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In the midst of the recent rumors in the tech world, Intel seems to be experiencing a "Waterloo". In recent months, news that the company's 13th and 14th generation desktop CPUs have frequently failed due to hardware defects has undoubtedly had a shock to Intel's latest layoff announcement. However, despite this, Intel's new processors still have a lower failure rate than their older designs and even lower than AMD's latest Ryzen CPUs, according to a report by computer hardware supplier Puget Systems.
Jon Bach, president of Puget, published a data report on his company blog analyzing desktop processor failure rates since 2020, including Intel's 10th Gen (Core i9-10900K and i7-10700K) and AMD's Ryzen 5000 and 7000 series:
This report reveals a clear upward trend in the failure rate of processors such as the Core i9-14900K, i7-14700K, i9-13900K, and i7-13700K since the end of 2022, especially in the last three months. All of these failures occurred within six months of installation, with a total of 14 failures per month, covering all Intel CPU installations.
This result coincides with the dire situation across the market, forcing Intel and its motherboard original equipment manufacturer (OEM) partners to adjust their strategies to prevent processor failures.
Interestingly, the failure rate of 13th and 14th Gen Intel Core processors is significantly higher than that of 12th and 10th Gen, but close to the level of failure rate of 11th Gen processors:
Looking at the entire hardware lifecycle, Intel's 11th Gen processors have an overall failure rate of 7%, compared to 2% for 13th and 14th Gen processors. At first glance, this gap may seem less obvious – after all, older processors run longer, and they are naturally more prone to failure over time.
Puget's data suggests that Intel's 12th Gen processors in 2022 have a failure rate of just 1%, while 10th Gen processors fail less frequently. Note that this data does not take into account issues that Intel originally attributed to the performance board settings.
In addition, Puget's tests also show that Intel's latest processors are still superior to AMD's Ryzen 5000 and 7000 series in terms of reliability, despite numerous recent reports of faulty CPUs.
AMD's failure rate for these processors is only slightly lower than that of 11th Gen Intel CPUs, and a failure rate of over 4% means that Puget-installed Ryzen 5000 and 7000 series CPUs fail about twice as often as 13th and 14th Gen Intel chips.
It is important to note that Puget Systems is not a laboratory or academic research institution, and the data it collects and analyzes is designed to maximize its own performance and reduce waste in hardware and service calls. It can be speculated that the sample size here may be between a few hundred and a few thousand desktops.
Therefore, while this data is compelling, it should not be taken as evidence to prove any particular point. Bach insisted that the company used a less aggressive motherboard BIOS setup, which may have skewed the data, showing that 13th and 14th Gen Intel processors had lower failure rates than the average user observed.
In any case, this report provides us with an opportunity to examine the comparison between Intel's latest processor issues and the overall state of the market. At the very least, it reminds us that no computer component is 100% reliable, and it is advisable for everyone to keep the warranty card just in case.
Post by Polly