If the instability is something that develops over time as a genuine change in behavior of the chip, and not merely an artifact due to the evidence of instability taking time to pile up, then the extreme voltages are by far the most plausible culprit. And if on the other hand these chips are slightly unstable out of the box, despite the high voltages required to hit these peak frequencies and record-setting benchmark scores, it suggests that the clock speeds are being pushed too far.

Either way, the high operating voltages compared to what we see in laptop and server CPUs (and GPUs for any market segment) is worth raising an eyebrow. At a minimum, it's a symptom of the desperation Intel and AMD have for perennially leapfrogging each other in ways that are increasingly irrelevant to the average customer and the rest of their product stack.