Some Ryzen 7 9800X3D CPUs are dying unexpectedly, mostly on Asrock motherboards – is user error to blame?

In brief: AMD's Ryzen 7 9800X3D remains an incredibly popular CPU, especially among gamers. But it seems not every buyer is having a good experience. There have been over 100 cases of owners whose chips have died after working for a short amount of time, and for no obvious reason.

Reddit user natty_overlord compiled a list of all 108 Reddit posts involving a Ryzen 7 9800X3D that died. The chips passed POST and worked for varying amounts of time before dying with no signs of failure.

What's interesting is the brand of motherboard these failures occurred on. 98 of the cases, or 82%, happened on Asrock boards, though that could be due to their popularity as a more budget-friendly board maker. Tom's Hardware notes that the company released a new firmware update for AM5 motherboards in February that improved boot problems in AMD 9000 series CPUs. Whether ...