While it’s nothing new when an old processor burns itself out after being pushed too hard, especially on old and dusty hardware, it’s odd for a brand new processor to burn out, especially when it’s running on a relatively new motherboard and with other hardware. Unfortunately, that seems to be what’s happening to a number of Ryzen 7000X3D-series processors, with multiple posters on r/AMD" testifying that their new chips are giving up the ghost after mere days running.
The first to post their problems was Speedrookie, posting 7800X3D just killed itself and my mobo , where they simply posted "Came home to my system ideling [sic] full fan and QCode of 00. Reset BIOS, play with memory, then take it apart to find the 7800X3D bulged out and took the socket with it. What are my options?" It’s easy to suspect overclocking would be the issue here, especially with the bulging, but in a follow-up post, the same poster clarified that they had not been overclocking their system, and had not noticed any issues since the processor was installed on April 16.
It quickly became apparent this was not an isolated case, with another poster quickly collating all the posts and complaints about AMD and Asus processors and motherboards, with some other users also noticing hardware burning out within a few days.
There definitely isn’t enough evidence to diagnose a problem at this stage, but it seems clear that something is going wrong with this particular range of AMD processors, and some have posited that the 3D V-Cache may be to blame, due to the distinctive bulge that has been mentioned in a number of these cases. If it is to blame, it could be that the motherboard is attempting to boost clock speeds too high, but without enough cooling for individual chiplets.
We likely won’t know any more until a later date, but if you’re running a Ryzen 7000X3D-series processor, then we advise keeping a close eye on your system temperatures and keeping your BIOSes as up-to-date as possible.
