We recently reported on the continued instability of Intel’s 13th and 14th Gen K-series processors in gaming. We’ve RMA’d three Core i9-13900KF (one still in progress), and a Core i7-14700KF in the last couple of months. Ergo, the RMA of the first chip failed, and then the RMA of the RMA exhibited the same issues, prompting Intel to issue a refund. Using the “Intel Default” power delivery settings and the eTVB (Enhanced Thermal Velocity Boost) fix, we’ve been testing the latest replacement unit, and it’s somewhat stable…till it’s not.
Like many of the commonly reported crashes, the First Descendant is built atop Unreal Engine 5 and is prone to frequent crashing. Crashing during loading, crashing during shader compilation, and crashing during gameplay and even cutscenes. According to Steam, I “played” The First Descedant for 34 minutes. During those 34 minutes, the game crashed seven times, with five being BSODs (system crashes) and two CTDs (crash to desktop).
The Windows event viewer is full of the above “NVIDIA LocalSystem Container” crash logs. This has been widely confirmed to be an Intel CPU-related issue wherein the processor becomes unstable due to whatever reason. As already mentioned, this unit is the second RMA replacement and has been running using the “Intel Default” power profile and the eTVB firmware fix.
Interestingly, the application log has a bunch of Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) warnings, reported right before every BSOD. It indicates that the Intel ME Prov (Intel Management Engine) tried to access the LocalSystem account which can cause security violations if not correctly requested.
