- An engineer from Firefox reported an apparent problem with Intel Raptor Lake
- These processors would have crushed more in summer heat in Europe
- There is a greater prevalence of accidents in places where temperatures have increased due to heat waves, and CPU 14700K suffers in particular
The processors of the 13th and 14th generation of Lake Raptor (and Raptor Lake Raft) are struggling with the heat wave in Europe, which apparently more frequently causes these processors with a popular web browser.
Tom’s equipment reports that Gabriele Svelto, a personal Mozilla Firefox browser engineer, reported the problem on mastodon, observing that: “If you have an Intel Raptor Lake system and you are in the northern hemisphere, there is a good chance that your machine is crashed more often because of summer heat.”
To clarify, these are browser accidents – as opposed to the locking of the complete system – and Svelto adds that he has obtained this information thanks to the Firefox crash reports from Raptor Lake PCS, which are linked to specific countries of the EU. There is a greater prevalence of accidents in places where temperatures have increased significantly during the summer.
The problem is so bad that we are told that the level of accident has become overwhelming, which means that Mozilla had to take measures to deactivate the bot submitting.
Svelto Note: “The Raptor Lake systems have experienced synchronization / tension problems that are getting worse. The things are so bad for the moment we had to deactivate a bot that automatically deposited planting because it only found accidents of people with affected systems.”
Another mastodon user hypothesizes that this is linked to known degradation problems that have struck the Intel processors of 13th and 14th generation, the heat exacerbating the problem. Svelto replies to agree that yes, this is true, while adding a warning, saying: “Yes, although some of these bugs are very reproducible and predictable, which is confusing. They could be linked to timing or even real coherent processor bugs (we have seen some of them too).”
As the Thread Mastodon progresses, the engineer suggests that the most recent update of the Intel microcode, called “0x12f” for Raptor Lake (and Raptor Lake Refresh), actually aggravated things, at least in terms of what Firefox sees here.
Svelto Note: “In particular, the microcode 0x12c had reduced the incidence of a certain number of bugs, but they returned in force when Intel published the 0x12f version.”
The 0x12F fix was postponed in May 2025, a good time after the previous updates, as a correction for a scenario more niche where the problems occurred with PCs that have been left continuously (for days at a time, running light workloads). Svelto therefore suggests that even if this patch has improved things for these distant scenarios, it worsened things for others.
According to the engineer, these problems of crushing with the chips of Lake Raptor occur the most with the Intel Core i7-14700K models.
Analysis: hot hot heat
Obviously, we must be careful by pinning the blame here. Apparently, something turned considerably if Mozilla needed to deactivate a system because it was overloaded on accidents.
This certainly suggests that Firefox points to a problem linked to the chip – even if the cause could be (theoretically) partly to buggy behavior with the browser, this always manifests with certain Intel silicon (at a apparently deep level, in correlation with warmer locations in Europe).
Cooling can also play a role here, of course, in terms of CPU coolers used. The reason why the 14700K may appear much more in these accidents could be because it is a rapidly public rapid chip, perhaps associated with a less efficient cooling solution. While those who run the fastest Top Dog 14900K (or even 13,900K) have probably invested in an expensive cooler to go with the processor, and therefore it can be less subject to overheating problems as temperatures are climbing, so there are not as many recorded crashes. There will also not be as many chips of 14,900k there due to their more expensive nature.
What will be interesting to see is if other software developers notice a similar type of model with their products that crash (navigators, or other) – and now this report has been disseminated, others may have reasons to invest more accident newspapers, perhaps.
Of course, another factor to monitor will be the performance of Raptor Lake processors if temperatures continue to increase (during the summer in Europe, or elsewhere – or much more wide as the next two years take place).
Even before that, my concern has always been the underlying degradation that instability problems may have caused with processors of 13th and 14th generations. As we know, these chips worked on PCs for a certain time in a problematic state, the applied microcode fixes being of a preventive nature – not a remedy, which means that they have no damage that has already been done. So, there could be an undetectable deterioration under the hood of the chip which manifests itself until much later in its lifespan – a process possibly accelerated by the processor which works too hot, perhaps?
Now, the good news – like the affected people undoubtedly remember – is that Intel has made the coverage of the guarantee of these processors at five years. However, as I pointed out in the past, what happens if in the sixth year, your Raptor Lake processor begins to descend the plughole in terms of recurring instability problems? You are unlucky in this case, which does not seem very fair – it is not unreasonable to expect a processor, the engine of a PC, to last more than half a decade.
Of course, we cannot yet go to negative conclusions, but this situation certainly deserves to be monitored.