Have a computer I built with all newest gen parts. It started out fine for the first few months then suddenly games started randomly crashing and I was getting BSOD. Decided to check cpu temps with HWmonitor and my temps the last month have been spiking to 90-100C on the CPU.

I have a Kraken AIO 360mm with the radiator on the top and fans exhausting, the back fan exhausting and 2 front fans pulling in air.

AIO is reading 30-32c idle and 40-42 gaming and HWmonitor is spiking to 100c for 3/4 a second crashing all my games only on load screens.

Only games I can play are League and Elden Ring (sometimes it crashes but it's rare)

Path of exile, diablo 4 etc crash nonstop. as soon as it spikes to 90+

Just applied new thermal paste hoping I botched the last one but didn't help.

Will post HWmonitor info in a few minutes.


i-9 14900k
RTX 4090
192G TridentZ 5,200 RAM
Kraken 360mm AIO.

NVM, apparently the CPU is shot from what others have told me. Time to RMA.

Someone told me to limit the CPU Pcores to 57 (5.7) in the bios and it stopped the temp spiking. Other people said to RMA it.

This post was edited by Effective on Jul 27 2024 08:44pm

The latest Intel CPUs do have this issue a lot as they're highly unstable. RMA probably won't help it if you're going to get the same model. Undervolting it usually helps but it won't be working properly unless they send out a BIOS update for it or just tell you to get a different motherboard that supports them

Apparently my motherboard does support it. The only way to keep everything from crashing is to limit the cpu to half of what it's base clock speed is which sucks because just a game and Netflix open I get shudders.

Would I be better off RMA and get a refund and get an i7? What sucks is it's been like 4 months. I could have just returned it to Amazon. It didn't start till up about a month ago or so.

This post was edited by Effective on Jul 28 2024 12:22am

Here's a video on your model specifically. It's a widespread issue so I would definitely recommend getting a different model just for your sanity. I'd prefer to recommend an AMD CPU but that'd force you to get a compatible motherboard. An i7 should get you by though

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QzHcrbT5D_Y

For the time being I lowered my ICC to 307A
PL1 125
PL2 160
Undervolted .035

It undercuts my cpu by 25% but temps don't go above 60-65 during stress test and still score 1800 in cinebench. Maybe tweak it a little more to see if I can safely run 5ghz without spiking temps.

Temporary fix for now I guess.

This post was edited by Effective on Jul 28 2024 03:35am

These chips are shipped with known manufacturing errors. Oxidation of vias and botched microcode.
I would RMA the CPU if there is any instability, then not use the replacement chip until after the bios updates are available (should be somewhere in mid-late august).

Any degradation caused by the aforementioned is permanent and not fixable by bios updates.

As it currently stands, most review outlets refuse to recommend these chips and are calling out Intel for the embarrassing way they have been handling this issue.