Only 5 out of 10 i9-13900K and 2 out of 10 i9-14900K Stable In Auto Profile
A tester at Chiphell has gone his way to find the stability rate of Intel's Core i9-14900K & 13900K CPUs as the chip manufacturer has yet to identify the root cause of the stability issues affecting these chips.
Intel Core i9-14900K & Core i9-13900K CPUs End Up Poorly In Stability Tests, Poor Silicon Being Pushed Too Hard
Over at Chiphell, a user by the name of kmdkai, has managed to put several hundreds of Intel Core i9-14900K and Core i9-13900K CPUs through a series of stability tests to determine just how well they respond to the "AUTO" profiles being dished out by board manufacturers.
Just recently, it was reported how Intel's latest 14th & 13th Gen CPUs end up doing poorly in terms of gaming and app stability. The main reason is yet to be determined but it looks like fixes being rolled out by board makers shed some light on the issue which happen to do with their BIOS releases which set these chips at their "Extreme" power profiles rather than using the baseline limits set by Intel itself.
The tester is the owner of a studio that buys several CPUs for their own needs. In invoices shared by the tester, it is revealed that he has bought and tested at least 100s of Intel Core i9-13900K and Core i9-14900K CPUs and it looks like almost all of the chips he acquired had some sort of issue in terms of stability. Motherboards used by the studio include ASUS's Z790, B760, Z690 and B660 boards.
The software he runs requires each CPU and PC to pass through a certain variety of tests and at the Auto profile set in the ASUS motherboards, the majority of CPUs fail this test and have to be resold. Based on these tests, the tester determined a probability rate respective to the CPU's stability & it is shared below:
- Intel Core i9-13900K "AUTO -253W" - 40/50% (4/5 out of 10 units stable)
- Intel Core i9-13900K "Reduced Loadline" - 50-60% (5/6 out of 10 units stable)
- Intel Core i9-13900K "B760/B660 Board" - 60-70% (6/7 out of 10 units stable)
- Intel Core i9-14900K "AUTO - 253W" - 20% (2 out of 10 units stable)
- Intel Core i9-14900K "Reduced Loadline" - ~30% (3 out of 10 units stable)
- Intel Core i9-14900K "B760/B660 Board" - 40% (4 out of 10 units stable)
So the out-of-the-box experience on an Intel 13th and 14th Gen CPUs is bad. It is reported that the chips might work fine for a week or a little over a month but usually end up producing stability issues.
Furthermore, the reason why a "Z" series motherboard produces more instability versus a "B" series motherboard is simply because the "Z" series is designed for tuning and overclocking & has higher limits set by default whereas the "B" series boards don't feature such CPU overclocking options, leading to power limits being set closer to the Intel set baseline defaults.
It is also mentioned that the quality of used Intel 13th and 14th Gen CPUs is slightly better due to higher voltages out of the box. The ones with lower voltages may be seen as golden samples but end up causing more stability issues. The problem with being used or older chips is that most of them won't be eligible for warranty as buyers in Asia (specifically China) are being rejected from RMA.
Furthermore, a lot of fake Intel Core i9-14900K & Core i9-13900K CPUs are making the rounds in Chinese markets which show up with perfect 200 SP scores but they are die-less chips. Our friend and renowned overclocker, SAFEDISK, was able to spot these and confirm that they are fake chips.
Furthermore, the release of Intel's "Baseline" profile in recent BIOS updates means that "Z" series boards can be just as stable as the "B" series boards but the lower voltage and power limits mean a huge difference in performance.
Intel's 13th and 14th Gen Core i9 CPUs consume a lot of power and taking some of that power away exposes the harsh reality of poor performance. This is reported to be up to -30% in multi-threaded applications and up to -15% in games which is quite big. Furthermore, Intel's very own performance benchmarks have been carried out with the "Extreme" or "Auto" profiles which are in no way representative of real-world performance since that's unstable and leads to an intolerable PC experience.
Zdnet Korea also posted a new update from an Intel-partnered manufacturer who reveals that neither Intel nor motherboard manufacturers have yet determined the cause of the instability issues affecting Intel's 14th & 13th Gen CPUs but it looks like a more official response is going to go live on the 15th of May so fingers crossed that we get a proper solution for this whole crisis (though the chances of that happening are slim as motherboard makers would have to implement Intel's CPU baseline profiles" from what we have heard talking to various motherboard makers.
Are you facing instability issues on your Intel Core i9-14900K or Core i9-13900K CPU?