Tech YouTuber Highlights ASRock X870 Motherboard's "Killing" of His Ryzen 9 9950X CPU

[CronXPX]

It's a shame that this situation will ruin their reputation for years to come.
They're already far behind ASUS, MSI, and Gigabyte in terms of sales, and this drama will put them even further behind.

 

[blinnbanir]

I have a few As Rock boards and have had no issue. It is sad though as we see the total number of failures is less than 1000. How many CPUs has AMD sold in 9000?

 

[ErikG]

A thousand doesn't seem like much, until it happens to you.

Asrock and Asus MB, big NO!

We can only hope that Intel will come with something better and put this Rayzen CPU's in the bin.

 

[bobsled]

A thousand doesn't seem like much, until it happens to you.

Asrock and Asus MB, big NO!

We can only hope that Intel will come with something better and put this Rayzen CPU's in the bin.

So you want Intel to release better CPUs so you don’t have design issues with ASUS and ASRock products. Got it.

Lol.

 

[blinnbanir]

A thousand doesn't seem like much, until it happens to you.

Asrock and Asus MB, big NO!

We can only hope that Intel will come with something better and put this Rayzen CPU's in the bin.

You are looking at the Glass half empty, 1000 is not even close to the number I am referring to from the Charts. What the key is though is how many of these chips have been sold to consumers?

 

[ErikG]

Who cares, I have the same problem and I don't care about charts.

 

[Chrispy_]

I don't think it's bad contact in the socket.

Look at this closeup of the scorched contact pads:

You can see the bright spots (I highlighted a couple in blue) on each pad where the socket pins were making contact with the pads on the CPU - they're bright because the pin contacting the pad masked it off from the smoke residues that dried on the surrounding area. They're not perfectly centred on the pads, but they do fall wholly within the pad and, to my eye, they are perfect electrical connections.

It's not an alignment issue or socket flex issue based on this one particular photo at least - that is solid evidence of exactly where the pins were making contact at time of death, and it's where they were supposed to be. So this PCB burned because there was too much current for the copper traces in this location and it heated up to combustion temperatures.

 

[ErikG]

Asus ROG Crosshair X670E Hero+9800X3D:

Asus Proart X670E+7950X3D:

Lucky, all under warranty.

 

[Caring1]

AMD pushed it too far to compete, they need to reduce the power.

I agree, it's a combination of that and I believe the very high power consumption at idle shown on those boards.

I don't think it's bad contact in the socket.

Look at this closeup of the scorched contact pads:

View attachment 398816

You can see the bright spots (I highlighted a couple in blue) on each pad where the socket pins were making contact with the pads on the CPU - they're bright because the pin contacting the pad masked it off from the smoke residues that dried on the surrounding area. They're not perfectly centred on the pads, but they do fall wholly within the pad and, to my eye, they are perfect electrical connections.

It's not an alignment issue or socket flex issue based on this one particular photo at least - that is solid evidence of exactly where the pins were making contact at time of death, and it's where they were supposed to be. So this PCB burned because there was too much current for the copper traces in this location and it heated up to combustion temperatures.

Or those scorch marks are indicative of arcing between the pads.

 

[DudeBeFishing]

I agree, it's a combination of that and I believe the very high power consumption at idle shown on those boards.


Or those scorch marks are indicative of arcing between the pads.

It looks like the inside of an electrical panel when something pops. I wonder if something got between the pins and caused an arch, like a bug or something.

 

[Mr. Perfect]

This is a picture I got from another forum, but it looks like it's a combination of bad luck, like dust getting in, imperfect contact, etc.View attachment 398803

What CPU model is that? All those back side components rule out the 9000X3D parts. It looks like an older Intel LGA?

 

[Chrispy_]

AMD pushed it too far to compete, they need to reduce the power.

Compete with whom?

Intel aren't even matching their own last-gen performance in gaming, which is who the X3D chips are really aimed at. The 7800X3D runs circles around Intel's best, and the 9800X3D is so far ahead again that they could easily have lopped 200MHz and some voltage off the official spec of the 9800X3D and it would still be the single best gaming CPU by a country mile.

 

[JustBenching]

Compete with whom?

Intel aren't even matching their own last-gen performance in gaming, which is who the X3D chips are really aimed at. The 7800X3D runs circles around Intel's best, and the 9800X3D is so far ahead again that they could easily have lopped 200MHz and some voltage off the official spec of the 9800X3D and it would still be the single best gaming CPU by a country mile.

I had the 9800x 3d (and 14900k), those are not true. Especially when you move out of the gaming performance it's a rofl stomp but whatever, not going to bother with that.

 

[Bobaganoosh]

I found this thread where someone had really good pictures of their CPU and socket showing no damage even though their 9800X3D doesn't boot anymore.

I'm not sure why we're looking at a burned intel chip, but it does look like both ASUS and Gigabyte use a "LOTES" socket while ASRock doesn't. Unless there's some kind of poor contact that causes arcing, I would still suspect the issue behind all this is a voltage issue not a socket issue as it is also present on other boards that aren't ASRock. I was just trying to look at pictures to see if there's any physical difference that would make the ASRock stand out and it was interesting to find that their sockets and backplates are unique compared to other brands.

 

[evernessince]

I had the 9800x 3d (and 14900k), those are not true.

No, he's right. The 9800X3D and it's predecessor beat the 14900K in gaming. That is not deniable, it's a fact.

AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D Review - The Best Gaming Processor

The Ryzen 7 9800X3D establishes AMD as the leader in gaming performance. This Zen 5-based X3D chip is not only fast, it also comes with full support for overclocking. Besides gaming, application performance is considerably improved over the 7800X3D, but that comes at a price.

www.techpowerup.com

Especially when you move out of the gaming performance it's a rofl stomp but whatever, not going to bother with that.

The only metric the 14900K wins in outside of gaming is multi-threaded and that's because you are comparing Intel's flagship to AMD's 8 core part. So yeah congrats, Intel wins when you tie one of AMDs CPU dies behind it's back. It's an illogical comparison designed only to put Intel in a good light as anyone seeking multi-threaded performance will seek higher core count CPUs.

All the above is beside the fact that your earlier comment completely missed what the article is saying, which is astounding given it's in the title. The article only puts forward that failures are higher on AsRock boards, not that the root cause lies in something on AMD's end. We don't know the root cause yet but what we can say is that it appears that AsRock is doing something on some of it's boards that cause higher failure rates. It may well be an AMD issue but we'd first need to see something that confirms that.

The usual individuals were salivating so much at the thought of getting a shot in at AMD that they couldn't be bothers to comprehend the title, read the article, or think for a moment before posting.

 

[TechLurker]

Either AsRock cheaped out or they have an unidentified manufacturing issue (trace quality possibly). It's kind of a shame too; they went from being the bottom-of-the-barrel cheapo ASUS dumping ground to becoming their own competitive company, and this will sting them for a generation or two. That said, personally, I've owned only their Taichi flagships, and have never had any trouble with them. Granted, I also don't really do much OC'ing now; just undervolting and strapping an overkill cooling system.

 

[anonuser57]

From what I remember from when the 7800x3D had this issue. It was entirely AMD's fault, ASUS got most of the flak, and 1 or 2 vendors fixed the bug and it is not clear if they did so because they found the bug or just fixed it by coincidence when making their customizations. I'm guessing this is a repeat but with ASRock getting the worst of it instead of ASUS.

 

[evernessince]

From what I remember from when the 7800x3D had this issue. It was entirely AMD's fault, ASUS got most of the flak, and 1 or 2 vendors fixed the bug and it is not clear if they did so because they found the bug or just fixed it by coincidence when making their customizations. I'm guessing this is a repeat but with ASRock getting the worst of it instead of ASUS.

The original issue was due to some vendors setting too high a vSOC voltage, hence why it predominately impacted boards that would set aggressive vSOC. AMD "fixed" the issue by capping vSOC so that board partners couldn't set too high a voltage.

This would seem to suggest that some board partners are to blame but it's impossible to say with confidence unless we know what voltage guidance AMD gave partners prior to the issue appearing. If AMD's guidance was extremely poor then in turn it would be their fault.

As of right now we don't have that information and thus all parties look culpable. To say it's entirely AMD's fault would be supposition.

Either AsRock cheaped out or they have an unidentified manufacturing issue (trace quality possibly). It's kind of a shame too; they went from being the bottom-of-the-barrel cheapo ASUS dumping ground to becoming their own competitive company, and this will sting them for a generation or two. That said, personally, I've owned only their Taichi flagships, and have never had any trouble with them. Granted, I also don't really do much OC'ing now; just undervolting and strapping an overkill cooling system.

Or it's a firmware bug, or a bad batch of components, or a number of other things. PCs are complicated.

 

[Blurpy]

huh my exact specs thats not good

 

[Icon Charlie]

Well I got to say that I am incredibly impressed with everyones possible solutions to this problem. Keep up with the crowd sourcing of information.

IMHO I am leaning towards the motherboard flexing somehow. I also think that it is not just one area of potential problems but in a combination of areas. So bad batch of components is where I'm going with this.

It used to be you did not have to worry the Weight of the CPU Cooler. Now you have to take a look at it to see just how heavy the thing is and how well the support brackets are made as well as socket of the CPU.

I do take my comment into consideration in all of my builds. But damn... having people spend their hard earned money only to see their cpu and/or Mother fry just plain sucks.

 

[Eskimonster]

Maybe he can save them from going to hell

 

[Chrispy_]

An interesting development from 20 minutes ago:
Asrock SoC voltage anomalies:

Same processor and RAM used for all motherboards, but he went back to retest the SoC voltage issues on another Asrock board to confirm. Take with a pinch of salt, given the small sample size of boards, but it's definitely an Asrock-specific thing for this guy.

 

[TechKilledMe]

Well I got to say that I am incredibly impressed with everyones possible solutions to this problem. Keep up with the crowd sourcing of information.

IMHO I am leaning towards the motherboard flexing somehow. I also think that it is not just one area of potential problems but in a combination of areas. So bad batch of components is where I'm going with this.

It used to be you did not have to worry the Weight of the CPU Cooler. Now you have to take a look at it to see just how heavy the thing is and how well the support brackets are made as well as socket of the CPU.

I do take my comment into consideration in all of my builds. But damn... having people spend their hard earned money only to see their cpu and/or Mother fry just plain sucks.

Do we know how many layers on the PCB AsRock tends to use? I know they tend to be more budget oriented so I wonder if lower layer count plus a worse backplate is contributing.

 

[cal5582]

honestly, i wonder if its just barely making contact, if you are pushing the same amount of current through a lesser surface area it would generate heat.

 

[_roman_]

Asrock SoC voltage anomalies:

Hell NO.

visual Cancer omfg.

4Minutes 34 Seconds. That video guy really thinks that HWINFO, a junk windows Software is measurement.

Get a proper oscilloscope and probes. Let it calibrate properly. Think about the measurement setup and than come again.

Really any teletubbie can make a videochannel these days ans post junk for the masses. "Fake news".

4 Minute 58 SEconds. Windows operating system and hwinfo is not a measurement. I'll not explain why. Basics - look it up when interested. This was discussed too often and proven also.

--

Especially in this case the root cause determination for 8D-Report needs proper measurement. when someone does not know the difference in measurement it's even worse.


The 600.000 youtube subscribers and the usual contents he makes speaks volume. He should have sticked to his usual contents. Air bubble videos about hardware without deep dive. Note: I only checked youtube video preview - not the videos. // Such videos are kinda easy. Read a few reviews and than present it like Hardware unboxed, Linus tech tips and a few other low quality youtube channel do.