Intel points at motherboard vendors for recent CPU instability issues but the chip maker isn't entirely blame-free

You might recall reports of Unreal-based games crashing when running on gaming PCs using high-end Intel processors toward the start of this year. As the problem was getting flagged up around the world, things were serious enough for Intel to investigate the problem formally. That's still ongoing but Intel has made an early statement on the matter, in which it's essentially blaming motherboard manufacturers for having default settings in the BIOS/UEFI that allow the CPU to run well past the recommended limits for power and current.

The full statement was relayed by Igor's Lab but the most telling part is this comment by Intel: «600/700 Series chipset boards often set BIOS defaults to disable thermal and power delivery safeguards designed to limit processor exposure to sustained periods of high voltage and frequency.»

Anyone who bought an Intel-based motherboard in the last few years will probably already be aware of this. For example, by default, Asus enables its Multi Core Enhancement feature in the BIOS which simply sets the power and current limits to their maximum possible values. 

Intel's CPUs have two primary power limits, PL1 and PL2, and the idea behind them is that the former is the maximum power the chip can consume under 'normal' circumstances, whereas the latter allows for more energy to be used, for a limited duration.

Take the Core i9 13900K. That has a PL1 and PL2 of 125 and 253 W respectively, but stick that into most Asus 600/700 series motherboards with MCE enabled, and the processor is given limits of 4095 W. The same is true for the current—the chip is permitted to draw well over Intel's recommended maximum value of 307 A. It's over 100 A more than the 'extreme config' limit of 400 A.

That particular CPU won't ever use that much power, but for the 13th and 14th Gen i9 models, the excessively high power and current limits—along with overly high operating voltages—all result in a processor being unstable in demanding scenarios, such as playing