I was having issues with crashes in multiple games but rdr2 was the worst. I had a rig built with an i9 14900k and Asus hero z790.

I think I finally found the solution and it was to do with the default bios settings for my Asus MB and my i9 14900k.

In the document linked here...

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/content-details/743844/13th-generation-intel-core-and-intel-core-14th-generation-processors-datasheet-volume-1-of-2.html

Page 98, Table 17, Row 3: Reveals the stock turbo power limits for the 13900K and 14900K CPUs are 253W, not the 4,000+ my MB's Bios settings default to. Page 184, Table 77, Row 6: Lists the maximum current limit at 307A, far below the MB's default of 500+A.

I found this information in a Reddit post (https://www.reddit.com/r/overclocking/comments/1axepvu/optimizing_stability_for_intel_13900k_and_14900k/) and followed the settings as follows:

ASUS Z790 Motherboards:

Save your current settings into a profile so you can return to them later if you want.

Reset your BIOS to default settings. Ai Tweaker tab:

Disable MultiCore Enhancement.

Enable XMP(if your RAM supports it).

Set SVID behavior to Typical Scenario.

Set short duration turbo power = 253

Set long duration turbo power = 253

Set max core/cache current = 307Amps

Doing this immediately stabilised the CPU temps as well as bring down the average temp by ~10 to 15c. It's been a few months now with zero crashes.

Hope this helps someone

From what I understood from Hardware Unboxed, running without hard power limits is essentially "supported" by Intel and motherboard manufacturers weren't compelled to stick to the "recommended" power limits.

The fact that the new "Intel Baseline" profile that was pushed to motherboards via a BIOS update is vastly inconsistent between manufacturers leads be to believe that Intel doesn't clearly state "do this and this as default".

I find it a bit cheap to put the blame solely on motherboard manufacturers here.

There are also reports of instabilities with CPUs running at supposedly safe power limits. I can't confirm this but I also wouldn't be surprised if these power limits also caused silicon degradation at an unexpectedly fast pace.

Hardware Unboxed recently made a video and said that intel is mostly to blame, because they don't have clearly defined defaults, because they want motherboards to "overclock" CPUs because it looks good on benchmarks.

I've been reading news about this for a bit.

I believe that I may have damaged an i9-13900KF with stock Asus motherboard settings myself (though I can still make it work by disabling all but one core, sees constant problems now with multiple cores active).

If you're getting one of these yourself, no joke, give serious consideration to using more-conservative-then-stock-motherboard settings.

My guess is the motherboard manufacturers could get away with this in the past without any issues. But Intel is pushing chips so close to redline out of the box that now it causes problems.

This is the best summary I could come up with:

An Intel statement obtained by Igor's Lab suggests that Intel's investigation is wrapping up, and the company is pointing squarely in the direction of enthusiast motherboard makers that are turning up power limits and disabling safeguards to try to wring a little more performance out of the processors.

"While the root cause has not yet been identified, Intel has observed the majority of reports of this issue are from users with unlocked/overclock capable motherboards," the statement reads.

"Intel has observed 600/700 Series chipset boards often set BIOS defaults to disable thermal and power delivery safeguards designed to limit processor exposure to sustained periods of high voltage and frequency."

As we reported previously, the problems primarily affect high-end unlocked Core i9 CPUs like the i9-13900K and i9-14900K, as well as KF and KS variants of the same processors.

Intel releases these K-series chips to satisfy overclockers and tinkerers, but it's clear that there just isn't a lot of performance headroom left in these chips since Intel is already pushing their clock speeds and voltages to squeeze out generational performance improvements.

If it is, we should know more about the company's recommendations for safe power settings sometime next month, and we'll hopefully see new BIOS releases from the motherboard manufacturers that reinstate some of Intel's safeguards for these high-end chips.

The original article contains 355 words, the summary contains 218 words. Saved 39%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

Nah, just Intel shifting the blame.