Yet another dead Ryzen 9 9950X3D on an ASRock X870 motherboard reported

The unfortunate streak of dead Ryzen 9000 series CPUs continues as another Ryzen 9 9950X3D has met its demise. A redditor shared a detailed post on the platform explaining the circumstances that resulted in a dead CPU that was recently purchased. Once again, it was an ASRock motherboard that the 9950X3D was sitting on. This incident came less than a week after the company shared an update about damaged CPUs and no boot issues, and how these issues were addressed and/or fixed.

‘I_fliu’ posted on the pcmasterrace subreddit on March 31, stating the AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D CPU they had purchased about three weeks prior from Micro Center, along with the ASRock X870 RS Pro Wifi motherboard, was “fried.” The BIOS was updated to the latest available version, and the CPU was cooled by an AIO. The user did note that the idle temperatures for the CPU stayed around 50 to 58 degrees Celsius, but dropped to 45 degrees at times. While everything seemed normal during the first boot and initial gaming sessions, the user decided to test the capabilities of this rig by gaming on a 4K OLED monitor. After several hours of gaming, the user came back to a powered-off system with just an M.2 light on.

Upon further investigation, the user found that there was a bulge in a small area on the contact points as well as some discolouration in another area. On the ASRock motherboard, there were no bent pins, but some discoloration. They added that the CPU was not overclocked or undervolted, and PMO was disabled.

Responding to this post, another user shared a similar experience with a Ryzen 7 9800X3D and an ASRock X870e RS Pro Wifi motherboard. 

There have been quite a lot of cases of damaged CPUs with ASRock motherboards, and the company investigated some of these cases by obtaining some of the motherboards for thorough inspection. It found that with a system where CPU damage was reported, everything was within spec for the motherboard, and after removing some debris from the socket, the motherboard functioned normally. For the no boot issues, the company stated that the BIOS 3.20 update fixed those issues on Ryzen 9000 series CPUs.

This is not the first 9950X3D CPU that has been damaged when paired with an ASRock motherboard, and users who own Ryzen 9000 series CPUs with select ASRock motherboards are becoming skeptical about their setups. Some users noted that their MSI Tomahawk motherboards have been working just fine with Ryzen 9000 series CPUs, though there have been similar reported cases with those as well.