One unfortunate gamer has reported that their ASRock motherboard has fried not one, however two AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D gaming CPUs. Based on the report, regardless of already claiming a substitute CPU from AMD for the primary burned-out 9800X3D, the gamer has now seen a second one fail utilizing the identical ASRock board.
Worryingly, it seems like this gamer was additionally operating the latest ASRock motherboard BIOS replace that the corporate believed fastened this subject. The 9800X3D is our favourite alternative for avid gamers proper now, topping our greatest gaming CPU checklist, however if you happen to’re utilizing it with an ASRock motherboard, you will wish to ensure it is up-to-date with the newest BIOS updates first.
Posting on the r/ASRock subreddit, person RedYourDead confirmed that the ASRock B850i Lightning WiFi motherboard they have been utilizing was operating a manufacturing facility default BIOS when the primary 9800X3D failed. This second failure, nonetheless, occurred operating with BIOS model 3.25, which featured “optimized PBO settings” that ought to have resolved the error.
Though ASRock hasn’t formally commented, its engineers did converse off the report at Computex 2025 to YouTuber Tech Sure Metropolis about the issue earlier this 12 months. These engineers believed that the present provided to the CPU utilizing AMD’s Precision Enhance Override (PBO) was behind the issue.
PBO is a function utilized by Ryzen CPUs to regulate your voltage and clock velocity limits robotically for greatest efficiency. Based on the ASRock engineers, the default energy settings on these motherboards for AMD Ryzen 9000 sequence CPUs have been “too aggressive” initially.
ASRock’s engineers confirmed {that a} change had been made to regulate so-called hidden voltage settings, or “shadow voltages” because it referred to as them, to convey the electrical design present and thermal design present limits for PBO down to fulfill AMD’s design specs for these CPUs. That, it believed, would repair the issue, and it launched these new fixes through BIOS replace 3.25. Nevertheless, RedYourDead has mentioned they have been operating this BIOS model when their second CPU failure occurred.
One potential motive for the continued failure is that RedYourDead used the identical board with each CPUs, so it is potential that the board itself was broken following the primary failure. That would imply that ASRock’s repair for the difficulty has actually labored, however there is no clear reply but.
Neither ASRock or AMD have commented on the failure to date, however we’ll be hoping that is an remoted incident. If you happen to’re operating a 9800X3D on an ASRock motherboard, we would strongly advocate updating your BIOS to the newest model accessible, which you’ll obtain from the ASRock web site to your specific board.
All of the sudden considering a brand new board improve? Make sure that to take a look at our greatest gaming motherboard information subsequent for stable AMD and Intel-focused choices to swimsuit any funds. You may as well try our AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D evaluation to see why this CPU continues to be our favourite for avid gamers.
You can begin a dialog about this tough ASRock subject, particularly if you happen to’ve been affected, over on our Discord server.
