AMD Addresses Recent Ryzen 7000 CPUs With Burned Contacts

AMD Addresses Recent Ryzen 7000 CPUs With Burned Contacts

The issue likely stems from unsafe voltages provided by EXPO profiles.

Image: u/Speedrookie (Reddit)

There had been reports of some AMD’s Ryzen 7000 CPUs with some pins on the motherboard burned out, with a small visible bulge on a specific spot on the CPU contacts itself. Apparently it’s bad enough that chips started desoldering itself due to excessive heat, effectively killing the chip and damaging the motherboard in the process. This affects both standard and X3D chip variants, across all motherboard brands including ASUS, MSI, GIGABYTE, ASRock and Biostar.

The root cause, according to Tom’s Hardware’s anonymous industry contacts as well as ASUS’s official statement given to Der8auer, points to excessive SoC voltages provided from certain EXPO memory modules. The unsafe voltage given to the SoC (which hovers around 1.4 to 1.5 volts, but normally it’s 1.25V) likely destroyed the internal temperature sensors and protection systems, making the CPU unable to clock itself down as temperature information is no longer available.

Image: Der8auer

This, coupled with Ryzen 7000’s new boosting mechanisms which pushes the chip as much as it can unless the temperature limit is reached (95°C by default) – creates an unsafe condition where there’s no safeguards to prevent the chip from literally melting down. As the CPU continues to push even more current to the SoC part of the die, this creates huge amounts of heat in that specific spot which causes the chip to warp and bulge, damaging both the chip and the socket in the process. The bulge all points to similar pins relating to voltage control for SoC-related components.

Various motherboard manufacturers, including ASUS and MSI, are releasing a new BIOS update to place a hard limit on SoC voltages to prevent chips from burning itself. ASUS puts the SoC voltage limit to 1.3V, for example – but no specifics are coming out from MSI for the voltage limit used (which seems to be specific to X3D chips only). Other affects OEMs are yet to release new BIOS updates to limit SoC voltages as of this writing.

AMD has since released the statement to various outlets, with investigation ongoing:

We are aware of a limited number of reports online claiming that excess voltage while overclocking may have damaged the motherboard socket and pin pads. We are actively investigating the situation and are working with our ODM partners to ensure voltages applied to Ryzen 7000X3D CPUs via motherboard BIOS settings are within product specifications. Anyone whose CPU may have been impacted by this issue should contact AMD customer support.

ASUS meanwhile has since provided free replacement CPU and motherboard for affected users – for other users, the common workaround for now is to simply set a manual voltage limit, or turn off EXPO, to solve the issue (the former of which should not affect performance whatsoever unless heavily overclocked). Keep in mind though while the issue is fairly high-profile, only a very small amount of failures has been reported thus far.

More info are possibly on the way, as GamersNexus has got ahold of one particular failed sample and the failure analysis is still ongoing with “a lot of progress”.

Pokdepinion: Not a good look for AMD or motherboard manufacturers, regardless of who’s to blame here.