Law firm investigates class action lawsuit regarding Intel's CPU issues

Intel's troubles with its 13th and 14th generation of desktop CPUs may be ramping up.

The law firm Abington Cole + Ellery, specializing in class action litigation and intellectual property, is investigating a class action lawsuit about Intel's instability issues with its 13th and 14th-generation CPUs, codenamed Raptor Lake and Raptor Lake Refresh.

The company is looking for representatives to participate in a lawsuit, providing a form to fill out on the company's website.

If there are enough complaints, the firm may initiate a lawsuit on behalf of affected Intel customers. Some Reddit users have already expressed dissatisfaction with how Intel is handling the problem, and some said that the company should recall the affected CPUs.

However, an Intel representative last week commented to The Verge that the company will not recall affected CPUs.

Intel hasn't provided details on how many users are affected by the instability problem. Still, it seems that Intel's troubles are quite significant, as instability issues may affect all the 13th and 14th gen CPUs that consume 65W or more power.

According to French Les Numeriques (via Tom's Hardware), which quoted data from a large unnamed European retailer, Intel's 13th generation of CPUs has a fourfold higher return rate than the previous version, while the 14th generation return rate is thrice as high as that of the 12th.

The publication extrapolates that the return rate of Intel's Raptor Lake CPUs may be 4-7%, while Raptor Lake Refresh's may reach 3-5.%. These predicted numbers include only those returned to the retailer, not to Intel directly.

Last week, Intel finally broke the silence and explained that the issue stemmed from a microcode algorithm that resulted in incorrect voltage requests to the processor. According to the company, a patch released in mid-August should address the instability problem. However, there are reports that Intel's representatives aren't sure the patch will resolve the problem and that the damage to the affected CPUs may be irreversible.

Intel urges impacted users to contact their support or the support of their PC manufacturer/shop.

The issues with Intel's CPUs, released in 2022 and 2023, began to emerge at the beginning of the year. Previously, some of these CPUs also experienced oxidation problems, though Intel claims they have been resolved.