- Joined
- Sep 19, 2018
- Messages
- 9,973
- Location
- Ohio
- Joined SLU
- 02-22-2008
- SLU Posts
- 16791
The newest-gen Ryzen 7 7800X3D processors from AMD have been out for a couple of months now, but within the last few weeks some owners were...surprised when their CPUs blew up and died. I mean, it wasn't like violent, they were popping like pimples rather than exploding like a SpaceX rocket; people's computers weren't literally catching fire or anything so dramatic. But this was like a $500 CPU so you can understand why some people might be upset.
The problem turned out to be motherboards passing too much current to the CPU. The overvoltage caused certain of the chip's internal components to weaken and melt little by little over time until they eventually suddenly shorted out and started drawing a tremendous amount of electricity; at that point, the current was so excessive that the chip got hot enough for some of the copper and even some of the silicon to actually melt (the melting point of silicon is 1414 °C!!!) and a part of the chip die would just incinerate. It would look like a tiny raised burnt-black spot on the bottom of the CPU.
AMD released a statement about the problem and said that they had sent an instruction to motherboard makers with a new maximum voltage restriction, which the motherboard makers passed onto users in the form of a BIOS update. For its part, AMD is replacing all destroyed CPUs, including paying for shipping both ways. So far so good, right?
Well, for most victims of the problem yeah. But not so much for the owners of ASUS motherboards.
See most motherboards, when the chip failure occurred, detected the excessive power draw of the CPU and immediately cut power. This wasn't in time to save the CPU (by the time to final catastrophic failure happened the chip was already toast), but it certainly saved the motherboard itself from any damage. But ASUS boards didn't do that. ASUS boards do have OCP (overcurrent protection) just like any other motherboard, but ASUS's OCP particularly failed to notice the overcurrent from the self-destructing chip and kept it live, with the result being that when chips asploded in an ASUS board, they would asplode hard enough to actually damage the CPU socket too.
Unlike AMD's response which was pretty straightforward, ASUS's response has left very much to be desired. They've released a whole host of BIOS updates to try and fix the problem (with disclaimers about how the new BIOS updates are "betas" and thusly if your board is damaged while running them it's not covered under warranty), throwing a blanket over the faulty OCP problem by disallowing overclocking altogether and, bizarrely, telling you that even using EXPO profiles counts as "overclocking" against your warranty. EXPO is the new Ryzen chips' version of XMP/DOCP profiles that you're supposed to use as a very normal feature of the motherboard to make your RAM sticks run at their intended speeds and shouldn't have anything to do with your CPU voltage, but whatever, I guess? If you can't run the EXPO profiles on your high-tier $700 super-enthusiast motherboard and its $500 CPU for your $300 in premium memory modules then you've basically spent $1500 for what is functionally a mid-tier machine.
This is making some people really upset with ASUS.
It makes ME upset with ASUS. There was a time when ASUS was my first choice for just about anything if my budget could allow it. ASUS has for the longest time been considered THE premium vendor and their prices waaay reflect that reputation; even their budget-tier boards and cards are higher priced than other vendors' equivalent stuff by far. But there has been a steadily increasing quality problem, and this latest customer-service dickery is really just so damaging to their image, for me.
The problem turned out to be motherboards passing too much current to the CPU. The overvoltage caused certain of the chip's internal components to weaken and melt little by little over time until they eventually suddenly shorted out and started drawing a tremendous amount of electricity; at that point, the current was so excessive that the chip got hot enough for some of the copper and even some of the silicon to actually melt (the melting point of silicon is 1414 °C!!!) and a part of the chip die would just incinerate. It would look like a tiny raised burnt-black spot on the bottom of the CPU.
AMD released a statement about the problem and said that they had sent an instruction to motherboard makers with a new maximum voltage restriction, which the motherboard makers passed onto users in the form of a BIOS update. For its part, AMD is replacing all destroyed CPUs, including paying for shipping both ways. So far so good, right?
Well, for most victims of the problem yeah. But not so much for the owners of ASUS motherboards.
See most motherboards, when the chip failure occurred, detected the excessive power draw of the CPU and immediately cut power. This wasn't in time to save the CPU (by the time to final catastrophic failure happened the chip was already toast), but it certainly saved the motherboard itself from any damage. But ASUS boards didn't do that. ASUS boards do have OCP (overcurrent protection) just like any other motherboard, but ASUS's OCP particularly failed to notice the overcurrent from the self-destructing chip and kept it live, with the result being that when chips asploded in an ASUS board, they would asplode hard enough to actually damage the CPU socket too.
Unlike AMD's response which was pretty straightforward, ASUS's response has left very much to be desired. They've released a whole host of BIOS updates to try and fix the problem (with disclaimers about how the new BIOS updates are "betas" and thusly if your board is damaged while running them it's not covered under warranty), throwing a blanket over the faulty OCP problem by disallowing overclocking altogether and, bizarrely, telling you that even using EXPO profiles counts as "overclocking" against your warranty. EXPO is the new Ryzen chips' version of XMP/DOCP profiles that you're supposed to use as a very normal feature of the motherboard to make your RAM sticks run at their intended speeds and shouldn't have anything to do with your CPU voltage, but whatever, I guess? If you can't run the EXPO profiles on your high-tier $700 super-enthusiast motherboard and its $500 CPU for your $300 in premium memory modules then you've basically spent $1500 for what is functionally a mid-tier machine.
This is making some people really upset with ASUS.
It makes ME upset with ASUS. There was a time when ASUS was my first choice for just about anything if my budget could allow it. ASUS has for the longest time been considered THE premium vendor and their prices waaay reflect that reputation; even their budget-tier boards and cards are higher priced than other vendors' equivalent stuff by far. But there has been a steadily increasing quality problem, and this latest customer-service dickery is really just so damaging to their image, for me.
