when running on gaming PCs using high-end Intel processors toward the start of this year. As the problem was getting flagged up, things were serious enough for Intel to investigate the problem formally. That's still ongoing but Intel has made an early statement on the matter, in which it's essentially blaming motherboard manufacturers for having default settings in the BIOS/UEFI that allow the CPU to run well past the recommended limits for power and current.
Intel's CPUs have two primary power limits, PL1 and PL2, and the idea behind them is that the former is the maximum power the chip can consume under 'normal' circumstances, whereas the latter allows for more energy to be used, for a limited duration.. That has a PL1 and PL2 of 125 and 253 W respectively, but stick that into most Asus 600/700 series motherboards with MCE enabled, and the processor is given limits of 4095 W.
In other words, Intel has known about this for long enough and has been happy to enjoy the fruits of such settings, i.e. chart-topping performance figures. But now, with customers and retailers complaining about games crashing and chips completely failing, it would seem that Intel is trying to point the finger at motherboard vendors. The reality is both are to blame here.
At the moment, what we're getting are BIOS updates that, in some cases, only do this as an option one has to hunt for to enable.