A motherboard featured in a burned out CPU Reddit thread has been analyzed by its manufacturer, who says that the board has no obvious damage or burn marks, and that it just required a clean-up to get it to boot with a CPU again. The board appeared on Reddit with a damaged AMD Ryzen 9800X3D gaming CPU, and is one of several ASRock boards featured in threads about 9800X3D CPUs that have stopped working.
We gave this AMD CPU a score of 9/10 in our 9800X3D review, thanks to its superb gaming performance, landing it the top place on our best gaming CPU guide. However, there is now a disturbing number of reports about 9800X3D systems ceasing to work on ASRock motherboards.
For example, this Reddit megathread links to 72 threads about broken 9800X3D systems, and 56 of them use ASRock motherboards, prompting the manufacturer to respond, saying it is “taking these incidents seriously.”
In a blog on the ASRock website, the firm claims to have looked at the Phantom X870E Nova WiFi motherboard featured in one of the Reddit threads. “When inspecting this motherboard, we found that the motherboard does not have obvious damage nor burn marks around the VRM area,” says ASRock, adding that “measurements of the motherboard are also within spec.”
The language is carefully worded, avoiding any accusations of user error, but ASRock does say that the motherboard didn’t require any repair work to get it to boot again. “After cleaning and removing debris from the CPU socket,” says ASRock, “the motherboard can boot up successfully with [the] original onboard BIOS. It also passed long-term stress tests.”
ASRock also says that some BIOS versions for its boards can’t boot “with random 9000-series CPUs,” and that it’s now fixed this issue with BIOS 3.20, an update that the company stresses “will not cause CPU damage,” with the same going for previous BIOS iterations for the board. ASRock also provided photos of the motherboard before and after cleaning, and one with the board apparently booting up fine.
If you’re thinking of upgrading to the 9800X3D yourself, check out our guide to the best gaming motherboard, as well as our full tutorial on how to overclock the 9800X3D, so you can get the most out of your new chip.
You can also follow us on Google News for daily PC games news, reviews, and guides. We also have a vibrant community Discord server, where you can chat about this story with members of the team and fellow readers.