Intel’s problems with 13th and 14th generation CPU deadlocks are well documented at this point. Long story short: high-end chips crashed and failed with seemingly irreversible damage, and Intel blames it on overzealous performance settings in the motherboard’s BIOS.

However, one New Yorker is not satisfied with Intel’s extended RMA offers and is suing the company in a class action.

reports Ars Technica on the lawsuit filed by one Mark Vanvalkenburgh, who claims Intel knew about the processor problems in late 2022 or early 2023 and didn’t disclose them to buyers, even as return rates increased and both end users and the mass- technological media (including PCWorld) began to discuss the issue at length. Vanvalkenburgh and his lawyers argue that Intel’s withholding of internal data on defect and return rates was misleading and led him and many others to buy processors they might otherwise have avoided.

Depending on what is presented in discovery, Vanvalkenburgh’s lawyers estimate that hundreds of thousands — or possibly millions — of people could be part of the class action. Although Intel claims that not every 13th and 14th generation desktop processor is vulnerable to these defects, this has not yet been empirically proven.

This scenario is already one of the biggest CPU blunders in recent memory, but the information coming out of this suit has the potential to turn it into a total disaster.

And Intel can’t afford a disaster now. The company has suffered several setbacks, including disappointing performance from its latest desktop and laptop chips, an inability to capitalize on the AI ​​boom as Nvidia eats everyone’s lunch, and an ascendant AMD. riding on its X3D chips in the enthusiast market. And that’s without mentioning a new boost from Qualcomm and other Arm-based chip makers now reaching the Windows space. The company’s shares are trading at less than half of what they were at the start of 2024 and will soon be removed from the Dow Jones Industrial Average to be replaced by Nvidia, which is now the most valuable corporation on the planet.

Intel tried to reassure owners of affected processors extending the one-year warranty support window to three yearswhich covers everyone who has purchased a chip in these series so far. But as Ars notes, it’s little comfort for those who bought a high-end chip to “future-proof” a powerful desktop, possibly to keep it around for much longer.