AMD Explains Why Motherboard Makers Are At Fault For Burnt AM5 Chips

There have been many reports on AMD CPUs dying, with burnt pins on the socket. It's not frequent or particularly widespread, but naturally it caused concern, particularly among gamers, as the CPUs in question were often Ryzen 7 7800X3D and 9800X3D models. Today, an AMD representative issued a fairly clear statement on that matter.

The quote comes from an interview given by AMD to Korean tech outlet Quasar Zone, and it's fairly clear: "This issue arises because some ODM BIOSes do not adhere to AMD's recommended values [for voltage and current limits]." The term "ODM BIOS" here is referring to motherboard BIOSes. As far as we can tell, AMD's generally right with its statement, but there could be a little more to the story.

As a recap, the situation started with 7800X3D chips occasionally dying, an issue that was eventually tracked to a voltage setting that was far too aggressive across several motherboard brands. That was eventually fixed with a BIOS update, and the mobo makers and AMD were good with processing RMAs for dead hardware. The problem unfortunately returned when the 9800X3D chips arrived. This time around, the reports of crispy chips seemed to revolve around ASRock motherboards, particularly those with the X870/E chipsets.


Once again, the problem was that some voltage/current settings were set too high, and ironically enough, users with sizable liquid coolers on their chips were the ones that had the most trouble, as the added thermal headroom afforded the CPU higher clock speeds, thus higher voltages provided by the board. This too was fixed with a BIOS update from ASRock, version 3.25.

However, in an interview a couple months ago with the Tech Yes City Youtube channel, ASRock reportedly pointed out something interesting: AMD had initially given motherboard makers a list of setting limits for the 98000X3D. ASRock allegedly applied the upper end of those limits, thinking it was all good, but then CPUs started failing, at which point ASRock revised the limits lower to fix the issue.

A contemporary PC has, in practice, hundreds if not thousands of parts working in synchonicity to function properly, and it's only natural the the occasional mistake is made, and both AMD and motherboard makers responded well to the situation. AMD's statement that it's completely the fault of the ODM BIOSes might be a tad exaggerated, though.

Thanks to Quasar Zone for the AMD interview.