Leaked internal reports allegedly reveal Intel’s instability problems are not over — elevated voltages could be only one of the causes of CPU crashing

Intel confirmed a few days ago that elevated voltage levels are the root cause of Raptor Lake’s instability issues, and the company will address this problem with a microcode update in mid-August. However, German publication Igor’s Lab claims that Intel didn’t share the whole story, saying that Intel is still investigating other root causes of Raptor Lake instability.

According to the publication’s sources, elevated voltages aren’t the true root cause—or perhaps the only root cause. The claims only somewhat contradict Intel’s official statement, which mentions elevated operating voltage as the root cause of the issues, but does say that validation work is ongoing to ensure the microcode patch addresses the entirety of the issue. 

Igor’s report also highlighted details of the elevated voltage behavior causing Raptor Lake instability and what precisely Intel is adding to its mid-August microcode update. Intel has purportedly observed a significant increase in minimum operating voltage (Vmin) across multiple cores on unstable chips returned from customers. The elevated minimum operating voltage is purportedly caused by the “elevated voltage, high frequency, and elevated temperature“ conditions that Intel has observed in chips that have been returned. 

This unsafe minimum operating voltage affects the chip even at idle conditions. Intel has observed sporadic elevated voltages when Raptor Lake chips resume low-power states to execute background operations before entering a low-power state again.

To fix the issue, Intel’s microcode update will reportedly limit VID requests above 1.55V to rectify the voltage-related problems. This change will not impact performance much. However, Intel says that further analysis is required to see whether or not the mid-August microcode update will fully mitigate all instability issues due to the reasons above.

Here’s a snippet of the purportedly leaked communications given to Igor’s Lab:

– Intel observes a significant increase to the minimum operating voltage (Vmin) across multiple cores on returned affected processors from customers.
– This increase is similar in outcome to parts subjected to elevated voltage and temperature conditions for reliability testing.
– Factors contributing to this Vmin increase include elevated voltage, high frequency, and elevated temperature.
– Even under idle conditions at relatively cool temperatures, sporadic elevated voltages are observed when the processor is resumed from low power states in order to service background operations before entering a low power state again.
– At a sufficiently high voltage, these short-duration events can accumulate over time, contributing to the increase in Vmin.
– Intel analysis indicates a need to reduce the maximum voltage requested by the processor in order to reduce or eliminate accumulated exposure to voltages which may result in an increase to Vmin.
– While Intel has confirmed elevated voltages impact the increase in Vmin, investigation continues in order to fully understand root cause and address other potential aspects of this issue.
––Intel—