Abington Cole + Ellery, a law firm specializing in class action litigation and intellectual property law, began explore 13th and 14th Generation Intel Core “Raptor Lake” processors are experiencing freezing and instability issues, potentially resulting in a class action lawsuit filed on behalf of Intel customers.
Intel announced about a week ago that some 13th and 14th-generation Core processors could become unstable due to elevated voltages, which should be fixed with a patch expected to be released in mid-August. The company has promised to honor all RMAs, so any affected processors should be replaced. The issue isn’t circumscribed to higher-end models — Intel says the instability bug also affects popular 65W processors.
Intel sells its popular 65W processors in the tens of millions of units, so this could be a costly replacement cycle for Intel if the company honors all replacement requests. This is where things start to get engaging for class action lawyers, who are now trying to determine whether Intel honors all RMA requests.
Intel’s customer responded that Intel honored its RMA. All the owner of the faulty CPU had to do was take pictures of the CPU and send them to the company. Once the company is satisfied with the pictures, it contacts the owner to get their credit card information and ships a novel CPU before receiving the faulty device. Once the owner receives the novel CPU, they have to send the faulty CPU to Intel, and once the company receives it, it will reverse the charge on the credit card. There is a $25 fee for this advanced RMA process, but the company also offers the option of sending the faulty CPU first and then receiving the novel one later.
For now, Intel seems to be handling the flawed processors without a hitch. Still, there will inevitably be unhappy customers, and it looks like class-action lawyers are preparing to file a lawsuit against the company if they can find enough plaintiffs. If they do, and they win, a judge could order Intel to pay damages to virtually all owners of 13th- and 14th-generation Intel Core processors. Then the class-action lawyers will get their cut—a huge cut—so it’s not surprising that the company is launching an investigation.
