AMD 9800X3D 'failures/deaths' Reddit megathread indicates the vast majority may be happening on ASRock motherboards

Ryzen 7 9800X3D processors appear to be dying at an abnormally high rate on ASRock motherboards, to the point where the issue has gained the attention of ASRock Reddit moderators. Moderator SoupaSoka on the ASRock subreddit created a "9800X3D Failures/Deaths" megathread revealing an allegedly high amount of user reports surrounding dying 9800X3Ds on ASRock motherboards. Over 40 reports have been made so far, with 32 of them on ASRock's boards.

We've reached out to ASRock for comment and will update if we get an answer.

The megathread reveals that Ryzen 7 9800X3D deaths in association with ASRock motherboards, while abnormally high, seem to be occurring in an inconsistent fashion. Some 9800X3D's are allegedly dying during boot-up, while some are dying within hours, days, or weeks of ownership. Some reports also claim their CPUs were dead on arrival. AMD and ASRock are allegedly aware of the problem; however (probably due to the aforementioned inconsistency), the sole cause of the issue causing 9800X3D's to die has yet to be determined.

A summary of dead 9800X3D reports in the megathread features over 40 user reports of dead CPUs. A few non-X3D reports were sprinkled in there, suggesting the issues could extend beyond the 9800X3D. Some of the worst reports include users who went through two dead 9800X3D's to only have their non-X3D fallback CPU working well without issues. Still, some of the luckier users claim to have their replacement 9800X3Ds working fine.

One potential workaround mentioned in the thread is a BIOS flashback reversion to an older ASRock BIOS. At least one report claims to have "revived" a 9800X3D by using BIOS flashback to revert to an older BIOS. The megathread creator recommends that 9800X3D owners (with ASRock boards) revert to an older BIOS revision with this method if they experience POSTing failures after BIOS updating with their 9800X3D.

The full reports include a few MSI, Gigabyte, and Asus motherboards. 40 reports is not a critically high number, considering the amount of 9800X3D processors AMD sells every month. However, the most telling issue is that 32 of the 40 reports come from users featuring an ASRock motherboard.

This problem could be an extension of the original Ryzen 7000 burning catastrophe last year that was caused by badly tuned firmware pushing certain voltages beyond safe levels. It could be a case that ASRock's firmware is doing something similar to Ryzen 7 9800X3D processors, but time will only tell if this is the case. These issues also appear to be different from the first 9800X3D burnout reports we saw late last year that were allegedly caused either by user error or a faulty AM5 socket.