5950x and PBO overheated something or busted custom loop?

[A Computer Guy]

During custom loop disassembly I noticed a small screw fell onto my workbench. Here I finally found out where it came from. Was holding the I/O shround

All B550 and X570s offer a single x16 lane of PCIe 4.0. If you're referring to the second x16 slot, it looks to be wired electrically for x4 on most of these boards.

Practically, the only thing the X570 offers is a second 4.0 x4 NVMe slot, the B550 will only have one 4.0 slot. If you don't need that, you won't lose out with B550.

X570 and B550 Steel Legend have no BIOS flashback so if somehow you get old stock without a bootable BIOS for 5950X, you'll have to return it. Fortunately that should be exceedingly unlikely for both boards, since they've always been popular boards moving a lot of stock. PG Velocita does have BIOS flashback, all things considered it isn't that bad of a deal at the $210 sale price, since it is also a 6-layer board over the 4-layer (albeit excellent 4-layer) Steel Legend.

PG Velocita also had the 2.5GB network interface which I might end up making use of in the future although I'm unsure of the quality of the chip.

Getting the monoblock off is a real PITA. So I use this little tool to wedge in between the cpu and block when wiggling the block to help break the bond so I don't rip the CPU out of the socket.

 

[tabascosauz]

PG Velocita also had the 2.5GB network interface which I might end up making use of in the future although I'm unsure of the quality of the chip.

Can't say anything about the E3100. Killer (now Intel) had a horrible reputation all around on 1Gbe, and I think only one other AM4 board has 2.5Gbe Killer.

Realtek 2.5Gbe (RTL8125) is everywhere and solid (must have had like 4 or 5 boards with it now), as long as it's not the Dragon "gaming" variant (RTL8125BG). Intel i225 had a lot of problems at launch, should be much better now.

 

[A Computer Guy]

The CPU socket was melted in on the edge of the CPU. Took some very careful prying to get the CPU out.

EK blocks are solid performers but generally stupid expensive. If you can get one on the cheap, do it. Finding ANY top tier blocks for a reasonable price is next to impossible now and considering they are all within a couple of degrees of one another, your down to cs, warranty and trust.
You can't go wrong with primochill lrt. Its easily the best soft tubing I've ever used and I've tried just about all of them. If your a miser (like me) or know exactly what you need, ppcs sells it by the foot to save a few bucks.

But man, I'm truly shocked that Asrock jacked that mb up like that! Pulling that kind of bs is criminal in my book, particularly if it damaged other gear. I look forward to seeing what your cooked vrms look like in that morbid geeky way we all enjoy. I especially look forward to your posting said pics/results and your story to their social media pages. If for nothing else than to see what they have to say about the vrm bs. If they respond at all. Probably the latter I'm guessing.
GL with the mb search!

I'm thinking of opening a support ticket with them. Maybe if I get lucky they will send me an x470 Tiachi but I really doubt it.

The first cleaning - no joy.

The last farewell before disassembly

This little drain valve I installed last month was great. 2/3 of the loop drained fast. Good enough that I could quickly disconnect all the blocks and plug all the ports.

The wife forced me to have a lunch break.

Disconnected enough hoses to get the GPU and motherboard out.

Darn you Corsair... RGB madness!

 

[maxfly]

3 washes later.... it cleaned up nicely, looks like 1 pin lost a bit of gold.
View attachment 256443

View attachment 256442

The monoblock VRM thermal pads were intact but you can see that the mounting pressure in the middle looks insufficient for the thermal pad thickness EK recommended.

View attachment 256444

Here is a image of the rear side of the board
View attachment 256445

Another angle of the topside (in sunlight)

View attachment 256446

During my teardown I'd figure I'd capture an image of how I keep my RGB extension cables from falling apart using 4 zip ties.

View attachment 256447

Using slim fans at the bottom of 011D when ATX motherboard is installed you can see how it gives you some comfortable room at the bottom of the case for cable access.
View attachment 256449

Woohoo! Your proc actually looks ALOT better than I thought it would ever get! The way the socket was melted I didn't think there was any way in hell it would survive. Now? There may be some hope for it afterall!

Those vrm blocks on the other hand. Lesson learned- always, always dry fit your blocks.
Have you checked those vrm blocks for flatness? Im dieing to know what they look like. I can't imagine mounting pressure alone could have caused them or the mb to pull away/bow like that. Unless that mb pcb is made of friggin paper, they should have made better contact than a gpu block. If they are in fact as bowed as they look. I wonder if you can send some pictures to EK and see what they have to say?

Wow. That mbs ovp/ocp sure did its job lol. It just let whatever voltage went nuts, go right on cooking!
You were lucky to have cut power when you did.

 

[Valantar]

Any pics of the socket/pcb after the CPU was removed? From what little I can tell of that shot of the CPU installed, it looks like some traces on the motherboard overheated? That's, uh, disturbing. Also, if the socket plastic melted... that plastic is very, very heat resistant - it needs to withstand not only a hot CPU, but its large pin array being soldered to the board, i.e. >230°C (the melting point of unleaded solder) for short periods of time. If the PCB has started melting? That's several hundred degrees C.

 

[A Computer Guy]

Woohoo! Your proc actually looks ALOT better than I thought it would ever get! The way the socket was melted I didn't think there was any way in hell it would survive. Now? There may be some hope for it afterall!

The CPU was only 80 some degrees when I flipped the switch so I am hopeful but the time from the puff of smoke to the off button still could have been a kill shot.

Those vrm blocks on the other hand. Lesson learned- always, always dry fit your blocks.
Have you checked those vrm blocks for flatness? Im dieing to know what they look like. I can't imagine mounting pressure alone could have caused them or the mb to pull away/bow like that. Unless that mb pcb is made of friggin paper, they should have made better contact than a gpu block. If they are in fact as bowed as they look. I wonder if you can send some pictures to EK and see what they have to say?

Previously I didn't but now that I am looking at them they do have so ever small a curve. The VRM mounts were tricky because you could crank down on them too much and warp the board in the process so it was a bit of a balancing act. I did dry fit them each time calibrating roughly how tight I needed the screws to make impressions in the pad. It's difficult to see but most of the VRM's chips do have an ever so slight impression in the pad. Clearly though I did need to use a thicker pad in retrospect for better contact in the middle.

Wow. That mbs ovp/ocp sure did its job lol. It just let whatever voltage went nuts, go right on cooking!
You were lucky to have cut power when you did.

I should have just stopped and inspected for damage the first time but I was impatient and trying to see if I could get quick readouts on the VRM and Water temps before tearing it down for inspection. The VRM temps spiked hugely the 2nd time around and was very fast likely in part because of the damage already done from the first attempt.

Any pics of the socket/pcb after the CPU was removed? From what little I can tell of that shot of the CPU installed, it looks like some traces on the motherboard overheated? That's, uh, disturbing. Also, if the socket plastic melted... that plastic is very, very heat resistant - it needs to withstand not only a hot CPU, but its large pin array being soldered to the board, i.e. >230°C (the melting point of unleaded solder) for short periods of time. If the PCB has started melting? That's several hundred degrees C.

Yes I posted pics of that early in the thread. Here https://www.techpowerup.com/forums/...busted-custom-loop.297316/page-2#post-4804460

 

[freeagent]

I feel terrible about what happened to your hardware

That pizza looks really good though..

 

[phill]

Any plans for your next steps? What you plan on getting/doing?

 

[A Computer Guy]

Any plans for your next steps? What you plan on getting/doing?

I have two ideas

1) Just get a replacement board for my daily driver.

I already have quite an investment around my 011D case so getting something with that is my best option to spend the least amount of cash.
If my 5950x is toast I can still fall back to my 3950x and just wait for the AM5 platform to mature a bit and reconsider my options.

Thinking about the following options more and what fits best for my current setup.

a) - https://www.newegg.com/asrock-x570-steel-legend-wifi-ax/p/N82E16813157894
not a fan of some of the color scheme for the shrouds but some spray paint can fix that
does not have USBC header for 011D ( I didn't have one for the Master SLI/ac so not much of a loss )
this is reasonably priced and seems basically a matching replacement feature for feature (or even a bit better) for what I had plus better VRM
Still considering this

b) - https://www.newegg.com/asrock-x570-taichi/p/N82E16813157883?Item=N82E16813157883
USBC header likely unusable because of conflicting position with graphics card
older and perhaps a more proven and reliable series, but also priced a bit higher
has more layers than steel legend, higher quality PCB?
I am heavy leaning in this direction as a replacement

c) - https://www.newegg.com/asus-prime-x570-pro/p/N82E16813119196R
I might consider this Asus board.

c) - https://www.newegg.com/asrock-x570-pg-velocita/p/N82E16813157969?Item=N82E16813157969
unsure about the quality of the Killer E3100G 2.5GB LAN, I've seen some complaints, nice on paper and good a nice to have if it really works well, if junk then worst case scenario get addin card for LAN
nahimic audio, my ITX board has this and it broke with windows update so non-working feature I don't want to pay for
a bit cheaper than Tiachi, the chipset fan is unobstructed so also easy to clean too

2) Take my home server ASRock B450m Pro4 (rev1) R5-2700 and swap in the 5950x/3950x into that and repurpose that as my daily driver.

It's basically setup and all ready to go other than swapping out the CPU, I have to wait for my CPU waterblock to arrive for that.
According to https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet...qVxdCR9daIVNyMatydkpFA/htmlview#gid=639584818
this should be doable with 3950x (no PBO or overclocking of course) but I will have some all core workloads so I worry if that is really feasible with this board.
I kind of don't want to bother with this option but at the same time have been eyeing this board in the below link off and on as a home server board.
- https://www.newegg.com/asrock-rack-...eneration-series-processors/p/N82E16813140023
Get this board to possibly replace home server (b450m) this since the price is back down but it lacks of rear USB is a bit of problem.
I already have one PCIe slot adding 8 sata ports might have to get a USB3 card.

Any plans for your next steps? What you plan on getting/doing?

I also created a support ticket with ASRock although I have no expectations of anything happening.

 

[Mussels]

Yea I'm just grinding my teeth now because I really dislike the x570 chipset fan.
https://www.newegg.com/asrock-x570-pg-velocita/p/N82E16813157969 is on my mind a the moment and one of the more recent x570 boards.

It's not as bad as early reports made it seem

A few early shitty boards had no RPM control, that was the Asus Tuf amongst others

Then asus screwed up the X570-E and -F with a nasty therma pad - quick replacement for 10C+ drop and 1K less RPM on the fan
That said, even at 3K RPM it was inaudible


Definitely get something with BIOS flashback, theres a lot of good boards - and a lot of X570S options (or asus just slapping II at the end, despite being x570S) with all the benefits of B550 as well (passive cooled, newer wifi/eth chipsets)

And seriously, that board was more cooked than the pizza


and the pizza looked cooked

 

[A Computer Guy]

And seriously, that board was more cooked than the pizza

The smell was really bad. Still after cleaning the CPU several times today it still smells like burned plastic and/or pcb. Really annoying.

 

[maxfly]

The smell was really bad. Still after cleaning the CPU several times today it still smells like burned plastic and/or pcb. Really annoying.

Bleh, good ol burned electronics. Kicks up its feet and sets up house in your nose smell.

 

[tabascosauz]

I have two ideas

2) Take my home server ASRock B450m Pro4 (rev1) R5-2700 and swap in the 5950x/3950x into that and repurpose that as my daily driver.

The Pro4 is literally a 3-phase doubled Vcore. The other 3 phases are wasted on SOC. Your K4 was at least a 4-phase Vcore, and with bigger heatsinks. Exact same Sinopower garbage on both boards.

Does the Pro4 at least have a software-visible temp sensor embedded near the mosfets so you can keep an eye on things? If you still run watercooling it'll be pretty much mandatory to strap a ghetto fan to the heatsinks, lest you wanna end up the same way as the K4. Even at 142W, it's a big ask of a 3-phase.

If you're looking to save a buck, I don't see any reason why you need these X570 boards. You don't have multiple 4.0 NVMes, and all the boards you're looking at have direct almost copy-paste B550 counterparts at lower prices. Completely removes the worry about cleaning the PCH fan as well.

Taichi is a stout board, and that price ain't bad either. No way the PG velocita is a good deal over the Taichi.

 

[Valantar]

Yes I posted pics of that early in the thread. Here https://www.techpowerup.com/forums/...busted-custom-loop.297316/page-2#post-4804460

That is ... such a strange place on the socket for that to happen. There aren't any high current voltage lines in that area, just some (of many, many) vSOC pins, and a bunch of data lines of various types. Makes me wonder if this wasn't actually power related at all, though that seems unlikely.

 

[Mussels]

That is ... such a strange place on the socket for that to happen. There aren't any high current voltage lines in that area, just some (of many, many) vSOC pins, and a bunch of data lines of various types. Makes me wonder if this wasn't actually power related at all, though that seems unlikely.

custom loop, coulda had leakies. it happens.

Now OP just has to decide what type of board they want, to avoid poopy VRM shenanigans for round two.
Find your top 3 boards and let us argue over them?

 

[harm9963]

When I first got my 5950X , it went into ASUS X470 PRO, was temporally , like a month , since then ,over a year + with a ASUS DARK HERO X570 , best combination for me , never use PBO , only DOCS .

 

[ThrashZone]

Hi,
Stay the hell away from asus prime it's just a bloated pos

1-B is best route.

 

[A Computer Guy]

Hi,
Stay the hell away from asus prime it's just a bloated pos

1-B is best route.

Does that include this?
https://www.newegg.com/asus-prime-x570-pro/p/N82E16813119196R

It was looking at it as an interesting alternative to x570 Tiachi. I had a great experience with at Asus P5E-WS Pro and Core-2 Quad Q6600. Ran it for about 10 years before a forced Win10 update destroyed my RAID-6 driver reliability and that's when I took a look at AM4 after skipping the 1st gen Zen.

 

[freeagent]

Sorry about the pizza comment, I was hungry and just getting ready to bbq.

Really hungry..

American food looks good

 

[A Computer Guy]

Now OP just has to decide what type of board they want, to avoid poopy VRM shenanigans for round two.
Find your top 3 boards and let us argue over them?

Here is what I've got. The some requirements are:
- Must support ECC so I can reuse my current RAM (64GB minimum)
- Plenty of USB3 ports, at least 6 (must include 1 USB-C)
- At least 1 internal USB2 port
- At least 2 M.2 (2 NVMe or 1 NVMe + 1 SATA)

1) https://www.newegg.com/asrock-x570-taichi/p/N82E16813157883?Item=N82E16813157883
Would go with this if I can't find a more compelling board near the same price point.
$220 doesn't sound unreasonable considering I'm gonna put my 5950x or 3950x into it no matter what and keep it for many years (until it dies)
While I'm inclined to trust the Tiachi line it hasn't been completely without issues (looking at you x470 Tiachi)
Pros: Has the 3rd M.2 which I could actually really use with the limited space in 011D.

2) https://www.newegg.com/asrock-x570-steel-legend-wifi-ax/p/N82E16813157894
The price point is hard to argue with but doesn't have bios flashback. I did pretty well not bricking my Master SLI/ac in terms of BIOS/UEFI updates (I've been though most of them including several betas) But personally I think BIOS flashback should have been a standard feature across all AM4 boards given the insane number of updates the eco system produced.

3) https://www.newegg.com/asus-prime-x570-pro/p/N82E16813119196R
I'm willing to try Asus again but unsure of their ECC support
This one has a header for external temp sensor.

At this point I'm sifting through user reviews of these boards trying to find any gotchas that would disqualify them.

The Pro4 is literally a 3-phase doubled Vcore. The other 3 phases are wasted on SOC. Your K4 was at least a 4-phase Vcore, and with bigger heatsinks. Exact same Sinopower garbage on both boards.

Good point. It flusters me why that spreadsheet put the green checkmark in for that board. I'm inclined to believe it that was a mistake.

Sorry about the pizza comment, I was hungry and just getting ready to bbq.

Really hungry..

American food looks good

No problem. It was 1 of 2 slightly humorous elements I put in the thread. Challenge: Can anyone find the 2nd?

Potential dislikes Tiachi
- USB-C front panel header location conflict with GPU making it useless to use for my 011D (sad but not a show stopper)
- Chipset fan position blocked or partially blocked by GPU (since my GPU uses a block this seems a non-issue)
- The "Armor" is a big chunk and requires removing GPU to get to the M.2 (annoying but not a showstopper)

Major Question is the extra 4 pin for the CPU power still unnecessary?
This guy says you need it

Potential dislikes Steel Legend
- Chipset fan position blocked or partially blocked by GPU (since my GPU uses a block this seems a non-issue)
- The "Armor" is a big chunk and requires removing GPU to get to the M.2 (annoying but not a showstopper)

 

[tabascosauz]

Here is what I've got. The some requirements are:
- Must support ECC so I can reuse my current RAM (64GB minimum)
- Plenty of USB3 ports, at least 6 (must include 1 USB-C)
- At least 1 internal USB2 port
- At least 2 M.2 (2 NVMe or 1 NVMe + 1 SATA)

1) https://www.newegg.com/asrock-x570-taichi/p/N82E16813157883?Item=N82E16813157883
Would go with this if I can't find a more compelling board near the same price point.
$220 doesn't sound unreasonable considering I'm gonna put my 5950x or 3950x into it no matter what and keep it for many years (until it dies)
While I'm inclined to trust the Tiachi line it hasn't been completely without issues (looking at you x470 Tiachi)
Pros: Has the 3rd M.2 which I could actually really use with the limited space in 011D.

2) https://www.newegg.com/asrock-x570-steel-legend-wifi-ax/p/N82E16813157894
The price point is hard to argue with but doesn't have bios flashback. I did pretty well not bricking my Master SLI/ac in terms of BIOS/UEFI updates (I've been though most of them including several betas) But personally I think BIOS flashback should have been a standard feature across all AM4 boards given the insane number of updates the eco system produced.

3) https://www.newegg.com/asus-prime-x570-pro/p/N82E16813119196R
I'm willing to try Asus again but unsure of their ECC support
This one has a header for external temp sensor.

At this point I'm sifting through user reviews of these boards trying to find any gotchas that would disqualify them.


Good point. It flusters me why that spreadsheet put the green checkmark in for that board. I'm inclined to believe it that was a mistake.

Unless you have LN2 planned for your 3950X/5950X, you will never need a second 4-pin or 8-pin for AM4, full stop. Thick pin 8-pin of the kind they use now can take something like 350W.

Which spreadsheet are you looking at? There's this one that covers everything except newer B550/X570S boards and the Unify-X. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet...YZiW1pfiDZnKCjaXyzd1o/htmlview#gid=2112472504

I don't look at VRM lists that make vague recommendations based on guesses of current handling capability. VRM thermal performance has way too many factors to broadly shoehorn a bunch of boards into one category.

 

[A Computer Guy]

Unless you have LN2 planned for your 3950X/5950X, you will never need a second 4-pin or 8-pin for AM4, full stop. Thick pin 8-pin of the kind they use now can take something like 350W.

LN2 is way out of my league. Won't be doing that anytime soon.

Which spreadsheet are you looking at? There's this one that covers everything except newer B550/X570S boards and the Unify-X. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet...YZiW1pfiDZnKCjaXyzd1o/htmlview#gid=2112472504

I don't look at VRM lists that make vague recommendations based on guesses of current handling capability. VRM thermal performance has way too many factors to broadly shoehorn a bunch of boards into one category.

I was looking at this one but I don't know how realistic it is other than to warn about potential unreasonable CPU/Motherboard configurations.

AM4 Vcore VRM Ratings v1.4 (2019-11-07) - Google Drive

docs.google.com

I don't think I answered your prior question...

The Pro4 is literally a 3-phase doubled Vcore. The other 3 phases are wasted on SOC. Your K4 was at least a 4-phase Vcore, and with bigger heatsinks. Exact same Sinopower garbage on both boards.

Does the Pro4 at least have a software-visible temp sensor embedded near the mosfets so you can keep an eye on things? If you still run watercooling it'll be pretty much mandatory to strap a ghetto fan to the heatsinks, lest you wanna end up the same way as the K4. Even at 142W, it's a big ask of a 3-phase.

I'm not sure about the temp sensor. Normally I wouldn't have considered sticking the 3950x into the B450 Pro4 but since I have the CPU lying around I pondered the notion of it to have something operating close to what I was using sooner, while I wait for the replacement motherboard. I stopped considering that option when you pointed out the fact the VRM is the same trash and less phases.

 

[tabascosauz]

I'm not sure about the temp sensor. Normally I wouldn't have considered sticking the 3950x into the B450 Pro4 but since I have the CPU lying around I pondered the notion of it to have something operating close to what I was using sooner, while I wait for the replacement motherboard. I stopped considering that option when you pointed out the fact the VRM is the same trash and less phases.

Short term should be fine if you need your computer up and running. Crank up the case airflow, point a 92mm fan at the heatsinks, maybe avoid all-core and consider Eco mode/lower PPT or disabling 1 CCD turning it into a 3700X if you have high ambients. Especially if you're like me on the west coast in the middle of a heatwave.

 

[maxfly]

It wouldn't be a bad idea to take your 5950x on a test ride anyhow...just to be sure nothing wonky happens.

 

[A Computer Guy]

It wouldn't be a bad idea to take your 5950x on a test ride anyhow...just to be sure nothing wonky happens.

Perhaps I'll test ECO mode with 5950x on the B450m just to to see if it still works. If that board blows up I won't miss it but I can't blow it up just yet until I have the replacement up and working.