14900k issues and the retailer's response.
14900k issues and the retailer's response.
I've owned the 14900k for more than a year now. At first everything was fine, performance was solid. Recently I've noticed frequent crashes and the system would throttle under load. Temperatures kept climbing past 100°C, and the CPU would slow down noticeably during regular gaming. Most recently it took over a minute to boot after powering on, but then started up normally. I tried various fixes—rebuilding, repasting, reinstalling Windows—but nothing resolved the issue. Eventually I returned it to the shop, hoping they could fix it.
They eventually replaced the motherboard and CPU, assuming one was faulty. I explained my problems and issues, and they confirmed everything was fine. They suggested a cooler might be the problem. A few days later they called back, saying there was nothing wrong and pointing out my cooler was overheating. I informed them I had a 360 AIO that had been stable for a year and was still working well with the new CPU.
They showed me it ran smoothly on their test rig using an older CPU, sitting at 100°C and clocking around 3.4GHz. I asked for a better cooler and they agreed to try again. After some time, they confirmed it maintained 4.4GHz with a max of 90°C. My question is: how much throttling is normal before it stops working as intended? I’m not an overclocker, just a gamer. When I first got it, I ran it through Cinebench a few times to check performance and multicore stats. Recently, after temperature spikes, it’s stabilizing around 30-32k. AI overclock is disabled in the BIOS, and it always respects Intel limits.
The motherboard is an ASUS Z790 Gaming WiFi 2. I’m considering giving it to my wife if it works properly, but compared to my first year, it seems to have degraded significantly. Maybe there’s a mistake, or perhaps the expectations were too high for what the hardware could handle.
It's a possibility, though I'm uncertain about the ease there in New Zealand. We generally have solid consumer safeguards for this type of product, but sometimes dealing with retailers can be challenging. However, a few inconsistencies stand out—during their second test they ran a second cooler and said it hasn't exceeded 90 degrees, yet it's throttling below 4500mhz, which seems contradictory.
Throttling and high temperatures may cause problems (and possibly harm). The repair shop you took it to isn’t reliable—they used an i9 14900k with a stock cooler. If they’re not careful during stability tests, they probably didn’t install a better cooler or confirm stability as promised. The crashes might stem from Intel’s instability issues. Consider updating the BIOS and filing a warranty claim with Intel. Your thermal paste could be worn out, which is common if you don’t use the correct one. I bought a Thermaltake TFX, one of the top thermal pastes, and after a few months my i7 reached 98°C at 45 watts.