What just happened? AMD has responded to reports of 108 Ryzen 7 9800X3D CPUs unexpectedly dying in users’ machines, with most of the incidents happening on Asrock motherboards. Team Red blames memory compatibility issues for the processors “failing to complete POST,” even though the affected chips reportedly did pass POST and worked for anything from half an hour to several months before dying, with many cases showing physical damage.
This week saw a Redditor compile a list of 108 Reddit posts involving a Ryzen 7 9800X3D that died, along with 12 other Ryzen 9000-series chips that suffered the same fate. 98 of the failures, or 82%, occurred on Asrock boards. It’s stated that the processors passed POST and worked for varying amounts of time before dying with no signs of failure.
That many instances doesn’t represent a huge number compared to the thousands of Ryzen 7 9800X3D CPUs sold each week – the processor is incredibly popular with gamers, and for good reason. But it’s not an insignificant figure, either, so AMD gave an official response to some outlets.
Also read: AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D Review: The New Gaming CPU King
“We are aware of a limited number of user reports involving Asrock AM5 motherboards failing to complete POST. Following a joint investigation, AMD and Asrock identified a memory compatibility issue present in earlier BIOS versions, which has been rectified in the latest BIOS,” the company wrote, repeating previous statements made by Asrock.
AMD added that failure to POST can be caused by several factors and does not necessarily indicate a non-functional CPU. It recommends that anyone experiencing problems start by updating their BIOS to the latest version for their motherboard. If issues persist, the next step is to contact AMD’s customer support team.
Asrock responded to the reports last week. The company said that it had inspected a motherboard from a system where the CPU showed burn damage. It claimed there was no burn damage around the mobo or VRM area. After “cleaning and removing debris” from the CPU socket, the motherboard booted up successfully with the original BIOS and passed long-term stress tests.
AMD is saying that a memory compatibility issue prevented the CPUs from POSTing, stopping them from working entirely – as one would expect. But the Reddit post states that these problematic chips are passing POST and working for a while before failing, sometimes with electrical or burn damage, which doesn’t sound like a symptom of the issue AMD is blaming.
One can only conclude that AMD’s statement is referring only to the cases where the 9800X3Ds didn’t pass POST, and not those that suffered permanent physical damage. Nevertheless, a lot of user response to the explanation has been negative. It’s possible that the company will follow-up with another statement at a later date.
