There have been reports of certain combinations of processor, motherboard, and BIOS version destroying Ryzen 7000 CPUs. Images shared by those affected show charred areas and bulges on the underside of the CPU carrier, as well as damage to contact springs on the motherboard. Scorched spots indicate very high temperatures, which should trigger an emergency shutdown. Despite this, there are several cases in which this did not occur.
Newer X3D models such as the Ryzen 9 7950X3D, Ryzen 9 7900X3D, and Ryzen 7 7800X3D with additional cache seem to be primarily affected. These processors are particularly sensitive to high voltages due to the stacked chips. All X3D models shown have damage in the same place and seem to have run primarily on Asus AM5 motherboards.
There are also isolated cases of normal AM5 CPUs and motherboards from other manufacturers where the bulges are located in a different place. The high SOC and controller voltages raise the suspicion that the automatic voltage settings could be partly to blame for RAM overclocking.
Asus has recently uploaded BIOS updates for all AM5 motherboards, with recommended updates for optimum performance with the Ryzen 7000X3D series processors. All old BIOS versions have disappeared from the product pages. However, inquiries to AMD and Asus have remained unanswered.
If you want to be on the safe side, you can use tools like Hwinfo64 to keep an eye on the CPU voltages. Users of a Ryzen 9 7950X3D, Ryzen 9 7900X3D or Ryzen 7 7800X3D in combination with an Asus motherboard should update their BIOS. The current version can be found on the mainboard’s product page.
The cause of the issue is yet to be determined, and the c’t lab is working to replicate the problem. Updates will be provided as soon as there is new information.
