ASRock motherboard gets 3 CPU killstreak, all Ryzen 9700Xs

Unfortunately, an ASRock motherboard has achieved three kills as it has reportedly damaged three of the same Ryzen CPUs. The information was shared by the unlucky user on a Korean forum and what’s also interesting is that the motherboard in question was examined and cleared by ASRock after the first two damaged CPUs.

User ‘OnOr’ posted on the Quasar Zone forum that the ASRock B850 Pro RS motherboard they were using has claimed a third victim. All three were Ryzen 9700X CPUs and the first two were from AliExpress, purchased back in February. Those two did not come with any warranty so the user could not get them serviced or RMA’d. The third, however, was purchased from a local retailer called Compuzone in August.

Following the third CPU’s demise, the user was able to get it serviced, but is now wondering if they should have swapped the motherboard after the first two kills. What’s interesting is that user had sent the board to ASRock for investigation after the first two CPUs died. At the time, the company said there was nothing wrong with the board and that there are a lot of defective CPUs on AliExpress. The user also mentioned that they always kept the BIOS updated, ran the CPU at stock settings, and did not have XMP enabled.

This isn’t the first report of an ASRock motherboard damaging a Ryzen CPU. Back in February, ASRock had released a BIOS update for its X870, B850, B650, and A620 motherboards to address user complains of Ryzen 7 9800X3D CPUs kicking the bucket. In March, it was reported that another Ryzen 7 9800X3D fell victim to an MSI X870E Tomahawk WiFi motherboard, showing that the occurrence was not limited to ASRock motherboards. Then in April, a Ryzen 9 9950X3D died on an ASRock X870 motherboard.

This latest case shows the ASRock B850 Pro RS as the culprit for claiming three CPUs, something that ASRock must take very seriously if they want to dismiss the ‘avoid ASRock motherboards’ rhetoric.