Intel Faces Class Action Lawsuit Threat Over Raptor Lake CPU Bug

The situation involving Intel’s Raptor Lake CPUs has worsened over the past few days despite Intel finally announcing it had identified the culprit for the instability some customers are experiencing. Earlier this week, Intel announced it would deliver a microcode update to fix its Raptor Lake processors. Still, it would only keep healthy processors from breaking bad instead of repairing faulty CPUs. The message didn’t sit well for folks with bad chips, even though Intel has offered to replace them all, and now a law firm is seeking people who have been burned in the process for a potential class action lawsuit.

The law firm Abington Cole + Ellery, based in Oklahoma, has set up a page to investigate a potential class action suit against Intel. It has a questionnaire people can fill out stating whether they own a 13th or 14th Generation Raptor Lake CPU and whether they’ve experienced any issues with it. The law firm’s website says it focuses on two areas of law, class action and intellectual property, and that it’s not affiliated with Intel or any of its partners. It’s unclear how the firm became aware of the situation, but perhaps some partners are gamers.

Though initial reports of crashing in games were attributed to the Core i9 chips, Intel has now stated it can affect any Raptor Lake CPU with a TDP of 65W or higher.
Credit: Intel

It remains to be seen if enough Raptor Lake CPU owners will be interested in becoming class members. At the same time, Intel has offered to RMA all affected processors, but the law firm is now questioning whether that is happening. According to Tom’s Hardware, a representative of the firm posted on Reddit that it was trying to ascertain whether Intel was living up to its promise on that front; according to Tom’s Hardware, there are no signs it isn’t at this point.

However, the process is not exactly ideal. The Tom’s Hardware article says users must send Intel a photo of their CPU to begin the RMA process. Once the photo has been verified, the user must send credit card information to Intel to get a new processor shipped to them. Once the new processor has been received and the bad one received by Intel, the company reverses the credit card charges. There’s also a $25 fee to get the new CPU before the bad one is returned. As a CPU owner, this process sounds pretty annoying, but at the same time Intel can’t just start shipping expensive CPUs to thousands or millions of customers without a system to prevent fraud.

This is obviously a massive problem for Intel, as the situation is rapidly devolving and doing significant damage to the company’s reputation of offering reliable CPUs. It got even worse this week when Intel revealed that instability can happen on any Raptor Lake CPU with a TDP of 65W or higher instead of just impacting the Core i9 chips. Folks with affected CPUs can contact Intel to begin the RMA process, and people who have healthy chips are advised to update their BIOS when Intel delivers the fix in mid-August. Until then, we’ll have to wait and see if this lawsuit gains any steam.