ASRock says that by cleaning the AM5 socket, the motherboards will work without repairs and is likely the cause of Ryzen 9800X3D failures.
"Foreign" Objects Removal Resumes Normal Operation of ASRock AM5 Motherboards; Finds ASRock in Internal Testing
The past few weeks recorded several AM5 system failures, especially when the AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D was installed on an ASRock motherboard. Even though the problem was also seen on motherboards from other vendors, such as MSI X870E Tomahawk WiFi, more reports were reported for ASRock AM5 motherboards.
If you aren't familiar with this issue, then recently there have been several reports suggesting that the ASRock AM5 motherboards have caused Ryzen 9800X3D failures and even deaths. As far as the latter is concerned, we have seen users posting their damaged Ryzen 9800X3D CPUs, but in a new press release (via @unikoshardware), ASRock claims that their AM5 motherboards aren't causing this at all.
After gathering the CPU and motherboard combos from several such users, ASRock says it has found in its internal testing that one of such motherboards had no 'actual' damage but 'foreign' objects in the socket that have caused the systems to not boot or damage the CPU. After removing those foreign objects from the socket, ASRock compares the before and after pics of the AM5 socket where one can see a noticeable difference between those.
As per ASRock, the motherboard started working properly and was able to pass the long burn-in and heavy-load tests without any repairs.
Investigation report updated! CPU burnout and abnormal startup of some processors encountered on AMD platform.
We have noticed on the forums that some AMD processors will not boot up under certain BIOS versions, and there are cases where ASRock motherboards have caused CPU damage. We take these incidents very seriously and have quickly contacted multiple affected users to collect and clarify relevant information, and have recalled some motherboards for detailed testing.
In one case where the CPU was burned and damaged, we retrieved the motherboard. After testing, we found that this motherboard had no obvious damage or burn marks in the CPU power supply area (VRM), and all measurement data of the motherboard still met the specifications. After carefully cleaning the CPU socket and removing foreign objects, the motherboard was successfully powered on without any repairs and passed the long burn-in and heavy-load test.
- ASRock (Machine Translated)
ASRock did release a new BIOS last month to mitigate these issues, and it was assumed that it could be due to memory. However, nothing related to memory has been found in the investigation. So, the question arises: how did the CPUs get burn marks? Were the incidents caused by user errors like incorrect placements or were they due to foreign objects in the socket?
It certainly needs more investigation as 9800X3D failure has been reported quite numerous times, not just on ASRock motherboards but also on MSI, ASUS, and Gigabyte motherboards as well (Reddit). The issue needs to be investigated thoroughly and AMD should involve itself as well.
