Intel has recently announced an extension of the warranty on its 13th-gen and 14th-gen CPUs, providing customers with an additional two years of coverage. This brings the total warranty period to five years for these processors.
Despite being considered among the top-performing CPUs available, Intel’s latest 13th and 14th-gen processors have faced issues related to instability. This has raised concerns and affected trust in both the CPUs and the Intel brand. The warranty extension is an effort by Intel to rebuild this trust and address the ongoing narrative surrounding its stability issues.
The extended warranty applies retroactively to previously purchased CPUs as well as newly purchased ones. Intel is specifically extending the warranty for models that operate at 65 watts or higher. The full list of covered models can be found in Intel’s forum post. While instability reports have mostly centered around the Core i9 models, Intel is including models down to the Core i5 range in the extended warranty.
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Intel ensures that the extended warranty applies globally to all customers, regardless of region.
Additionally, the forum post advises customers who have experienced instability symptoms with their 13th or 14th-gen CPUs to contact Intel Customer Support for further assistance, even if previous warranty claims were unsuccessful.
There have been reports of Intel denying warranty claims for these CPUs despite known instability issues. It is hoped that there will be a more generous approach to accepting warranty claims going forward.
Intel will release a microcode update in mid-August to address the instability problem by adjusting voltage requests made by the processor. This update aims to prevent degradation in newer chips but will not fix already affected CPUs.
If you have encountered instability problems, Intel advises reaching out to their customer service team for boxed processors or contacting the system manufacturer for prebuilt systems.
