Third Ryzen 7 9800X3D burnout case appears, kills the CPU, and damages the motherboard socket

Ryzen 7 9800X3D
(Image credit: Reddit/t0pli)

Yesterday, on the PCMR subreddit, u/t0pli posted a photograph of a Ryzen 7 9800X3D, one of the best CPUs, with visibly damaged pin contacts and a motherboard socket scuffed in the same place.

This is the third report of a Ryzen 7 9800X3D burnout, although the two previous cases were on MSI X870 motherboards. Redditor u/t0pli's Ryzen 7 9800X3D was reportedly paired with an ASRock Nova x870E motherboard and had worked perfectly fine for the past three weeks until suddenly and spontaneously failing one day. The failure prompted the user to share the photographs and subsequent Reddit posting.

The incident could be an apparent case of the CPU failing. It happens more than you think. Considering how long the Ryzen 7 9800X3D worked before the burnout, it's a high possibility. Nonetheless, some further details reported by the user could point toward different issues.

For one, debris with differing colors from the surrounding environment seems to be stuck in the field of pins. The foreign material between the CPU and CPU pins could have contributed to a short-out. However, concluding what got stuck in the CPU socket is hard. It is possible that the electric error was severe enough to cause discoloration and material warping without any debris.

Another possible cause of the failure is a bent pin. The AM5 socket may have had one or two bent pins, which the user may have missed during installation. A bent pin touching the wrong CPU contact can also cause a short-out and explain the burn marks.

The Redditor confirmed that he only enabled the AMD EXPO profile for his memory. We can't definitely say EXPO was the culprit until the system is analyzed. However, there is a precedent of EXPO and SoC voltages killing previous Ryzen 7000 chips. However, those issues have been resolved, so that's not likely the case here with the Ryzen 7 9800X3D.

Whatever the situation truly is, with the PC being sent to a repair shop to determine RMA status at the time of writing, it still seems odd that the CPU would enjoy seamless operation for a whole three weeks before spontaneously having a few pins melt and explode, especially if foreign material was already inside the CPU socket when it was mounted. One would reasonably assume that whatever the problem was here, it should result in a complete system crash much sooner than it did.

Christopher Harper
Contributing Writer

Christopher Harper has been a successful freelance tech writer specializing in PC hardware and gaming since 2015, and ghostwrote for various B2B clients in High School before that. Outside of work, Christopher is best known to friends and rivals as an active competitive player in various eSports (particularly fighting games and arena shooters) and a purveyor of music ranging from Jimi Hendrix to Killer Mike to the Sonic Adventure 2 soundtrack.

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  • edzieba
    It is possible that the electric error was severe enough to cause discoloration and material warping without any debris.
    Wow, chatGPT really mangled 'arc fault'.
    Reply
  • usertests
    User Terror
    Reply
  • Gururu
    I bet you that guy had a 4090 or 5090 in his rig too.
    Reply
  • LaminarFlow
    As something that loosely follow the gist of the story, this past weekend I wanted to clean off and re-apply thermal grease on my 5800X. It turned out my alcohol wipe was too damped and some liquid (70% IPA) sipped into the CPU socket.

    I didn't initially notice it, tried to power on, and nothing happened. Realized what I could have done, I panicked a little. Disconnected power and took everything off. Sure enough, the CPU socket was wet. Despite being an atheist, I prayed to all kind of deities I could think of for the next 5 minutes while letting things dry.

    Fortunately, after that everything powered on without any further incidents.
    Reply
  • Dr3ams
    Maybe the user doesn't know how to properly handle or install a CPU.
    Reply
  • atomicWAR
    A few bad chips are pretty much expected in any batch of CPUs. Failure rates are just part of the game. As long as the numbers remain low I don't see an issue. If the numbers jump over time though AMD may have a design/production issue that was missed in testing. All we can do is play the wait and see game at this point. But considering the teething issues with the 7000 series CPUs, I'll be keeping an eye on how this plays out in the near to long term. We have two 7950X3Ds running with 64GB of DDR5 6000mhz CL 30 running Expo on x670 Taichi boards with no issues but we waited until AMD and it's board partners had everything under control so we didn't melt a chip. As such I make sure I keep up to date on everything AM5 as I do intend to upgrade to Zen 6 after it launches, has time to mature and sale prices begin to bring its cost down. Side note...I am curious to find out if the leaked 12 core CCDs are actually a thing for Zen 6. Regardless I appreciate Tom's keeping us up to date on potential pitfalls in the tech world.
    Reply
  • bit_user
    The damage pattern looks to me like a piece of debris could've been involved. Or, maybe some of the springs got slightly mashed when something bumped into the empty socket, and weren't making proper contact.

    The main question such explanations pose is how it took so long to fail, and why it failed when he was allegedly just watching a video.
    Reply
  • bit_user
    metin112233 said:
    Was the system running stock settings, or was there any undervolting or tweaking involved?
    User claims no overclocking or undervolting, but EXPO was enabled. Claims he wasn't stressing the CPU at the time, either.
    Reply
  • TerryLaze
    bit_user said:
    The damage pattern looks to me like a piece of debris could've been involved.
    Might not be the same issue but sure looks a lot alike.
    https://www.igorslab.de/en/pin-analysis-of-the-destroyed-ryzen-7800x3d-all-burned-pins-supply-the-vddcr-cpu-core-power-supply/https://www.igorslab.de/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Damage-Small-1-934x980.jpg
    Reply
  • Alvar "Miles" Udell
    According to the Reddit thread he could have possibly been using a beta BIOS, which could have caused the issue.

    Also looking at the image he posted on Reddit in its full zoom I'm not seeing any "debris". It's slightly fuzzy but the CPU pads appear to be scorched or missing, while the pins in the socket appear to be bent sideways or melted, as you would expect if it were an electrical short, and combined with JPEG compression, camera flash, and phone camera processing it appears to be slightly different colors, and could easily be the CPU pads having been fused to the socket pins, that would be the shape of the pads.

    My money would be on a beta BIOS overvolt, I'm not so sure a mis-manufactured socket pin causing an electric arc would have lasted weeks, as I can't see pins slowly bending over time towards each other until they touched.
    Reply