Owner of China’s largest internet cafe chain claims PCs with Intel chips have experienced instability issues

The owner of the internet cafes Dongyu E-Sports In the city of Yueyang, Hunan, Xie Liuqiu, shared that your establishment has been penalized with chip instability problems Core i9-14900K. Option that is part of the 14th generation Core family lineup, which, like the 13th generation, has flaws that result in processor instability.

In addition to individual reports found on forums, people linked to companies have also publicly reported failures with Intel CPUs. As the Unrel Engine supervisor, Dylan Browne, which you confirmed in your X account that the PCs of professionals who work directly with the Epic Games engine, equipped with Core i9-13900K and Core i9-14900K, presented failure rates above 50% in the last year. With this scenario, Epic Games decided to migrate to AMD.

Note that the Core i9-14900K is mentioned, the same chip that was also mentioned by the owner of the Chinese internet cafe. According to the report, the failures with Intel’s CPU have been happening since December 2023, well before Intel concluded that the cause of the failure is the incorrect use of voltage, caused by an algorithm that generates incorrect voltage requests for the CPU, directly impacting the chip’s instability.

Periodically, the machines at the internet cafe would display the blue screen of death. This situation caused a major problem for the business, as it left many customers dissatisfied. To try to alleviate the embarrassment, these people were given free drinks and other compensation.

Given the scale of the case, the owner contacted Intel’s after-sales support team and technical department. Specialists from the company went to the location and confirmed the incorrect use of processor voltage.

After identifying the problem, technicians reduced the voltage and applied appropriate settings. The problem was resolved and the owner of the Internet cafe thanked Intel for the quality support and reaffirmed that he will continue using the company’s products.

Damage is permanent

The damage to 13th and 14th generation chips will be permanent. The microcode update that is already being released by some motherboard manufacturers is just a measure to prevent perfectly working chips from experiencing incorrect voltage usage.

For already affected chips, the Intel confirmed the 2-year warranty extension.