the direct problem but the max current, so it doesn't really matter if they run at 1.3V or 1.5V. This is also why this issue is mainly related to K series CPUs and more often happens on fully unlocked motherboards, while most CPUs have the same voltage range. Look at AMD and their stock of 1.45V on every single Ryzen generation, or even most Intel series that were "soft-locked" at 1.52V but were going up to 1.45V+ at auto for at least 4-5 generations and had no global problems. 1.52V was the "safe" limit given by Intel in their official documents. The current issue also doesn't include all CPUs, and using default settings for Intel doesn't "fry" CPUs. There are many variables that may or may not cause faster degradation.
It's not like it's the first time with Intel, as older generations at higher voltages were degrading like mad. Sandy Bridge could overclock 200-300MHz worse after running at over 1.5V for several hours (most motherboards had no additional power management, only main voltages, but no current limits). After one weekend of benching, I had "world-record" chips that were barely running at the default specs. Some of the early Core i series were dying randomly.
I had multiple 13700K, 13900K, 13900HX, 14600K, 14700K, and 14900K CPUs, and I saw no stability or degradation problems with them. On the other hand, I wasn't overclocking most of them. I had 14700K since the release, and it was fully stable until I sold it last week. It was used only for tests and reviews, but I reviewed at least 50 memory kits on this CPU, and for the overclocking stage, I was pushing SA and MC voltages to the limits. It also ran multiple times at high load for long hours but at default CPU voltages.
I'm not saying there is no issue with them, but similar issues were probably present with older series, too. If not for the noise on the web, we wouldn't even know about any problems right now. The problem is real, but most reports were, however, not true, so eventually (took them a few months to even start it) it was investigated.
The typical life expectancy for CPUs used to be about 10 years. With a typical PC replacement of around 3-5 years, barely anyone noticed any issues in the past. Now, in some scenarios, and probably on some CPU batches, the degradation happens much faster. However, as some sources report, the RMA rate for faulty K CPUs is still no higher than 10%, while the 13/14th gen has been on the market for two years. One of the charts showed a similar RMA rate for 11th-gen and 13/14th-gen CPUs. Still, we haven't heard anything about the problems with the 11th gen. Some people may say that problems will appear in time, but these CPUs have been on the market for two years, and reported issues are with random CPUs, not only with specific old batches.
No one was also having problems with faulty Ryzens 3000/5000 that couldn't run at the standard RAM speed, and they had similar RMA rates to current K series CPUs.
Intel will cover this problem with the new CPU release in a month, and barely anyone will remember it in a year.
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