Intel extends its warranty support for 13th and 14th Gen CPUs by two years but its RMA procedure has been anything but straightforward for some

pcgamer.com:

Intel has announced that it will be extending warranty support for boxed Intel Core 13th and 14th Gen desktop processors by two years, in its ongoing attempts to minimise the fallout from the ongoing crashing issues affecting its Raptor Lake and Raptor Lake Refresh CPUs.

In a post on the Intel community forums, the company encourages those who have experienced «instability symptoms» in prebuilt machines to contact the system manufacturer's support team, while those who've purchased boxed CPUs should reach out to Intel Customer Support for further assistance.

Given that a law firm has been investigating the possibility of a class action lawsuit against Intel for the ongoing CPU instability issues, a warranty extension may well invalidate or waylay those potential legal repercussions as things stand.

However, Reddit user jerubedo has written a post detailing their experiences with Intel's current RMA procedure, and for them, it's been an exercise in frustration. They attempted to RMA two Core i9 14900Ks, one bought from Amazon and the other from Microcenter as brand-new chips.

According to the Redditor, Intel has claimed that both products were potentially not genuine CPUs. For the Microcenter-bought chip, jerubedo filled out an RMA form and provided shipping details and proof of purchase, along with pictures of the IHS, only for Intel to claim that the CPU was a re-marked unit, despite jerubedo's claim that the chip was bought in a sealed box directly from the shelf.

While Intel's remarks were disputed and further photos were provided that showed that the serial number and batch number on the box matched the faulty CPU, and were reported as valid on Intel's warranty checker tool, they claim that Intel told them to return the CPU to Microcenter instead.

Eventually, after further back and forth with Intel, Microcenter accepted the chip in return for store credit.

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