Intel’s troubled CPUs fail less often than AMD, says PC maker

Intel is having a bad time lately. The biggest scandal of the past few months has been the apparent hardware flaw causing 13th- and 14th-gen desktop CPUs to fail at high rates (which probably didn’t help that recent announcement of massive layoffs).

But according to a report from computer hardware supplier Puget Systems, Intel’s crashing CPUs still fail less often than older Intel designs and less often than AMD’s newest Ryzen CPUs.

Intel Core CPU failures by generation

Puget president Jon Bach published some data on the company’s blog that analyzed failure rates for desktop processors going back to Intel’s 10th generation (Core i9-10900K and i7-10700K from 2020) as well as AMD’s Ryzen 5000 and 7000 series:

Puget Systems

Puget Systems

Puget Systems

Puget’s analysis shows definite spikes in processor failures for Cores i9-14900K, i7-14700K, i9-13900K, and i7-13700K since late 2022, and especially in the last three months. All of these failures reportedly occur six months or more after installation, climbing as high as 14 total failures per month across all Intel CPU installations.

That’s in line with the dire news coming out of the market in general, forcing Intel and its motherboard OEM partners to make adjustments as they attempt to keep their processors from failing.

It’s worth noting: Bach says Puget uses custom motherboard BIOS settings for both its in-house and in-the-field PCs, which should have already mitigated some of the factory overclock problems that were first thought to be the core of the failure issue.

Interestingly, failure rates for 13th- and 14th-gen Intel Core processors are far higher than 12th-gen and 10th-gen Intel processors, but approximately the same as the failure rate for 11th-gen processors:

Puget Systems

Puget Systems

Puget Systems

Across hardware lifespan, Intel 11th-gen processors have a higher total failure rate (at 7 percent) versus 13th- and 14th-gen processors (at 2 percent). That’s less dramatic than it might seem initially—after all, the older processors have been running longer and are naturally more prone to failure just as a function of time.

Puget’s data shows a failure rate of 1 percent or lower for Intel 12th-gen processors from 2022, while 10th-gen processors failed even less frequently. Keep in mind, all of this is without the performance motherboard settings that Intel initially pinned as the source issue.

Intel Core CPU failures vs. AMD CPUs

Puget’s testing also shows that Intel’s newest processors are more reliable than AMD’s Ryzen 5000 and 7000 series, even with the high-profile news of failing CPUs in recent months.

Those Ryzen processors are showing higher failure rates than all but 11th-gen Intel CPUs. At failure rates over 4 percent, Ryzen 5000 and 7000 series CPUs are failing for Puget installations at approximately double the frequency of both 13th- and 14th-gen Intel chips.

Once again, it must be noted that most of those Ryzen machines would have been installed before the latest Intel machines, meaning a higher failure rate merely as a function of time.

Some caveats to keep in mind

Puget Systems isn’t a laboratory or academic testing center. This data is collected and analyzed for the purpose of maximizing their own performance and minimizing waste in hardware and service calls. (I’m guessing the sample size here is somewhere between a few hundred and a few thousand desktops.)

So, while the data is compelling, it shouldn’t be used as evidence of anything one way or another. Bach’s insistence that the company is using less-aggressive motherboard BIOS settings could be skewing this data, showing even fewer failures for 13th- and 14th-gen Intel processors than regular users have been seeing.

That said, it’s an interesting look at how the latest issues with Intel processors compare to the wider marketplace. If nothing else, take this as a reminder that no computer component is 100 percent reliable… and maybe keep that warranty card handy, just in case. Read More