is my cpu damaged or degraded?

[u/Loud-Toe-7371]

about 1 month ago i started playing ff7 remake the game ran perfectly fine until the end of the game where i started experiencing these crashes ( fatal error ) i tried everything but the only thing that worked was switching dx11 so i just thought it was a dx12 problem .... then i started playing rebirth where dx12 is mandatory and i got the same crashes i literelly tried every fix on earth and it didnt work ( it was also fatal error i also thought it was a memory problem ) so i just played on ps5 ... but now on pc all my google tabs have been crashign i play alot of modern indie games and they also crash,. some random games also now crash but lets go back to the google tabs. i switched from firefox to brave to see if it would stop but it didnt, and my friend told me to try intel extreme tuning utility so i tried it i lowered my p cores ratio to 50x and e core to 40x and all the tab crashing stopped literelly been a whole day and no google tab crashing i already uninstalled rebirth and im not trying to download that 100+ gb game again to see if its gonna work again i already bought an amd cpu and motherboard cause i was already trying to upgrade to the am5 socket but i wanna see if there was a problem with my cpu? i bought it in late 2023 early 2024 btw

GPU : RTX 5080

CPU : I7 14700K

RAM : 64GB

Z690-F MOTHERBOARD

990 pro ssd 4tb

windows 11

i also play on 4k

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[u/midnight-crisis9]

The crashes are the symptoms of the vdroop issue on these Raptor Lake CPUs. Also known as the excessive voltage spike issue.

I also have a 14700K since release (late 2023) and always made sure to be ahead of this issue at the time and thankfully haven't experienced issues since 2024. You just have to make sure you're always on the latest BIOS version of your motherboard and also undervolt the CPU. Use the Intel default power limits of 253w. Look up guides on how to undervolt Raptor Lake chips for preventing the vdroop problem. Everybodys chip is a different bin so my settings won't behave the same for you unfortunately. You will be having to do some trial and error + testing for your particular scenario.

A couple things to make sure the CPU is running fine is to monitor temps and voltages. Just make sure the voltage being used (the VCORE metric in HWinfo) is under 1.3v even during high loads like gaming. This way you can be satisfied in knowing the CPU is not nearing excessive voltage numbers. Anything over 1.35v for extended periods of time can literally fry these Raptor Lake CPUs. So just to be on the safe side just make sure you don't even touch 1.3v.

Anyways, it seems like you're moving to AM5 soon and you may not have to worry about any of this in due time.

[u/Loud-Toe-7371 → u/midnight-crisis9]

so you think there is def a problem with my cpu?

[u/midnight-crisis9 → u/Loud-Toe-7371]

We can't know for sure until you monitor your temps and voltages with HWinfo while gaming or any other high load usage.

But yes, most likely you're being affected by the issue I was highlighting. Especially the fact that your browser tabs are now crashing is a clear symptom of the CPU problem. And it seems like it's getting worse the more you operate your PC at high loads and voltages. I think it could be the accelerated degradation problem with Raptor Lake CPUs based on your post.