Intel has filed a class action lawsuit over CPU crashing fiasco

Intel’s problems with 13th and 14th generation CPU crashes are well documented at this point. Long story short: high-end chips crash and fail with seemingly irreversible damage, and Intel blames overzealous performance settings in the motherboard’s BIOS.

However, one New Yorker is not satisfied with Intel’s extensive RMA offer and is suing the company in a class action.

Ars Technica reports on the lawsuit filed by a Mark Vanvalkenburgh, which alleges that Intel knew about the problems with the processors in late 2022 or early 2023 and failed to disclose them to buyers, even as return rates increased and both end users as well as tech media (including PCWorld) began to discuss the issue widely. Vanvalkenburgh and his lawyers argue that Intel’s withholding of internal data on failures and return rates was misleading and caused him and many others to buy CPUs they otherwise would have avoided.

Depending on what’s presented in the discovery, Vanvalkenburgh’s attorneys estimate that hundreds of thousands — or possibly millions — of people could be part of the class action. While Intel claims that not every 13th and 14th generation desktop processor is vulnerable to these flaws, this has yet to be proven empirically.

This scenario is already one of the biggest CPU blunders in recent memory, but the information gleaned from this suit has the potential to make it a complete disaster.

And Intel can’t afford a disaster right now. The company has faced multiple setbacks, including disappointing performance from its latest desktop and laptop chips, an inability to capitalize on the AI ​​boom while Nvidia eats everyone’s lunch, and an emerging AMD that’s riding high on its X3D chips at the enthusiast market. Not to mention a new push from Qualcomm and other Arm-based chip makers now entering the Windows space. The company’s shares are trading at less than half of what they were at the start of 2024, and will soon be removed from the Dow Jones Industrial Average to be replaced by Nvidia, which is now the most valuable company in the world.

Intel tried to reassure owners of affected CPUs by extending the one-year warranty period to three full years, which applies to anyone who has purchased a chip in this series so far. But as Ars notes, it’s little reassurance for those who bought a high-end chip to ‘future-proof’ a powerful desktop, potentially taking it much further.