29 minutes ago, Luke said:

Just because they haven't failed doesn't mean they are not affected. The over-voltage appears to significantly reduce their lifespan.

Cheers

Would the new BIOS reduce the voltage? Time will tell on lifespan I suppose.

45 minutes ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

Would the new BIOS reduce the voltage? Time will tell on lifespan I suppose.

The BIOS update is supposed to prevent the voltage spikes that were occurring when the CPU clocks-up.  There was also a manufacturing defect involving a coating on the semiconductor layers, and Intel has not been forthcoming as to which batches are affected by that.  No BIOS will fix that, if you're in that unlucky group.

 

1 minute ago, Bob Scott said:

The BIOS update is supposed to prevent the voltage spikes that were occurring when the CPU clocks-up.  There was also a manufacturing defect involving a coating on the semiconductor layers, and Intel has not been forthcoming as to which batches are affected by that.  No BIOS will fix that, if you're in that unlucky group.

 

Mine has been stable for nearly 11 months. No BSOD or anything else untoward. Those problems with P3D freezing last year were related to AIG Ai and v5.4. Solved by reverting to v5.3HF2.

Just now, Ray Proudfoot said:

Mine has been stable for nearly 11 months. No BSOD or anything else untoward. Those problems with P3D freezing last year were related to AIG Ai and v5.4. Solved by reverting to v5.3HF2.

My 13900KS is also running fine going on two years now. 

I have it set to run a fixed all-core overclock, so without demand-driven up/down clocking (the culprit that was fixed by the BIOS updates) the overvoltage spiking shouldn't have been hitting it.  I also run aggressive water cooling--it runs cool under load, 40s to low 60s, so the toxic combo of high voltages and temps associated with a lot of the failures shouldn't be a factor.  As to the bad coating...only time will tell.  That problem supposedly was fixed in the later production runs, and (again supposedly) was not a factor in all of the earlier production runs.  Mine is from an early run, so...??

Intel has a diagnostic utility that checks all the components on the chip.  'Tis probably not a bad idea to run that every couple months or if any unexplained flakiness erupts.

9 hours ago, Bob Scott said:

Intel has a diagnostic utility that checks all the components on the chip.  'Tis probably not a bad idea to run that every couple months or if any unexplained flakiness erupts

Useful. Do you have a link please?

3 hours ago, Ray Proudfoot said:

Useful. Do you have a link please?

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/download/15951/intel-processor-diagnostic-tool.html#:~:text=The purpose of the Intel,stress test on the processor.

I just wanted to take a moment to thank all of you for your helpful answers and guidance. I appreciate your help.

A decision has been made. He will go with the 7950x3d just for the L3 cache, which is 128 vs. 96 on the 7800x3d. From what I was able to gather from here and many other websites, the 7800x3d is about 6% faster in gaming than the 7950x3d. This is absolutely his choice and belief.

As I mentioned, I had a chance to compare the 14900ks on 2 PCs, the 13900k on my PC, and lastly, the 7800x3d. In this particular case, with MSFS2020, I can say that the 7800x3d is a clear winner in smoothness and temperature. The other noticeable situation that also improves the smoothness is the monitor refresh rate.

I'm eager to see what the difference between the 7800 and the 7950 might be now.

 

Thank you!