There would be no negative press for intel. Everyone with the shlightest knowledge about overclocking knows that overclocking can damage your parts. And like stated, parts breaking without voltage increase is highly unlikely. But still: Assume I buy an Intel Non-K processor, base-overclock it and it breaks. How on earth would I be able to produce negative press for Intel by publishing that?
It's simply a profit optimization. K-processors cost more, people who want to overclock had the option to buy non-K, that reduced sale numbers of the K line. Also the i7-6700 is clocked way below the i7-6700K, it was a nice option to get the cheaper version and up it to K level, saving 100€ for some time (prices changed).
"Everyone with the slightest knowledge about overclocking knows that overclocking can damage your parts."
It is not necessarily about damaging your parts; that would be the least of their worries. Unreliability of the CPU is the real problem. Your CPU might be 20% faster, but if it incorrectly computes some number in your spreadsheet, corrupts the file, or, worse, corrupts your file system without immediate consequences, or, even worse, makes hardware (drone, self-driving car, nuclear facility) behave incorrectly, they will not just have angry customers, but likely also lawsuits started against them (yes, they might win them, but not necessarily easily; people would complain that they should have closed that hole, given that they knew it was misused)
Also, that 'everybody with the slightest knowledge about overclocking knows' is only relevant as long as overclocking remains a niche thing. If it were mainstream, many of its users would not have 'the slightest knowledge about overclocking'. This microcode update helps keep it that way.
> they will not just have angry customers, but likely also lawsuits started against them
Which is why they've prevented over-clocking the whole time, except they haven't.
Their chips that allow over-clocking and the chips that don't are physically the same chips, there's nothing special about them. Intel is doing this only so that you can't buy a cheaper processor and get a more expensive processors performance.
I bought a 600MHz Celeron once, when the range was around 600MHz-1GHz. It overclocked stably to 900MHz. In essence I got a much faster processor for a much lower price. That is what Intel is fighting against, not some mythical lawsuit over life and limb.
There would be no negative press for intel. Everyone with the shlightest knowledge about overclocking knows that overclocking can damage your parts. And like stated, parts breaking without voltage increase is highly unlikely. But still: Assume I buy an Intel Non-K processor, base-overclock it and it breaks. How on earth would I be able to produce negative press for Intel by publishing that?
It's simply a profit optimization. K-processors cost more, people who want to overclock had the option to buy non-K, that reduced sale numbers of the K line. Also the i7-6700 is clocked way below the i7-6700K, it was a nice option to get the cheaper version and up it to K level, saving 100€ for some time (prices changed).
Behavior like that is why I buy AMD.