Some 13th and 14th generation Cpu instability issues have been bubbling up for a while. It started with reports of crashes in games and applications, and even Bsod reports on various forums on the Internet. The I9 13900K, i9 14900K, and their ks counterparts are much more likely to experience these problems than the i5 and i7Sku, and these problems are narrowed down to what can be termed inherently unstable automatic overclocking. The chip in question is not able to handle what is asked of them.

For many years, Intel has allowed motherboard manufacturers to take on freedom with a variety of power settings by allowing them to set short- and long-term power limits that far exceed the so-called default values. This will deliver the higher performance that Intel and its partners are pleased with.

The problem is that hitting and/or maintaining full-core clock speeds above 5GHz and single-core speeds above 6GHz clearly seems to have pushed things too far with the latest chips. At present, it is well known that the 14th generation Cpu is an iterative update of the 13th generation Cpu, which itself is an evolution of Intel's 12th generation Cpu released in late 2021. Everything is built in the Intel7 process. Without architecture updates and node shrinking that would improve meaningful performance, Intel was on the path to putting more power into the chip to achieve higher clock speeds. 

In response to these stability issues, motherboard manufacturers have deployed Bios with baseline power profiles, even if they are not enabled by default. I'm happy to see the options, but changing the BIOS settings is a step too far for many users, many of whom are not familiar with the changes or have no knowledge of things like the power profile.

Benchlife reports that Intel is requiring motherboard manufacturers to implement baseline power settings by default by the 31st. Of course, there is no way for Intel to force a bios update to the system, so this will probably affect the motherboards that ship from this date, but BIOS updates posted on the support page after 31 May will enable the baseline profile by default.

It will hurt performance, but it will hopefully lessen the cooling demands too, with instability issues caused by overly aggressive power and turbo settings. My 13900K and 14900K chips can easily hit 100 degrees Celsius before the speed of the AIO cooler fan has time to rise accordingly.

I put on my cynical hat and close it. When Intel launched the new Arrow Lake Cpu later this year, at least, it looked much better on those marketing slides when compared to the leashed i9 chip, but still, it was the default benchmark along with the previous "default" settings that nearly all LGA1700 boards have been shipping for the last two and a half years. It doesn't stop yourself and others from testing both your profile and your profile.