Intel’s 13th and 14th Gen desktop processors (dubbed “Raptor Lake” and “Raptor Lake Refresh”) have recently come under fire—and some serious scrutiny—for unexpectedly high failure rates. Ultimately, Intel put the problem down to a CPU-microcode bug that allowed, at times, for delivery of too-high voltage. The chip maker has been scrambling to mitigate this serious problem ever since it identified the cause. Now, we have our first look at what the chip giant’s solution looks like. It comes in the form of a microcode patch.What we’ve seen so far: The patch Intel released has a minor performance penalty associated with it, while also reducing heat production and power consumption a little bit. These changes just might be enough to prevent damage, or further damage, to your Raptor Lake processor. Still, you should know this isn’t necessarily a perfect fix for processors that are already crashing regularly. Also, further patches or other remediations may come from Intel in time.What’s the Problem With Raptor Lake?Anyone who has seen Jurassic Park should realize that raptors are indeed a huge issue. Jokes aside, Raptor Lake processors have become a major problem, too, and—just like in Jurassic Park—for staff and guests equally. Systems using 13th and 14th Gen processors have been crashing at an alarming rate, with reports of frequent Blue Screens Of Death (BSODs). Some game developers, who have deployed these generations of chips in large numbers, have reported a disproportionate number of these Intel CPUs exhibiting failures or unstable behavior, compared with their AMD equivalents (and versus earlier Intel generations).
(Credit: Michael Justin Allen Sexton)
The problem is isolated to 13th Gen Intel Raptor Lake processors and 14th Gen Intel Raptor Lake Refresh processors. As their code names suggest, both employ the same underlying architectures, so we will refer to them in this article jointly as “Raptor Lake” for simplicity. The crash problems are also reportedly isolated to processors with a power rating of 65 watts or higher; that applies to almost all Raptor Lake processors.As mentioned, excessive voltage appears to be the root cause of this crashing. Overclockers have long known that pushing too much power through a processor can damage it, but this damage tends to occur over time, and it isn’t always apparent that damage is happening until it’s too late. You can liken it to pushing the engine in your car to where it’s red-lining, operating with its RPMs in the red part of the gauge. It’s something you can do but not something you really want to do. Doing it a few times may not have an effect, but the more you do it, the strain on the hardware shows.
(Credit: Michael Justin Allen Sexton)
That’s essentially what’s happened with Intel’s Raptor Lake processors. There were signs that these processors were being pushed too hard early on, which we indicated in our reviews of the Core i7-13700K, Core i9-13900K, Core i9-13900KS, Core i7-14700K, Core i9-14900K and Core i9-14900KS. These processors proved relatively power-hungry during testing, and all hit their thermal limit when under peak benchmark stresses on our standard 240mm liquid cooler. This is far from ideal on both accounts, but the processors were stable (mostly) at launch, so we didn’t have a concrete reason to think they would fail prematurely or suffer any other side effects. That’s how they were designed to run. Or so we thought.Intel’s 0x129 Patch: The First Formal FixThe microcode patch Intel created to address this dilemma is referred to as “0x129.” A microcode update alters the instructions processors use to guide their internal operations. A great deal of information is stored in this microcode, including the logic determining how much power the CPU should request from the motherboard. When the processor turbo is active, the 0x129 patch limits voltage requests above 1.55V. If excessive voltage is indeed the root cause of your Raptor Lake crashes, this patch could help to alleviate that. But it may not fully resolve the problem, in all cases.The first big reason why? Damage may have already been done. As mentioned in the previous section, damage from excess voltage typically accrues gradually, and there isn’t a way to undo it. It’s like running your car too hard: If it starts having problems, they won’t just disappear if you push the vehicle less hard. In the same way, users already experiencing crashes may continue to see some even after applying the patch. Processors damaged to this point likely need to be replaced under warranty, which Intel has extended by two years for processors affected by this voltage issue. A community forum post by Thomas Hannaford, Intel communications manager, on the situation and the company’s stance on frequently crashing processors reads as follows:In light of the recently announced extended warranty program, Intel is reaffirming its confidence in its products and is committed to making sure all customers who have or are currently experiencing instability symptoms on their 13th and/or 14th Gen desktop processors are supported in the exchange process. Users experiencing consistent instability symptoms should reach out to their system manufacturer (OEM/System Integrator purchase), Intel Customer Support (boxed processor), or place of purchase (tray processor) further assistance.In the same forum post mentioned above, Hannaford stated the following:The latest microcode update (0x129) will limit voltage requests above 1.55V as a preventative mitigation for processors not experiencing instability symptoms.In inquiries to Intel, Hannaford indicated to us that it might still be possible for overclockers to exceed these voltage levels by manually changing settings. Either way, overclockers should try to stay under this voltage limit for the long-term stability of their hardware.A second reason why this patch may be just the start of this story: We may see more patches. Hannaford mentioned to us in the course of inquiries that…Investigation continues to ensure that scenarios of instability reported to Intel regarding its Core 13th/14th Gen desktop processors are addressed and appropriate preventative measures are implemented in current and future product families.That suggests Intel could have further patches coming to resolve the problem if its understanding of the problem evolves.A third reason the problems might persist is purely speculative on our part: As we saw in our latest tests (which we’ll get to in a moment), the chip operating temperatures remain relatively high. But we’ll discuss that more as we go through the test results.How We Tested the Patched-Up RaptorsWe examined a few of the higher-end chips targeted by the patch to gauge what, if any, effect the patch has had on performance, operating temperatures, and power consumption. We focused this testing on Intel’s Core i9-14900K and Core i7-14700K.Our logic for choosing these two? Since voltage levels are at play here, we surmised the patch would show the most significant observable changes with Intel’s power-hungriest processors. That alone would have guided us to retest the Core i9-14900KS and the Core i9-13900KS, but those processors are both special edition models available in limited quantities, and we wanted to test chips more people were likely to have. That left the Core i9-14900K and the Core i7-14700K as the two power-hungriest and most widely available ones.
(Credit: Michael Justin Allen Sexton)
The two CPUs were tested on the very same platform we benchmarked them on when they launched. The test system has a Gigabyte Z790 Aorus Master motherboard with 32GB of DDR5 RAM clocked at the max officially supported memory speed (5,600MHz). The system is equipped with an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 graphics card. A Cooler Master MasterLiquid PL240 Flux liquid AIO cooler is used with all tested processors, and a SilverStone DA850 850-watt power supply provides the juice. All components are installed on a Praxis Wetbench chassis, and all tests were performed under Windows 11 with the latest updates installed.To get and apply the patch to your system, you’ll need to download a BIOS update and apply it to your motherboard. This is likely the latest BIOS update on the board maker’s site, but you should check the description or update notes for the BIOS to confirm it includes the 0x129 patch. For example, the F14f BIOS version for our Gigabyte Z790 Aorus Master test motherboard has the following in its description:Update microcode 0x129 to address sporadic Vcore elevation behavior announced by IntelUnless you have the same motherboard, or possibly another Gigabyte motherboard, you aren’t likely to see a BIOS description or an update note that says that verbatim, but you should check that whatever update you install indicates the 0x129 patch is included. The download should be available on the support page for your motherboard under the BIOS section, and most pre-built systems (like those from Dell, HP, and Lenovo) should have similar updates available. This is how you’ll know the patch will be applied. Post-Patch CPU Performance Tests: Core i7-14700K & Core i9-14900KThe patch suppresses excess voltage requests over 1.55V, and this effect on performance (if any) will most likely be visible in CPU-focused tests. The reason why: Such voltage requests typically occur only when the processor is under a heavy load, such as when running highly threaded CPU-focused tests.We ran our standard benchmark suite on the Core i7 and i9 chips indicated and graphed them against the numbers we saw when the chips launched. In most tests, we saw a mild reduction in performance on both the Core i7-14700K and the Core i9-14900K when running the new patch.
In Cinebench R23, the patched Core i9-14900K performed 4% slower in the multi-threaded test and 3% slower in the single-threaded test than it performed pre-patch. The patched Core i7-14700K showed similar results in the multi-threaded test (3% slower), and a dead heat in the single-threaded test.The results we measured in our two Adobe tests, in part, we cannot fully explain. In Adobe Photoshop, the patched Core i9-14900K was 4% slower than it performed pre-patch (understandable), but in Adobe Premiere Pro, we measured a vast difference of 42%. The Core i9-14900K scored surprisingly high before the patch in this test, and that overperformance was consistent across multiple test runs. These excessively high Premiere Pro test scores vanished after the patch was applied. Given our other tests, it doesn’t make sense for this patch to drop performance by this extreme of an amount. Because the original number was so inflated, we’re willing to write this test off as an anomaly. The Core i7-14700K, in comparison, lost only 4% of its performance in Premiere Pro with the patch applied.Our Handbrake test showed 4% and 3% performance reductions, respectively, with the patched Core i9-14900K and Core i7-14700K. Next, our Blender trial had the patched Core i9-14900K take 6% longer to complete the test than it took before the patch, while the Core i7-14700K performed almost identically before and after the patch. Last is our POV-Ray 3.7 test. (It’s similar to Cinebench R23 in that it features both single- and multi-threaded torture tests.) The patch had no effect on performance in either chip’s single-threaded test, but the Core i9-14900K performed 5% slower in the multi-threaded test after the patch was applied.Post-Patch Gaming Performance Tests: Core i7-14700K & Core i9-14900KGaming results for the Core i9-14900K and Core i7-14700K varied greatly from test to test with the patch applied. The patch was not the only factor here. We applied the patch to resolve the crashing issue, of course, but other relevant updates have occurred since we initially tested the Core i9-14900K and the Core i7-14700K in October 2023, and these updates were also installed along with the patch. These tweaks can alter various things, including how Intel’s Thread Director behaves. (Thread Director governs how the high-performance P-Cores and the high-efficiency E-Cores share workloads.) Also new: graphics drivers that may be more mature for some games now than when we tested these two chips.In the synthetic 3DMark Time Spy test, the patched Core i9-14900K performed better than before the patch, whereas the Core i7-14700K performed about the same before and after the patch. Performance dropped in the game F1 22 with the patch applied by between 3% to 5% on both processors, but performance increased by up to 6% in Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy, which is likely down to driver optimizations.
Total War: Three Kingdoms performed between 3% and 4% slower on the Core i9-14900K after the patch was applied, but it ran a little faster on the patched Core i7-14700K (between 3% and 6%). Neither of our true legacy games, Bioshock: Infinite or Tomb Raider (2013), showed a significant change from having the patch installed.Post-Patch Power & Thermals: Core i7-14700K & Core i9-14900KWe use a Kill-A-Watt wall meter to perform power-consumption assessments on the test systems. This gives us an idea of how much power the system consumes as a whole, even if it does not give us exact measurements for the processor in isolation. The rest of the test system is unchanged apart from the CPU, however, so this gives us insight into how much power each processor consumes relative to each other in a consistent environment.
The patch didn’t significantly alter power consumption for the Core i9-14900K, but the Core i7-14700K showed a 3% reduction in power consumption in our Adobe Premiere trial and a 12% reduction in Cinebench R23. Overall temperatures dropped slightly on both the Core i9-14900K and the Core i7-14700K with the patch applied.Hitting 97 degrees C and 96 degrees C, respectively, however, both processors still operated at close to their thermal limit and higher than I would feel comfortable with for regular use. That’s just a few degrees off what we saw pre-patch.Verdict: Not a Big Penalty, But Is This the First & Last Fix?Intel’s patch for its Raptor Lake and Raptor Lake Refresh processors may well help to prevent damage from excessive voltage. The slightly reduced operating temperatures are a promising sign, as are the reduced power-consumption figures for the Core i7-14700K. Performance did drop in many tests, but the reduction was slight in most cases, detectable only in benchmarks. Most people likely won’t notice the difference in everyday tasks, which is excellent news. These changes may be small, but the difference between dangerously high voltage spikes that damage the processor and within-spec voltage boosts that don’t cause damage can be pretty small, too. This patch is hopefully enough to prevent the former.
(Credit: Michael Justin Allen Sexton)
That said, this patch is not a time machine or a healing potion. While the patch may prove effective at preventing damage (or further damage), any damage already sustained by an affected processor is permanent and likely won’t be resolved or mitigated by this patch. Given the still relatively high power consumption and operating temperatures, taking additional precautions, like the ones we outlined in this earlier article, would also be wise. After all, as a general rule: The lower the operating temperature of your computer components, the longer they will typically last, all else being equal.As a keen PC builder and component reviewer, I’m uncomfortable with components pushing over 90 degrees C under heavy load; I’m barely OK with anything that tends to run over 80 degrees C. If you still see the same patterns of crashing with the patch installed, you should look into warranty service for your CPU from Intel (if you bought a boxed chip) or your system seller (if you got the CPU in an OEM system). Taking further action beyond the patch to reduce power consumption and operating temperatures could be beneficial if you’re seeing similarly high temperatures. Of course, getting the power consumption and operating temperature down even lower than what we saw in our tests may mean a bigger performance hit. Regardless, even if you do nothing else, installing 0x129 is a crucial first step to take right now if you own one of these chips.
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About Michael Justin Allen Sexton
Analyst
For as long as I can remember, I’ve had love of all things tech, spurred on, in part, by a love of gaming. I began working on computers owned by immediate family members and relatives when I was around 10 years old. I’ve always sought to learn as much as possible about anything PC, leading to a well-rounded grasp on all things tech today. In my role at PCMag, I greatly enjoy the opportunity to share what I know.I wrote for the well-known tech site Tom’s Hardware for three years before I joined PCMag in 2018. In that time, I’ve reviewed desktops, PC cases, and motherboards as a freelancer, while also producing deals content for the site and its sibling ExtremeTech. Now, as a full-time PCMag analyst, I’m focusing on reviewing processors and graphics cards while dabbling in all other things PC-related.
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