User kmdkai from the ChipHell discussion forum runs a studio with dozens of kits, and also manufactures and sells kits. He mainly bought Core i9-13900K, now Core i9-14900K and Core i9-14900KS and also Core i7-14700K. He has little experience with Core i7-13700K and Core i9-14900KS, so he does not rate them.
By running and testing builds with these processors, he came to the following conclusions:
- Core i9-14900K + auto profile: 20% of units are stable
- Core i9-14900K + economy profile: 30% of the pieces are stable
- Core i9-14900K + B660/B760 boards: 40% of units are stable
- Core i9-13900K + auto profile: 40-50% of units are stable
- Core i9-13900K + economy profile: 50-60% of the pieces are stable
- Core i9-13900K + B660/B760 boards: 60-70% of units are stable
The Core i9-13900KS comes in the range of Core i9-13900K and Core i9-14900K, and it considers the Core i7-14700K to be the most stable of the named. He also observed that OEM processors (tray, i.e. on a plate, without a box) show 10-20% higher consumption and temperatures than boxed (retail) pieces, but are more stable. According to him, the new Intel BaseLine profiles are basically useless.
Raptor Lake Series Intel Core Processors (Shutterstock)
This information doesn’t make it seem like the biggest problem is setting the limits too high in the BIOS. Let us recall that the first reports of mass problems came from Asia, then (albeit to a lesser extent) they appeared in the USA, and the fewest complaints and claims are in Europe. Complaints began to appear on a noticeably larger scale around February – until then the problems were not so widespread. It is therefore possible to speculate about defective pieces that went on sale in different parts of the world at different times, or about boards with new versions of the BIOS, with which the instability began to manifest itself to a greater extent.
I emphasize that this is speculation, but the situation really looks like it worsened significantly in the first quarter of this year, so it was caused by some kind of impulse during this period, in addition, with a certain time difference in different regions (which purely running the processor in “auto” mode is not , numerous pieces of Core i9-13900K have been running on it for a year and a half). Therefore, it is not excluded that two problems have come together – one, which causes complaints in the order of units of percent, and the second, which was added at the beginning of the year and, together with the first, brings instability to tens of percent of newly sold units.
