In April, Intel suggested that motherboard makers could be the problem because many motherboards used power settings that exceeded Intel's defaults. By the summer, Intel had tracked down one root cause of the problems and had released a microcode update to resolve it: The CPUs were making 'elevated voltage requests,' which could degrade performance and stability and damage the hardware over time.
Today, the company is releasing what should be the final fix for the problem, which is a confluence of four issues: too-high motherboard defaults, a bug that kept some CPUs from downshifting when they were running too hot, a bug where CPUs were being given too much voltage for an extended period, and a bug where CPUs were given too much voltage when they were idle.
The fourth and final problem is being fixed by a new 0x12B microcode update, which also includes the previously released fixes for the other problems. Motherboard manufacturers and PC makers will need to release new BIOS updates containing the new microcode, and you should install them as soon as you can once they're available.
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