Is there an issue with my specs?

[Zowdie]

Hey there guys,

Got a question about my build. Basically I've had it for 4 months total, but about 2 months of that it has needed to be with PCSpecialist undergoing 2 RMA fixes. Both times it has been the CPU. (First time I had an i9 13900-KS, 2nd time I had an i9 14900-KS)

I know there have been issues with 13th and 14th gen i9 CPU's.

Anyways, I want to know if there is perhaps an issue with the build itself so I can prevent this thing from breaking again in the near future.

Specs:
Case
CORSAIR iCUE 5000X RGB MID TOWER GAMING CASE
Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™ i9 24-Core Processor i9-13900KS (Up to 6.0 GHz) 36MB Cache

Change to: Intel® Core™ i9 24-Core Processor i9-14900KS (Up to 6.2 GHz) 36MB Cache
Motherboard
ASUS® ROG STRIX Z790-F GAMING WIFI II (LGA1700, DDR5, PCIe 5.0, Wi-Fi 7)
Memory (RAM)
128GB Corsair VENGEANCE DDR5 4800MHz (4 x 32GB)
Graphics Card
24GB NVIDIA GEFORCE RTX 4090 - HDMI, DP
1st M.2 SSD Drive
2TB SAMSUNG 990 PRO M.2, PCIe 4.0 NVMe (up to 7450MB/R, 6900MB/W)
2nd M.2 SSD Drive
2TB SAMSUNG 990 PRO M.2, PCIe 4.0 NVMe (up to 7450MB/R, 6900MB/W)
DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
NOT REQUIRED
Power Supply
CORSAIR 1000W RMx SERIES™ - MODULAR 80 PLUS GOLD, ULTRA QUIET
Power Cable
1 x 1.5 Metre UK Power Cable (Kettle Lead, 1.0mm Core)
Processor Cooling
PCS FrostFlow 360 Series ARGB High Performance Liquid Cooler
Thermal Paste
ARCTIC MX-4 EXTREME THERMAL CONDUCTIVITY COMPOUND
Sound Card
ONBOARD 6 CHANNEL (5.1) HIGH DEF AUDIO (AS STANDARD)
Network Card
ONBOARD LAN PORT
Wireless Network Card
NOT REQUIRED
USB/Thunderbolt Options
2 PORT (2 x TYPE A) USB 3.0 PCI-E CARD + STANDARD USB PORTS
Operating System
Windows 11 Professional 64 Bit - inc. Single Licence
Operating System Language
United Kingdom - English Language
Windows Recovery Media
Windows 10/11 Multi-Language Recovery Image - Unlimited Downloads from Online Account
Office Software
FREE 30 Day Trial of Microsoft 365® (Operating System Required)
Anti-Virus
Norton 360 inc. Game Optimizer - Free 90 Day License
Browser
Google Chrome™
Warranty
3 Year Silver Warranty (1 Year Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour)
Delivery
STANDARD INSURED DELIVERY TO UK MAINLAND (MON-FRI)
Build Time
FAST TRACK 3 WORKING DAY DISPATCH
Welcome Book
PCSpecialist Welcome Book

Please let me know if there are any issues with the configured hardware guys.

Also let me know what other external things could be causing the CPU to fail if it isn't the config and link me to potential fixes.

Cheers,
Z

 

[Scoped Badger]

Outside the obvious CPU issue, I would have gone for a better cooler with that chip, but the honest answer is that it probably wouldn’t have mattered anyway. The chips are broken and not fit for purpose. It doesn’t matter how many times you change it.

 

[Zowdie]

Outside the obvious CPU issue, I would have gone for a better cooler with that chip, but the honest answer is that it probably wouldn’t have mattered anyway. The chips are broken and not fit for purpose. It doesn’t matter how many times you change it.

Well that is truly unfortunate... I read that 70 - 90° C is normal and okay for these chips and while gaming that's what I was at. (Highest I saw was 91°C) I just wanted the best reasonable specs possible tbh, that's the only reason I went with said CPU.

I didn't think the issue was widespread enough for it to affect me twice in a couple of months.

 

[Scoped Badger]

When you say “both times it has been the CPU” what did you mean by that? What was the reason PCS gave for the initial CPU swap?

 

[Zowdie]

When you say “both times it has been the CPU” what did you mean by that? What was the reason PCS gave for the initial CPU swap?

 

[Ekans2011]

I didn't think the issue was widespread enough for it to affect me twice in a couple of months.

Unfortunately, the ''issues'' have been well known for a long time.

Intel 13th and 14th Gen confirmed defective

So there's been a lot of upset gathering steam on the inter webs with intermittent games crashes on Intel 13th and 14th gen. Workarounds range from underclocking to disabling ecores. BUT, there are a lot of people finding that simply disabling hyperthreading is a proper solution. The findings...

www.pcspecialist.co.uk

I just wanted the best reasonable specs possible tbh, that's the only reason I went with said CPU.

You might have avoided those troubles by seeking advice on the forum before purchasing a poorly designed platform.

Honestly, I'd try to mitigate the silicon degradation by all means; as @Scoped Badger stated, definitely with a much better cooling solution.

 

[Zowdie]

Unfortunately, the ''issues'' have been well known for a long time.

Intel 13th and 14th Gen confirmed defective

So there's been a lot of upset gathering steam on the inter webs with intermittent games crashes on Intel 13th and 14th gen. Workarounds range from underclocking to disabling ecores. BUT, there are a lot of people finding that simply disabling hyperthreading is a proper solution. The findings...

www.pcspecialist.co.uk

You might have avoided those troubles by seeking advice on the forum before purchasing a poorly designed platform.

Honestly, I'd try to mitigate the silicon degradation by all means; as @Scoped Badger stated, definitely with a much better cooling solution.

Yeah, well, I'm not sure it should be breaking twice in 4 months even with the bad cooler. I'll look into it though... thanks for the passive aggressive advice I guess.

 

[Zowdie]

Unfortunately, the ''issues'' have been well known for a long time.

Intel 13th and 14th Gen confirmed defective

So there's been a lot of upset gathering steam on the inter webs with intermittent games crashes on Intel 13th and 14th gen. Workarounds range from underclocking to disabling ecores. BUT, there are a lot of people finding that simply disabling hyperthreading is a proper solution. The findings...

www.pcspecialist.co.uk

You might have avoided those troubles by seeking advice on the forum before purchasing a poorly designed platform.

Honestly, I'd try to mitigate the silicon degradation by all means; as @Scoped Badger stated, definitely with a much better cooling solution.

It's worth noting that I did look into it on a few platforms beforehand. A lot stated that a 360 MM cooler would be sufficient for an i9 13900KS which was my original CPU. However, I am willing to admit it might have been a rather stupid cost-cutting measure.

 

[Ekans2011]

Yeah, well, I'm not sure it should be breaking twice in 4 months even with the bad cooler. I'll look into it though... thanks for the passive aggressive advice I guess.

Sorry about that, it was not my aim to sound aggressive, it was probably influenced by my lack of native English.

 

[Zowdie]

Sorry about that, it was not my aim to sound aggressive, it was probably influenced by my lack of native English.

That's okay man, I didn't realise you weren't native to the UK, I assumed most people here would be.

 

[Scott]

91°C when just gaming is incredibly high. That's the sort of maximum temperatures you should see when it's running at full chat, not on light gaming loads.

You really want to get a more purposeful cooler. Not sure who stated that the PCS 360mm cooler would be sufficient, I would hope no-one on here? Anyone outside making remarks on it being sufficient I would take their advice with a pinch of salt as the Intel CPUs have been best avoided for a couple of years now, I would argue people not advising against Intel aren't giving good advice to begin with.

It was found that even a 420mm cooler would struggle to keep the 13/14900K in check during sustained loads, the chip would almost always thermal throttle. Nothing will break with poor cooling though, you just suffer poorer performance than you would expect, due to the throttling.

The links posted above with regards to the Intel issues are deep rooted microcode and potentially physical issues with the individual parts themselves. It's still going around the doors at the moment but BIOS updates have been released to limit the power draw of the chips to try and mitigate the issues they were having. Your latest chip, I would hope, should come with that mitigating BIOS. It's not going to be a guarantee on having no issues, but hopefully it will help.

Intel's stock has tanked with this issue and they are laying off 10s of 1000s of employees off the back of it.

 

[Zowdie]

91°C when just gaming is incredibly high. That's the sort of maximum temperatures you should see when it's running at full chat, not on light gaming loads.

You really want to get a more purposeful cooler. Not sure who stated that the PCS 360mm cooler would be sufficient, I would hope no-one on here? Anyone outside making remarks on it being sufficient I would take their advice with a pinch of salt as the Intel CPUs have been best avoided for a couple of years now, I would argue people not advising against Intel aren't giving good advice to begin with.

It was found that even a 420mm cooler would struggle to keep the 13/14900K in check during sustained loads, the chip would almost always thermal throttle. Nothing will break with poor cooling though, you just suffer poorer performance than you would expect, due to the throttling.

The links posted above with regards to the Intel issues are deep rooted microcode and potentially physical issues with the individual parts themselves. It's still going around the doors at the moment but BIOS updates have been released to limit the power draw of the chips to try and mitigate the issues they were having. Your latest chip, I would hope, should come with that mitigating BIOS. It's not going to be a guarantee on having no issues, but hopefully it will help.

Intel's stock has tanked with this issue and they are laying off 10s of 1000s of employees off the back of it.

Yeah, I'm thinking tbh mate... if I have issues this time I will request that they switch to the highest grade AMD CPU that is the nearest equivalent. I believe that'd be the Ryzen 9 7950X3D, if I am correct. Also, it wasn't anyone here don't worry. It was people on other forums. Could you suggest a cooler for that CPU that I can buy from PCS during the next RMA process if it does actually come down to that?

 

[Zowdie]

91°C when just gaming is incredibly high. That's the sort of maximum temperatures you should see when it's running at full chat, not on light gaming loads.

You really want to get a more purposeful cooler. Not sure who stated that the PCS 360mm cooler would be sufficient, I would hope no-one on here? Anyone outside making remarks on it being sufficient I would take their advice with a pinch of salt as the Intel CPUs have been best avoided for a couple of years now, I would argue people not advising against Intel aren't giving good advice to begin with.

It was found that even a 420mm cooler would struggle to keep the 13/14900K in check during sustained loads, the chip would almost always thermal throttle. Nothing will break with poor cooling though, you just suffer poorer performance than you would expect, due to the throttling.

The links posted above with regards to the Intel issues are deep rooted microcode and potentially physical issues with the individual parts themselves. It's still going around the doors at the moment but BIOS updates have been released to limit the power draw of the chips to try and mitigate the issues they were having. Your latest chip, I would hope, should come with that mitigating BIOS. It's not going to be a guarantee on having no issues, but hopefully it will help.

Intel's stock has tanked with this issue and they are laying off 10s of 1000s of employees off the back of it.

I've been out of the loop in the CPU space to be honest. I had a PC that I bought back in 2017 that worked flawlessly until early this year and then I just bought an Intel CPU because that's what I had in the first one. It's taught me to thoroughly research before buying in the future.

 

[TonyCarter]

Is this intended as a gaming rig only, or is there another use you need it for, as the 7950X3D is a waste just for gaming (as half the CPU won't be used)...but could be a good choice if it's for heavy rendering/video/photo work.

 

[Zowdie]

Is this intended as a gaming rig only, or is there another use you need it for, as the 7950X3D is a waste just for gaming (as half the CPU won't be used)...but could be a good choice if it's for heavy rendering/video/photo work.

I'm a professional video editor, but in my downtime I like to play some e-sports stuff haha. So eventually the goal was to get a 540 hz monitor and a 4K one for my job! (1 hour and 30 minute long documentaries generally with 4K videos involved)

 

[Scott]

Best cooler PCS offer is the H150i. It's also a 360mm cooler but has a bit more pedigree than the PCS offering. It's the best performance you will get from the chip.

Editing a 4k video on it is going to get quite hot though, the chip will take care of itself while on a reasonable cooler though, so don't worry. It's just some performance left on the table to be annoyed about.

For high end everything the 7950X3D is a good shout. I would read into 540Hz monitors vs what the human eye can actually see though, just before you go wasting your money. Proper elite gamers don't see past 240hz, with only 1% of that 1% of those elite gamers having any gains at 360hz. You would need to be, literally, the best in the world for 540hz to be for anything other than saying you have a 540hz panel down the pub.

240Hz is the absolute most I would recommend to anyone who isn't making millions from gaming & advertising. 144hz to 240hz sees incredibly narrow gains, margin of error for most people (99.9%).

 

[Zowdie]

Best cooler PCS offer is the H150i. It's also a 360mm cooler but has a bit more pedigree than the PCS offering. It's the best performance you will get from the chip.

Editing a 4k video on it is going to get quite hot though, the chip will take care of itself while on a reasonable cooler though, so don't worry. It's just some performance left on the table to be annoyed about.

For high end everything the 7950X3D is a good shout. I would read into 540Hz monitors vs what the human eye can actually see though, just before you go wasting your money. Proper elite gamers don't see past 240hz, with only 1% of that 1% of those elite gamers having any gains at 360hz. You would need to be, literally, the best in the world for 540hz to be for anything other than saying you have a 540hz panel down the pub.

240Hz is the absolute most I would recommend to anyone who isn't making millions from gaming & advertising. 144hz to 240hz sees incredibly narrow gains, margin of error for most people (99.9%).

Noted. I'll stick with my 240 hz monitor then. Definitely not bad at CS. Was top 3% before I had downtime... but I'm definitely not top 0.1%. 🤣

 

[Scott]

Those FPS levels are just snake oil for the most part. Good way to leverage some extra dosh out the gaming contingent.

I can't remember who it was (I have someone "zer0" in my head or something like that), in the test they were conducting one of those elite performed better on the 144hz panel (might have been 120) vs the 240hz panel. Only 1 out of 5 had a better performance on the 360hz panel and it was soooooo marginal that it was considered margin of error.

The human eye can only actually see 120hz/fps (equivalent). The gain from going above that when you are really good, you can see a frame you might not have seen falling within that 120hz bandwidth. It almost gives you a premonition in milliseconds. Means nothing to most, but when there's money on the line every little counts

 

[Zowdie]

Those FPS levels are just snake oil for the most part. Good way to leverage some extra dosh out the gaming contingent.

I can't remember who it was (I have someone "zer0" in my head or something like that), in the test they were conducting one of those elite performed better on the 144hz panel (might have been 120) vs the 240hz panel. Only 1 out of 5 had a better performance on the 360hz panel and it was soooooo marginal that it was considered margin of error.

The human eye can only actually see 120hz/fps (equivalent). The gain from going above that when you are really good, you can see a frame you might not have seen falling within that 120hz bandwidth. It almost gives you a premonition in milliseconds. Means nothing to most, but when there's money on the line every little counts

Thanks for letting me know man. You've been really helpful. So you're defo saying that if the 14900 KS goes again defo go with the 7950X3D for my job?

 

[Scott]

Thanks for letting me know man. You've been really helpful. So you're defo saying that if the 14900 KS goes again defo go with the 7950X3D for my job?

It might not be that straight forward, I can't see any supplier changing out an entire platform due to a CPU issue..... but if that becomes an option then it's definitely the way to go.

Be sure to come back next time you're looking for a new build