Enlarge / Intel's high-end Core i9-13900K and 14900K are reportedly having crashing problems in some games. (credit: Andrew Cunningham)

If you own a recent high-end Intel desktop CPU and you've been running into weird game crashes lately, you're not alone.

Scattered reports from Core i9-13900K and i9-14900K users over the last couple of months have pointed to processor power usage as a possible source of crashes even in relatively undemanding games like Fortnite . Games like Hogwarts Legacy , Remnant 2 , Alan Wake 2 , Horizon: Zero Dawn , The Last of Us Part 1 , and Outpost: Infinity Siege have also reportedly been affected ; the problem primarily seems to affect titles made with Epic's Unreal Engine. Intel said in a statement to ZDNet Korea (via The Verge ) that it's looking into the problems, escalating it from an "isolated issue" to something that may be more widespread and could require a more systemic fix.

Related CPUs like the i9-13900KF, i9-14900KF, i9-13900KS, and i9-14900KS may be affected, too, since they're all the same basic silicon. Some user reports have also indicated that the i7-13700K and i7-14700K series may also be affected.

Enlarge (credit: NZXT)

It's a weird time to build a PC. That's partly because fewer people are doing it—sales for parts and prebuilt PCs are down across the industry, as people continue to make do with the stuff they bought early in the pandemic. And GPU prices, while closer to "normal" than they have been over the last two years, are still historically high.

But that doesn't mean it's a bad time to build a PC. Storage and memory are mostly cheap, and you can buy a lot of CPU power for not a lot of money (especially if what you're used to is an older quad-core processor you picked up five or six years ago). Intel and AMD have also released new CPUs since our last system guide update in July , and Intel has finally jumped into the GPU business after years of false starts and delays.

It's as good a time as any for a new version of our PC building guide, so we've put together four different sample builds focused on different budgets and use cases. You can buy the specific components we recommend and get a good, functional PC, or you can use them as starting points and make changes based on what you want and need.