Over the weekend, reports of strange issues with the new Ryzen 7800X3D processors began to surface on Reddit and YouTube. In some cases, affected systems simply failed to boot, while in one case, the processor was physically deformed, damaging the motherboard socket. According to MSI, these damages “could be caused by abnormal voltage problems.”
The Ryzen 7800X3D processors operate at lower voltages than regular Ryzen 7000 processors by default, as the additional L3 cache can increase temperatures and make it difficult to cool the CPU. This makes the new processors more energy efficient than standard Ryzen, but limits overclocking capabilities and other features that enthusiasts usually use to improve the performance of their PCs.
As a result, Ryzen 7800X3D processors are initially limited to overclocking and changing power settings, but recent BIOS updates further prohibit any overvolting that can provide processors with more power than they need. However, users will still be able to use undervolting, that is, lower the voltage to try to reduce the temperature or power consumption.
The users who reported problems are mostly owners of Asus and MSI motherboards (X670 chipset), and many of them emphasize that they used only the default settings for their processors. However, there have been too few victims to make any definitive conclusions about problems on a particular chipset or on specific models of motherboards.
One user whose processor was physically damaged admitted that he was not using the latest BIOS version for his Asus motherboard when the damage occurred. This suggests that too much voltage could have been applied to the processor.
AMD has not yet commented on user complaints, but all owners of the Ryzen 7800X3D should make sure that their motherboards have the latest BIOS updates installed, and keep an eye out for new versions that fix this particular issue.
