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Comment by segasaturn | Hacker News Reader

This issue is specifically affecting Intel's K-series line, which are engineered to run up against the CPU's thermal limits. Basically, as long as there is load on the CPU and the CPU is running below 100°C, it keeps cranking up the frequency and voltage until it hits that barrier. I am quite sure that this behavior is what is causing CPU lifespan issues as pumping a theoretically unlimited amount of volts into a CPU can't be healthy. AMD is doing this performance hack on their newest AM5 Ryzen CPUs as well.

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You may want to take a look at some of the sleuthing Wendell over on Level1Techs did.

He was able to identify a large group of CPUs used in W680 chipset motherboards (i.e. using stock Intel power curves, never seeing a lick of overclocking/overvolting) which exhibited issues.

It would seem enthusiast ricing is, at best, an aggravating factor to some other underlying cause.

The large group of W680 are the game servers running 13900 & 14900.

Is this just an informational statement or were you trying to highlight a perceived shortcoming of what I had said?

If the latter, I am afraid I don't see the point you are hinting at and need more clarification.

You misunderstood. Some modern CPUs are designed to overclock themselves. The user does not have to do it anymore. It happens automatically.

It isn't "overclocking" if you conform to the Intel specification.

What you are getting at is Turbo boost, which is not a new thing. We can split hairs over the incremental enhancements to Turbo boost over the years of course.

I don’t think any of what you say is true.

> Intel® Thermal Velocity Boost (Intel® TVB) is a feature that opportunistically and automatically increases clock frequency above single-core and multi-core Intel® Turbo Boost Technology frequencies based on how much the processor is operating below its maximum temperature and whether turbo power budget is available

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/articles/000...

TVB specifically is exclusive to the i9 product line, but K SKUs in the i7 line have also experienced a heightened occurrence of stability issues.

So you kind of have to go all in on Turbo boost 3.0 as the issue and then explain why the non-K variants of the i7 and i9 don't seem to have the same frequency of occurrence.

Intel's arcane product line claims many victims.

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