These are QS chips - Qualification Samples . These are not quite production grade chips and there could be some undocumented errata , additional feature sets or issues cause by the lack of regulatory approval , which might cause System instability or errors in processing data . For commercial operations , these risks are too great .
Keep in mind , if they were identical to production grade chips , why not simply label them as such ? Intel doesn't .
As a System Builder , I would not use them .
If you use it for strictly gaming ( why don't you buy a Windows PC if you are interested in only games ? I have a dedicated PC running Windows for gaming - just got done playing Fallout on a lazy Sunday afternoon ) there should be no great concern .
If you sell this System with this upgraded chip in the future , you owe it to the next owner to engage in full disclosure that you installed a QS chip . It might profile as a production grade chip , but not quite act like one .
There's also the slight issue of legalities . This chip cannot be legally sold and is always the property of Intel . This is another reason why a commercial operation wouldn't be interested in having this chip installed in a System .
Every now and then someone gets the bright idea to sell a lot of engineering and qualification samples ( always the sole property of Intel ) , only to have the cops show up on their doorstep .
