For some time now, ASRock motherboards have been getting bad press because of these stories about Ryzen X3Ds dying on them. Since then, bios updates have been published and tests carried out, and nothing… There’s still nothing to pinpoint the cause of these processors’ deaths. Gamers Nexus tried and failed. Now it’s Level1Tech’s turn, and still nothing.
Level1Tech can’t find anything specific about what’s killing Ryzen X3D on ASRock motherboards!
The videographer’s aim is to find something that stands out from the crowd, something that will allow him to state peremptorily that “this is what kills CPUs “. So, the videographer’s test is simple: use a motherboard that has already burned out one CPU to see if it will kill another. He then goes into the bios and applies various parameters, some of which are a bit zany, such as 100% PBO, and… Nothing. Frustrating.
He then identifies several possible causes. The first would be a corrupted bios. This would make the motherboard and CPU impossible to use. However, a reflash or a bios chip change at the after-sales service and you’re back in business. Alternatively, it may come from specific CPU batches. In this case, we’re talking about CF 2449PGE, CF 2448PGE or CF 2502PGE, which seem to be quicker to die. Once again, standby/wake cycles could cause voltage irregularities. And last but not least, the user factor. If you mount your CPU a little too hard, you’ll find that some pins are crushed, contact is poorer and the CPU burns out.
But, once again, we’re talking about limited quantities of CPUs that burn out on these motherboards. On a Reddit thread, we’re talking about a small base reporting 148 CPUs mixing Ryzen 7 9800X3D, Ryzen 9 9700 and Ryzen 9 9950X3D. In reality, we’d need to have a complete listing of dead processors, compare these results with total sales, know which motherboards all these CPUs were used on and with which bios versions, the precise uses, etc., to derive interesting statistics.
In any case, keep your bios up to date, it’s the best way to avoid trouble.
