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Is my CPU dead?

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Bit of a long story.

A few months ago I built my first Ryzen build. I had a B550 Aorus Pro board with a Ryzen 9 3900X tamed by a NH-D15. Corsair Vengeance LPX 3200 CL16 RAM.

Recently, I upgraded the RAM to some 2x 16GB G.Skill Ripjaws V 3600 CL16 kit. And everything worked just fine. I was even able to increase the DRAM frequency to 3733 and pass several passes of Memtest86 without issues.

Problems started appearing immediately after I messed with the timings. Instead of leaving the default XMP timings (16-19-19-39) and DRAM frequency at 3733, I set about tightening the timings with the DRAM frequency still at 3733.

That went horribly wrong, my system rebooted several times until I managed to get into the BIOS, which was now freezing about 5 seconds in. Sometimes instantly. Instead of shutting the PC off from the PSU when this happened, I shut it off from the power button.

Then after several reboots, it wouldn't post at all and it was stuck on CPU.

Keep in mind I did not mess with any CPU settings in the bios. All on auto. All voltages, including SoC, on auto. DRAM voltage was 1.35v.

I then returned the board (and surprisingly got a refund), and now have a ROG Strix B550-F on the way.

The last thing I saw on that board was the CPU debug light being active, all fans at full blast. No CMOS resets, CMOS jumpers, anything, worked to reset the BIOS. DualBIOS didn't trigger. QFlash didn't work either. Thanks, Gigabyte.

I thought all that would happen if you got the timings wrong was either automatically reverting back to the working settings or no POST, which the latter can be fixed with a CMOS reset. But nothing worked in my case.

So, my question is... Did I kill my CPU by messing with the RAM timings? Is it gone, or did I just corrupt the BIOS? The RAM still works fine as I'm currently using it in my backup Intel build.
 
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probably just dead mobo. It is possible that it killed the CPU on the way out, but generally that's not easy to do.
 
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I reckon mobo
whoever you cant blame it on gigabye
you messed with timings your paying consequences gigabyte dont promise you can oc
 

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I reckon mobo
whoever you cant blame it on gigabye
you messed with timings your paying consequences gigabyte dont promise you can oc

Lets play fair. A CMOS reset should have allowed it to return to functional.
 
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Did you manually set the Infinity Fabric Frequency and divider to 1866mhz in the AMD Overclocking TAB ? if so then the BIOS is bricked.
Don't do anything in the AMD overclocking TAB without testing that they are stable first.

 
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Try the CPU in another mobo. I've done very very bad things to CPU's in the past 21+ years and only managed to kill one of them (It was under warranty and AMD replaced it. That was in 2001). If you didn't change any CPU voltages odds are it's OK.
 
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I'm wondering if the I.F. could be faulty enough to brick the CPU.
 
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Try the CPU in another mobo. I've done very very bad things to CPU's in the past 21+ years and only managed to kill one of them (It was under warranty and AMD replaced it. That was in 2001). If you didn't change any CPU voltages odds are it's OK.
if you had read the post, he has another board on the way.
 
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Yeahhh, I kind of messed up the IF in the AMD overclocking tab. My bad. I guess I did brick the board. Better than a dead CPU!

However. I hope the IF setting I set in the BIOS doesn't carry over to another board?
 
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New board should work, the Aorus B550 doesn't have dual BIOS so you were out of luck there, lesson learned :D
 
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New board should work, the Aorus B550 doesn't have dual BIOS so you were out of luck there, lesson learned :D
Lesson learned to no longer buy Gigabyte to be honest, I only had issues with that board outside of OC. Let's hope the Asus board treats me right

But yeah. I'll just be enabling XMP profile and overclocking something that isn't the RAM next time.
 
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Lesson learned to no longer buy Gigabyte to be honest, I only had issues with that board outside of OC. Let's hope the Asus board treats me right

But yeah. I'll just be enabling XMP profile and overclocking something that isn't the RAM next time.
You probably did but I will ask anyway. Did you reset the BIOS on the board?
This may not be the CPU but the MOBO which doesn't agree with the CPU due to RAM timings. I wouldn't cross out the CPU yet.
 
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New board should work, the Aorus B550 doesn't have dual BIOS so you were out of luck there, lesson learned :D
Dual bios (Gigabyte) only kicks in during a bad flash and you bricked the other bios by turning off the power. The system automatically goes to the default bios which would have the original bios revision.

@OP - The Infinity Fabric and controller are in the Cpu, not on the board. You have just as much chance bricking a Cpu with unlawful IF overclocking. Hope the new board works though.
 
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You probably did but I will ask anyway. Did you reset the BIOS on the board?
This may not be the CPU but the MOBO which doesn't agree with the CPU due to RAM timings. I wouldn't cross out the CPU yet.
I did try everything to reset the bios except resetting it in the BIOS GUI itself since it was freezing 5 seconds in.

@OP - The Infinity Fabric and controller are in the Cpu, not on the board. You have just as much chance bricking a Cpu with unlawful IF overclocking. Hope the new board works though.
Greeaaaat...
 
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I bricked my board's BIOS too many times, by messing around a lot with RAM subsystem. Speeds, voltages, timings. Not the CPU cores but IF, VSOC/UMC, DRAM.
Unfortunately on early BIOS versions (first 3~4 months) the board didnt reset itself to the second BIOS that is present.
Clear CMOS didnt work. Not remember what Debug led was on.
The only thing that worked to get it back functional again was to use the "Q-Flash Plus" button and load the whatever BIOS version was in the flash drive.

After that, by 2020 I guess they fixed it on newer BIOS versions and now it doesnt get bricked. Just reseting on defaults after 2~3 attempts and start again if I do anything stupid with the settings. I even try a week ago to boot with 1933MHz on 1:1:1 mode. It just got auto reset to defaults after 2 boot attempts.
 
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Can somebody confirm that a Ryzen can be bricked by setting unstable IF values? Will a new board not fix this?
 
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Can somebody confirm that a Ryzen can be bricked by setting unstable IF values? Will a new board not fix this?
Im not sure, but I dont think that any setting is stored on the CPU and can get it messed like that. Like a board BIOS.

Just to crarify...
When you wrote on OP that "QFlash didn't work either"...
...you mean the Q-Flash Plus button?
With a flash drive (FAT32) on white usb port, loaded with a BIOS file named gigabyte.bin?
 
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I think in my panic I didn't put it in the right slot and have the file renamed...
Well that sucks (the predicament)...
Too bad, and I have the thought that B550 AorusPro is a nice board.

Why didnt you ask here for advise?

Any way, whats done is done... I hope you enjoy your system now with the new board.
 
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The CPU can't be bricked. the I/O on the CPU cannot be changed. You don't set anything in the CPU but the motherboard which communicates with it. The I/O on the CPU adjusts to the speed of the RAM and that is all.
 
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Just a bad board, nothing to do with IF or ram timings, just coincidental bad timing, excuse the pun
 
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If the CPU still works that is
Unless you put some crazy levels of voltage I think it will.
Just a bad board, nothing to do with IF or ram timings, just coincidental bad timing, excuse the pun
Please read again from #15 and below. The board probably wasnt bad. The OP may not have done the right procedure to flash BIOS with Q-Flash Plus button.
 
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I haven't messed with the voltages at all. Every voltage related setting was on auto. Only DRAM voltage to 1.35v, as recommended.

And, I just got info that the Infinity Fabric settings are stored on a volatile flash memory chip that's powered by the CMOS battery, not the CPU. Technically, the CPU should work on a new board... I don't know what to believe anymore
 
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Dunno what the difference is but I never bricked my x570, if anything was wrong it would simply refuse to boot 3 times and then revert to defaults automatically.
 
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