For those who came in late, reports had been coming in that people with high-end unlocked 13th and 14th Gen “K” series CPUs have been dealing with weird stability problems. The issue became more urgent when Nvidia suggested those with game crashes should talk to Intel about it.

Igor Wallosek of Igorslab.de claimed he had an inside trouser measurement from a source inside Chipzilla which said the trouble was due to a wrong setting in the chip's enhanced Thermal Velocity Boost (eTVB) feature.

“Failure Analysis (FA) of 13th and 14th Generation K SKU processors indicates a shift in minimum operating voltage on affected processors resulting from cumulative exposure to elevated core voltages,” Wallosek wrote. “Intel analysis has determined a confirmed contributing factor for this issue is elevated voltage input to the processor due to previous BIOS settings which allow the processor to operate at turbo frequencies and voltages even while the processor is at a high temperature.”

Wallosek also said: “Previous generations of Intel K SKU processors were less sensitive to these settings because they had lower starting voltages and speeds. Intel asks all customers to update BIOS to microcode 0x125 or later by 7/19/2024. This update includes an eTVB fix for a problem that might let the chip perform better even when it's too hot.”

However, Intel told PC World that it had not confirmed the root cause and is continuing, with its partners, to investigate user reports regarding instability issues on unlocked Intel Core 13th and 14th generation (K/KF/KS) desktop processors.

A spokesChipzilla said: “The microcode patch mentioned in news articles fixes an eTVB bug found by Intel during their investigation. While this bug might be part of the problem, it's not the main issue.”