Intel told us today that it will extend the warranty on its boxed Intel Core 13th- and 14th-Gen processors by two additional years. Intel's warranty extension comes as a result of the crashing and instability issues that have plagued its 13th- and 14th-Gen chips for months. Those issues
impact all 65W and higher models, meaning the crashes have a widespread impact ranging from the flagship models down to even the pedestrian mid-range chips. Intel's processors typically come with a three-year warranty period, so the extension will bring the warranty for most boxed processors to five years.
Intel will
issue a microcode update by mid-August to address the crashing issues, which cause PCs to crash/BSOD inexplicably during gaming and other workloads due to what Intel attributes to excessive voltage. The issue can cause permanent damage, and the pending microcode update will not 'fix' processors that already suffer from crashing. As such, users with chips that are already crashing will have to return their processors for replacement. However, Intel says the update should prevent chips that haven't experienced issues from degrading.
For now, it is unclear if CPUs exposed to excessive voltage have suffered from invisible degradation or damage that hasn't resulted in crashes yet but could lead to errors or crashes in the future. Intel's extended warranty is obviously intended to allay those fears. Intel also says it is investigating a way to enable easy identification of impacted processors.
Intel's announcement comes as
investigations of the crashing issue begin for a potential class action lawsuit. Intel hasn't shared the full details of its new warranty extension yet, but it says more details are to come. We do know that some models, like the Special Edition KS models, only have a one-year warranty, but that will now extend to three years. The two-year warranty extension applies to the boxed units found at retail, but Intel's statement says those with OEM systems should reach out to the manufacturer, hinting that we might also see extensions from OEMs.
The company apologized for its slow response and released a statement reiterating its prior statement that Via Oxidation is not the root cause of the current instability issues. Intel says it first discovered the oxidation issue, which it characterizes as "minor," in 2022. The company says it instituted fixes and enhanced screening in early 2023 and removed all impacted chips from its supply chain by early 2024. However, it does concede that some chips with Via Oxidation defects could have still been on retail shelves as recently as early 2024.
