Intel is finally stepping up on its instability fiasco

Last week, Intel quietly committed to extending the warranty on its 13th-gen and 14th-gen CPUs, but it wouldn’t provide details at the time. Now, we know what processors are covered. Intel is extending the warranty on a large range of 13th-gen and 14th-gen CPUs by two years, giving customers a total of five years to file a warranty claim.

From a performance standpoint, Intel’s latest 13th-gen and 14th-gen CPUs are among the best processors you can buy, but the chips have been in hot water as of late. A string of instability issues, and a lack of communication from Intel, have eroded trust not only in the CPUs, but also Intel as a brand. The warranty extension is an attempt by Intel to help restore that trust, as the narrative around Intel’s instability troubles has only become more intense as time goes on.

As mentioned, you now get a total of five years of warranty coverage from the date you purchased your CPU. Intel is applying the warranty retroactively to CPUs already purchased, as well as new CPUs. Intel is only applying the extended warranty to models that run at 65 watts or above — you can find the full list in Intel’s forum post. Most of the reports of instability we’ve seen concern the Core i9 models, but Intel is covering models all the way down to its Core i5 range.

Intel isn’t doing any regional funny business, either. The company says the warranty applies to all customers around the world.

In addition to the warranty details, the forum post includes an important note: “If customers have experienced these instability symptoms on their 13th and/or 14th Gen desktop processors, but were unsuccessful in prior [return merchandise authorizations], we ask that they reach out to Intel Customer Support for further assistance and remediation.”

We’ve seen several reports that Intel denied warranty claims for its 13th-gen and 14th-gen CPUs, even after the instability problem was known. Hopefull,y there has been some direction from higher up in the company to accept warranty claims on these CPUs more generously.

Intel is still releasing a microcode update in mid-August that will address the instability problem. This is a preventative update, however, and it targets the voltage requests that the processor makes. It won’t fix a CPU that has already suffered from instability or degraded as a result, but it should prevent newer chips from degrading.

If you’ve already experienced instability issues, Intel says to reach out to its customer service team if you purchased a boxed processor. If you purchased a prebuilt system, Intel is directing users toward the system manufacturer.