Ryzen 9000s, and more specifically the 9800X3D, have been plagued by failures since their launch. The problem? Cracking processors, particularly on ASRock motherboards. Initially, the brand blamed AMD, pointing the finger at the PBO, but the brand did release a few bios updates. Despite this, the problem persists, prompting Gamers Nexus to investigate… Unfortunately, the investigation revealed nothing conclusive.
Ryzen 9000: voltage spikes at standby/hibernation on ASRock boards… But not very conclusive!
Broadly speaking, two versions of the bios were compared on an ASRock B650 Steel Legend, during 200 hours of testing. The first version is an old one, 3.15, dating from the end of 2024, and version 3.25 from mid-2025. At the end of these tests, no clear-cut conclusion was reached as to the cause of the processors’ death. But some interesting observations were made, notably concerning standby and hibernation modes.
In fact, although the latter observed voltage variations, there was nothing alarming. If we look at the difference between TDC and EDC, it’s almost identical. Only a change of 0.6A has been noted compared with version 3.15 of the bios. On the other hand, the PPT limit (total CPU power) has changed significantly, from 1000W to 270W. However, standby/hibernation output voltages have risen sharply, from 1.02V to 1.19V. Not catastrophic either, according to the videographers… But version 3.40, with its Fixed SoC_Voltage function, has reduced the latter by 0.07V. Under load, under Cinebench, VDDIO_MEM voltage spikes were observed, but again without danger.
In short, this is very disappointing, because after all the ink spilled on this problem, we’re still at the same point: we don’t know what’s causing the death of these processors. In any case, it has to be very specific and bring together very particular conditions for this to happen, but from there to know the cause is another story…
