It appears that Intel has officially discontinued its Performance Tuning Protection Plan (PTPP), an optional support plan which provided specific benefits in addition to Intel’s standard processor warranty. Intel will no longer offer new PTPP plans effective March 1, 2021.
The company has just now posted a message on the official PTPP website. In case you didn’t know, the Performance Tuning Protection Plan (PTPP) was an additional plan to cover processor failures caused by operating the eligible processor outside of Intel’s published specifications.
The plan did not affect the CPU’s standard warranty though.
The standard warranty was used to cover failures that occurred while the processor was used within Intel’s published specification. The Performance Tuning Protection Plan on the other hand covered an eligible processor that failed due to overclocking/OC.
PTPP was like a bonus insurance plan which offered protection from damage that occurred during overclocking of any eligible K-series Intel processor. Serious overclockers didn’t have to worry much about their CPU dying due to heavy overclocking, which gave them some peace of mind as well.
The plan required a small additional fee, and Intel would issue you a replacement chip to cover damage done due to overclocking within the warranty period.
The plans typically would cost between $19.99 and $29.99, and the pricing varied depending on the processor that was purchased. Moreover, if a processor was overclocked using Intel’s Extreme Memory Profile/XMP, the PTP plan covered the processor but not the memory.
If any eligible processor failed due to overclocking and required a replacement, then when requesting a return/RMA you just had to provide Intel the activation code. But now Intel has officially retired the PTPP feature, giving it an End of Life/EOL status.
According to Intel, the reason behind the discontinuation was that gamers/customers these days increasingly overclock their CPUs with confidence, so the company was seeing much lower demand for the Performance Tuning Protection Plans (PTPP), hence decided to end official support.
However, Intel will continue focusing on delivering amazing processors with tuning flexibility and overclocking tools like Intel Performance Maximizer and Intel XTU.
According to the official press statement/notice, the Intel Xeon W-3175X processor is still automatically covered for damage done as a result of heavy overclocking. No additional plan or activation code is required, so W-3175X owners have nothing to worry about.
But that’s a $3000 server/enterprise CPU, and it seems a bit odd for Intel to offer support for any damage done due to OC on this particular SKU.
For gaming/consumer CPUs, you won’t be getting such a plan in future though. However, users with existing plans are still covered as Intel will offer a “replacement” until the warranty period is over.
Stay tuned for more tech news!
Hello, my name is NICK Richardson. I’m an avid PC and tech fan since the good old days of RIVA TNT2, and 3DFX interactive “Voodoo” gaming cards. I love playing mostly First-person shooters, and I’m a die-hard fan of this FPS genre, since the good ‘old Doom and Wolfenstein days.
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