The lawsuit accuses Intel of intentionally selling defective Raptor Lake processors. It is based on a filing by the owner of a Core i7-13700K.
A class action lawsuit against Intel has been filed in a US federal court. The plaintiff, Mark Vanvalkenburg, accuses Intel of knowingly selling defective Raptor Lake processors 13th generation and 14th generation. The plaintiff is seeking damages, and Dovel & Luner expects other Intel customers to join the filing.
The lawsuit, filed in San Jose, California, comes from Mark Vanvalkenburg of Orchard Park, New York, who purchased an Intel Core i7-13700K processor in January 2023. According to the complaint, Vanvalkenburg experienced frequent problems, including sudden screen blackouts and unexpected reboots. This summer, he tried to apply an Intel patch designed to address Raptor Lake instability, but it didn’t help.
«After purchasing the product, the plaintiff learned that the processor was faulty, unstable and crashed very frequently. The processor caused problems in his computer, including random screen blackouts and random computer reboots. These problems were not resolved even after he tried to install a patch issued by Intel for its 13th generation processors. As a result, he did not get what he paid for. If Plaintiff had known the truth about the product, he would not have bought the product or would have paid less than», — the lawsuit says.
The plaintiff claims that Intel knew about the instability problems with the Raptor Lake processors before it made the purchase. He claims that the company’s internal testing, conducted before and after the release of the processors, revealed these defects. Despite this, Intel allegedly continued to market the processors as high-performance products, concealing the instability. The allegations of fraud and breach of warranty are based on New York consumer protection laws.
In July 2024, Intel publicly talked about a problem called «Vmin» shift instability. The company said that the stability issues were caused by increased operating voltages that physically damaged the processors.
To mitigate the problem, Intel released three microcode patches The first patch (0x125) was released in June to configure the Enhanced Thermal Velocity Boost (eTVB) algorithm. The second patch (0x129), released in August, reduced the number of unnecessary high voltage requests. In September, Intel released the third patch (0x12B), which combined the previous fixes and added protections to prevent excessive voltage during idle or light load conditions.
However already damaged processors cannot be repaired with patches microcode, which Intel has clearly stated. To make sure that all customers received a replacement, Intel extended the warranty on Raptor Lake processors for two years.
Source: Tom’s Hardware