China's largest Core i9-14900K gaming cafe has suffered from instability issues since 2023 — the flagship store has 171 gaming PCs with Core i9-14900K chips

Dongyu E-Sports Cafe
(Image credit: news.mydrivers.com)

Dongyu E-Sports hosts China's largest Core i9-14900K-equipped gaming cafe. Fast Technology reports that Raptor Lake instability issues dating back to 2023 severely impacted the luxury gaming cafe.

The Core i9-14900K instability at the cafe started early in December 2023, resulting in blue screens. The BSODs were so disruptive that it noticeably affected the cafe's business. When systems were down, dissatisfied consumers were compensated with extra drinks and Internet time.

Dongyu immediately contacted Intel's after-sales support team, technical department, and product department to fix the problem. Partner technicians were also called to jointly provide on-site support to troubleshoot the instability issues occurring on crashing Core i9-14900K gaming rigs.

Troubleshooting revealed that various issues were reportedly contributing to the instability, including power supply problems, heat dissipation problems, and CPU voltage problems. Intel engineers reportedly found the main cause of the instability and reduced the cafe's instability significantly by tweaking "relevant settings."

(Image credit: news.mydrivers.com)

Later, in 2024, when Intel provided its default settings guidelines, the issue was reportedly "further resolved." Cafe owner Xie Liuqiu commemorated Intel for its assistance and stated that he is determined to continue equipping his chain of internet cafes with Intel's latest Core i9 processors.

"Intel investigates product problems thoroughly, provides support for technical issues, and is reliable in warranty and after-sales service. This responsibility gives me the confidence to make money steadily and at ease and also makes me more determined to continue to equip all new stores with the latest Core i9 processors," said Xie to Fast Technology.

China's largest Core i9-14900K internet cafe is part of a chain of internet cafes owned by Dongyu E-Sports in Yueyang, Hunan. The company has set up six gaming cafes around different parts of the city for a total of 689 PCs where 68% of the gaming rigs utilize and Intel Core i9 CPU. The flagship store has the most Core i9-14900K CPUs, comprised of 171 machines. Each rig has an RTX 4090D GPU and a 540 Hz refresh rate gaming monitor. Mainstream rigs are purportedly equipped with RTX 4070 Super GPUs.

The rigs are about as high-end as it gets. Each Core i9-14900K is manually overclocked to 5.9 GHz, and the system RAM is overclocked to a blisteringly quick 8,533 MHz. The RTX 4090Ds are also overclocked, with speeds of 3.1 GHz on the GPU core and 13 GHz on the memory, respectively. 360mm AIO liquid cooling is employed to keep the CPUs cool.

The gaming cafe is about as luxurious as it gets. Each gaming system is paired with a luxurious gaming chair with high-end peripherals that can recline almost entirely flat. The cafe features a full range of services for hardcore customers, including a QR code for ordering food, toothbrushes, showers, laundry rooms, and a self-service supermarket.

Aaron Klotz
Contributing Writer

Aaron Klotz is a contributing writer for Tom’s Hardware, covering news related to computer hardware such as CPUs, and graphics cards.

  • Alvar "Miles" Udell
    Troubleshooting revealed that various issues were reportedly contributing to the instability, including power supply problems, heat dissipation problems, and CPU voltage problems.

    So The issues they suffered for a year on overvolted, overclocked CPUs with apparently dodgy PSUs and heatsinks is somehow Intel's fault?
    Reply
  • txfeinbergs
    I don't think I would ever have a reason to leave this place.
    Reply
  • redgarl
    Even if AMD was on Bulldozer, I would not recommend Intel...
    Reply
  • MisterZ
    Internet/gaming cafe. lol
    Reply
  • usertests
    txfeinbergs said:
    I don't think I would ever have a reason to leave this place.
    Broken computers!

    redgarl said:
    Even if AMD was on Bulldozer, I would not recommend Intel...
    Intel's old products are known good and far better than Bulldozer. 12th gen is working fine, as are the Alder Lake chips that got rebranded as 13th/14th gen. At the right prices (e.g. a cheap system on ebay), 10th gen Comet Lake or even the maligned 11th gen Rocket Lake are good.

    Most people don't need cutting edge CPU performance and should consider buying CPUs that have been on the market for years, if the price is right.
    Reply
  • derekullo
    usertests said:
    Broken computers!


    Intel's old products are known good and far better than Bulldozer. 12th gen is working fine, as are the Alder Lake chips that got rebranded as 13th/14th gen. At the right prices (e.g. a cheap system on ebay), 10th gen Comet Lake or even the maligned 11th gen Rocket Lake are good.

    Most people don't need cutting edge CPU performance and should consider buying CPUs that have been on the market for years, if the price is right.
    What you are saying is true, but without knowing what we know now anyone buying an i7-13700K, released in 2022, would also be out of luck despite "buying CPUs that have been on the market for years".
    Reply
  • derekullo
    Alvar Miles Udell said:
    So The issues they suffered for a year on overvolted, overclocked CPUs with apparently dodgy PSUs and heatsinks is somehow Intel's fault?
    It doesn't say they were using dodgy PSUs. (power supply problems, heat dissipation problems, and CPU voltage problems)
    Having the CPU overclocked is also perfectly fine as long as the CPU itself doesn't decide to override your settings and feed the CPU even more voltage causing instability and heat dissipation problems ... which is what the 13/14th gen is/was doing.

    Saving an extra $200 on a cheap PSU doesn't make much sense when each computer potentially costs whatever $3700 in yen is! (Using Alienware r16 as a stand in)
    More than likely each high end computer was ordered with the same model PSU as all the others.

    We have a mixture of 10/11/12/13/14th gen Intel CPUs running at work (public library) on about 900 of our computers. (Mostly i5s so we dodged the bullet!)
    Every few months we will get one that randomly gets an issue and sometimes that issue is with its power supply which is to be expected from our older computers since they are basically never shutdown for anything short of a hurricane.
    What I'm getting at is if they have almost 700 PCs running high wattage hardware, 2-3 power supply issues a year wouldn't be out of the ordinary.
    Reply
  • Amdlova
    People buy new high end nodes and think will last forever...
    old nodes last forever new nodes after some benchmarks or stress tests will degrade.
    It's why they give warranty of 3 years... after that Will only See Sorry...

    With today specs its hard to see when a cpu has degraded bacause has automatic control on voltage.
    drop clocks, mem clocks...
    2600k is working at this moment with OC at day launch in some one house with no problems.
    newer machines make forums be active as hell. My system keep crashing with my amd expo ddr5 over nine thousands HELP!
    Reply
  • derekullo
    Amdlova said:
    People buy new high end nodes and think will last forever...
    old nodes last forever new nodes after some benchmarks or stress tests will degrade.
    It's why they give warranty of 3 years... after that Will only See Sorry...

    With today specs its hard to see when a cpu has degraded bacause has automatic control on voltage.
    drop clocks, mem clocks...
    2600k is working at this moment with OC at day launch in some one house with no problems.
    newer machines make forums be active as hell. My system keep crashing with my amd expo ddr5 over nine thousands HELP!
    One of my older mining rigs has a Ryzen 1500x and 3 Geforce 1060s.
    Still kicking after all these years
    Making a cool 50 cents a day!
    I will honor its life by running it till it dies!
    Reply
  • Amdlova
    redgarl said:
    Even if AMD was on Bulldozer, I would not recommend Intel...
    Got an z690 board and a 14600T for 310us still cheaper than one ryzen 9600x
    Reply