well another day another bit of Intel drama well maybe towards a resolution of the drama anyway we're going to talk about it today we're going to say what Intel had to say we're going to kind of talk a little bit about what the micro code stuff is that they're mentioning for those that maybe don't know how that works and then we're going to talk about ways that you can sort of protect your CPU in the meantime while you're waiting for this fix to come out and we're also going to show you how one SI actually identified a lot of these problems all the way back in April for those looking for a high-end custom gaming experience look no further than Falcon Northwest Falon Northwest has been building PCS made for gamers for over 30 years with a focus on a true high-end gaming experience custom cases available only through Falcon Northwest featur state-of-the-art testing and design to ensure that every component is performing at their best through thermal imaging and rigorous lab testing designed and overseen by the Falcon Northwest founder himself with a complete lineup of systems ranging from small to large every Falcon Northwest system includes a three-year warranty policy and a year of 2way overnight shipping coverage providing the ultimate peace of mind to see all that Falcon Northwest has to offer follow the sponsored link in the description below so let's talk about the Intel statement first so Thomas Haniford uh is an employee as it says on there I'm assuming um he says based on extensive analysis of Intel Core 13th and 14th gen processors returned to us uh due to instability issues we have determined that a elevated operating voltage is causing instability issues in some 13th and 14th gen desktop processors our analysis of returned processors confirms that the elevated operating voltage is stemming from a micr codee algorithm resulting in incorrect voltage request to the process processor so talk about that for a second uh so the micro code is basically an instruction set that exists on the processor itself um they use a bunch of different types of voltage um systems built into the CPU um obviously we're talking about like the vid or the voltage control or the voltage identification obviously we've got the Fiverr which is something that came out several Generations ago um there's power management firmware itself built into the CPU there's the Adaptive voltage scaling there's so many things that take place when it comes to what is the workload what are the temperatures how long are we providing this workload um what type of instructions is a CPU currently responsible for uh Computing right now and then this algorithm determines what voltage it believes the CPU needs now the CPU voltage is a request by the way I don't know if a lot of people know this it is a request it is requesting the motherboard uh vrms and voltage regulation system built into the motherboard to provide the power to the CPU so where a lot of the finger pointing came when it comes to the whole micro code stuff uh or the voltage stuff regarding people realizing voltages were high or the temperatures were too high or why the hell is it pulling 350 Watts instead of the 253 that an I9 was supposed to pull um or up to what 300 watts in some instances and there's a lot of finger pointing where the motherboard manufacturers are going well you know what the CPU asked for it it's our job to give it if the CPU asks for it but I feel like there's some I feel like there's some disingenuine finger pointing happening here at the same time too because in the CPU battles have been taking place ever since ryzen ryzen really started to grow in popularity and speed and start to really close the gaps and exceed Intel in many instances I feel like this is one of those things where Intel had to kind of weigh what are the risks and what are the rewards and that risk is twofold one are we going to damage the CPUs uh that we're providing to our customers and the customers being not just end users like Gamers and stuff but their um like server clients they system integrators like and I mean big system integrators like HP and Dell and and these these companies that are buying not thousands of CPUs but tens of thousands maybe even millions of CPUs right what is our end result with that but also the risk are we going to lose the CPU War to AMD which we've been laughing at for the last 15 plus years at being just Antiquated old and can't really innovate so I feel like they they gambled with the risk being worth the reward to stay ahead on the charts and stuff uh so anyway that's that's about the micro code stuff we'll talk about that in a second we'll come back to it but I'm going to go back to the statement here Intel is delivering a micro code patch which will uh address the root cause of exposure to elevated voltages We are continuing validation to ensure that scenarios of instability reported to Intel regarding its core 13th and 14th gen desktop processors are addressed Intel is currently targeting mid August for patch release to Partners following full validation now those patch release to Partners obviously means they're board partners the board Partners like Asus MSI azrock gigabyte um any other biostar whatever Brands you can think of it's their job to implement the fix through a bios which will also uh hit the me or the management engine and such for the CPU which is then going to load the micro code so bios on your motherboard is not only patching the motherboard but also any CPU patches that are pertinent that are included with those bios fixes so that's why they say they're getting it out to their Partners this isn't this isn't something you're going to be able to just go to like Intel's website and download a fix for it has to be done through your board partner stuff so now we're going the it's one of those if it ain't broke don't fix it type situations I always say when it comes to bios like a lot of people don't like the idea of the risk of having a bricked bios or a power outage or something while doing a bios flash fortunately most motherboards do have bios flashback features these days however this is one of those it's broke you should fix it type of scenarios even if you haven't experienced any sort of uh weird crashing or such with your CPUs uh goes on to end with Intel is committed to making this right with our customers and we continue asking any customers currently experiencing instability issues on their core 13th and 14 G processors to reach out to Intel customer support for further assistance I saw another quote I think it was in Tom's Hardware that said that Intel is guaranteeing an RMA to anyone that is uh affected by this let me pause right there and say that's let me tell you why I'm sure Steve at Gamers Nexus has received a ton of these emails but I've received them as well of people that have reached out to Intel with crashing instabilities and started the r process and the moment that Intel notices that it's a tray processor which means it's a treay pack when SI or system integrators like uh whether it be I don't know Alienware Falcon Northwest uh origin PC whoever it may be you know Digital Storm they get these trays of CPUs they don't come with boxes or any of that crap and they have a specific serial number range and an identifier on them that says they're a box not a box retail CPU but a tray CPU if you have one of those if you bought an Intel system that was preconfigured Intel is going to tell you to pound sand and go back to your si for warranty however I've also seen the train and of emails saying for the SI to reach out directly to Intel so these are customers stuck in the middle of an RMA hell which is just one is saying go to the source the other one's saying go to your retailer where you got it from so these are customers that are completely stuck in the middle and Intel needs to I in my opinion they need to make it right with the end user customer now the all the other thing too though is the SI could also say well if you go and take your processor out and you damage something or whatever that's on you so ideally an SI would want you to pack up and return the entire system to them while they swap out the CPU and send it back so it's about to get way more complicated when it comes to the RMA process regarding these CPU so that's why I want to point it out right now that if you have an a pre assem system it is going to be complicated for you if you're not comfortable doing it yourself um anyway moving on I want to point out something over here from Falcon Northwest this is a a bunch of tweets they put out back in April April 23rd to be exact I won't go into like all the details but I want to point out they are showing bro these voltages what the heck's going on man in fact I was having correspondence with Falcon Northwest um about what was going on with this crashing and I was doing videos about all the Intel stuff that was going on and crashing and trying to figure out what the heck was happening I've even done videos as far back as 12th gen saying these voltages are too high these temperatures are too high here's how you go in and undervolt your CPU and I and and I'm not sure why 12th gen isn't necessarily affected by this probably because 12th gen is also not pushing the clocks as high as 13th and 14th gen and with those additional clocks come additional voltage as necessary um but look in this screenshot right here you can see in the Bios it's at 1.5 18 volts now that may seem like a lot and it is it's well within Intel's quote unquote safe range but what is not is the 1. 643 volts that you can see right here on this same Asus uh bios again this right here is requested by the CPU in my opinion it's asus's job to not give it that voltage and say bro chill out you're you're going you're going a little too hard here you know something a little too hard man you know that that whole meme anyway um you can see right here enforce all limits and Intel's fail safe is is enabled so enabling the Intel settings and telling the motherboard to no longer control the CPU but let the CPU do its thing and run off of its requests is at 1.64 3 volts that is significantly too high now here's the thing regarding degradation uh here's another see 1.47 4 this is getting better but he was showing how the different settings here um and the different bios versions and such can Absolut are affecting the voltages right and I did see this one time one time while I was playing around with all the voltages and stuff on our systems and I wasn't sitting there doing like real granular AB testing to try and see what the differences were I was just checking out different versions of BIOS to see was the voltage actually changing and we I noticed some changes but one time I did see over 1.6 volt and I thought it was really odd but then I immediately moved on to another bios and then you know I didn't think about it again until I saw these tweets and having a backend conversation with Falcon Northwest months ago where I realized wow yeah something's really off the voltages here um one of the reasons why I think it could have taken so long for Intel to really respond to this is it takes time for one the failures to occur for those rmas to make it back to you know how many people actually don't bother ring it's actually kind of crazy there's a there's a huge portion of failures out there that never make it back to the manufacturer so if they don't get these bad CPUs back and have time to do at you know the the failure analysis on them they can't find the the common threads that say here's what's wrong with them so they're just now starting to identify uh the failures as being voltage related now here's the thing regarding degradation as I started to say you don't have to run that voltage for very long for it to damage the CPU it could cause minor degradation at startup it can happen that quickly now what happens is it may not kill the CPU entirely 10 what tends to have to die in the CPU is some some sort of voltage regulator or I forget I'm not a CPU engineer but anyway there's there's physical components obviously within the CPU other than just the wafer itself or the the Silicon that can die so the degradation with the really high voltage like this is you can actually damage transistors within the CPU and the CPU will seem like it's operating fine until certain instruction sets or certain processes hit on certain transistors and then the math is wrong and then you get crashing which can lead to like you know the blue screening or the freezes or the lockups or whatever so anyway the voltage it may be booted and running and you may not even be under load for this type of degradation to happen and that's the slow degradation that takes place when voltages are too high now they also say that this micro code fix is not going to solve the problem for people's CPUs that are already crashing so what I've seen and I've gotten a lot of emails about is people saying hey my CPU is unstable I went in and I undervolted it and it's still unstable and I even reduced the clocks and it's still unstable unfortunately the damage is already done done so that's why you no matter what you do you're not getting stability back because the damage has happened at a transistor level so once the the that part of the CPU is damaged it's kind of like a probably a really bad analogy but it's like a it's like a fragmented or a damaged sector in a hard drive the data within that sector is corrupt but everything else around it can still seem like it's operating fine so the same thing can happen with a partially uh damaged CPU or a degradated CPU so you might be able to go in there and reduce it all way down to like 4 gigs and would still crash because you could have some actual full-on dead portions of the CPU so that's why these this micro code fix if you're dealing with crashing right now is not going to solve your problem you could go in and undervolt your CPU right now it's not going to fix your problem I mean you can't turn off the sector the portion of the CPU that's bad if that makes any sense I don't know if anyone's gone in and played with like disabling core by core to see if you can identify the bad core and then just remove it entirely at that point you've bined your own CPU that might be a fun I've had people reach out and say Jay I want to send you my bad CPU I haven't accepted them cuz I'm like what am I going to do with them maybe that's something I could do and just say hey can this you know 12 core CPU Now operate as a 10 core CPU or something I don't know that that might be interesting but here's the other thing I want to point out right now if you find yourself in the situation where you have a 13th or 14th gen it's currently not crashing and you're looking at this biting your nails going how long is it going to be until mine crashes then it might be worthwhile to go in there and and and this is this is where in my video I said going in enabling the Intel fail safe stuff is the probably the best move um this is when Falcon reached out to me and was like yo this could happen so that's not necessarily a fix because of the fact that if the problem is Intel itself and the Intel CPUs requests for voltage and the micro code being erroneous that that doesn't help your problem it can make it worse so this is where you would have to go in and manually actually set vid limits and Vore limits and play with load line Cali to make sure that it's not pumping in too much voltage so maybe I should do a video about that I I have in the past but typically enabling Intel fails safe stuff um would work like the response to this also was by saying going in and limiting your CPU to 253 watts is not the fix because it can still want to do 1.6 volts at 253 Watts it there's right there's three math there's there's three data points when it comes to power right so you have Watts amps and volts and all those things are related so you can still have the amps and the volts go way too high even though the wattage is low so it doesn't necessarily fix the problem that's why this is continuing to be widespread but it just seems to be the norm these days we got 409s want to melt themselves to death we had AMD CPUs that were literally exploding now we have Intel CPUs that are just dying a slow death I feel like the Intel CPUs at this point pretty much look like this anyway uh what a time to give a about computers right it just seems like any way you look any direction you face any move you make it just sucks it sucks everywhere can we all just have some sh that works please that's the latest um Mid August I'm a little concerned about the amount of time that is from when they probably identif I feel like they had this response ready to go I feel like all of this the the pressure um from like Wendell and Steve and hardware and box and everyone else that's really been like pushing for this I feel like that made them have to say something sooner it's almost it's almost ironic because Steve's video went out saying I can no longer recommend Intel CPUs and then the same day they're like oh here's our statement I feel like it's a damage control statement but clearly they're not ready to release the micro code it goes a lot of testing the last thing they want to do is inject a new problem into the CPUs which to be honest I'm not entirely convinced isn't going to happen if you want to know the truth but anyway there we go if you're using an Intel CPU it might be time to like look into what people are saying about your particular board manufacturer and what kind of settings should be limited manually just to force your CPU to not be able to request this kind of voltage seems to only be affecting for the most part like i7s and 9 but it's still kind of a mystery to me as to why 12th gen is not a part of this considering it's the same architecture but all right guys thanks for watching wanted to get this information out there um when the micro code fixes come we will uh we'll test them out and see how they're working for us I have a feeling my desktop that I use at uh for my work system here might be starting to become a part of this problem and the reason why I say that is it's becoming more and more frequent when I come in and my system is Frozen just dead Frozen and it's running EVGA motherboard so I don't know that that one's going to be confusing cuz I'm not sure evj is like actively like working on this right now if you know what I'm saying so all right thanks for watching we'll see you in the next one