A rash of dead CPUs? Crazy "luck" or a trend?

phaZed

phaZed

Well-Known Member
Reaction score
2,964
Location
Richmond, VA
So, I rarely get bad CPU's - and the general consensus is that the CPU generally doesn't go bad.

Well, last week I got three computers in with no boot issues.

I diagnosed one as being the CPU (I have a 5000 series AMD to test with):
Dead 5800x, replaced.

The other two I ordered boards for, assuming it was that (And I don't have and Intel 1700 CPU's or Ryzen 7000 series).
The new boards didn't fix them - same no boot issues as before. Yes, it's all different PSU, outside of case running barebones.

So, now I'm looking at a dead Intel i5-13600K and a dead Ryzen 7 7700x, along with the dead 5800x! All in one week! And I'm sitting on a bunch of boards with no CPU's lol.


I've had a handful of bad CPU's over my 12ish years in business (one of those being my own 5950x a year or two back).. but I've almost doubled that number last week. Crazy. Anyone else having a similar experience?
 
www.igorslab.de

AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D free overclocked, overvolted and unfortunately executed with the MSI Center | igor´sLAB

First and foremost, a warning to everyone not to replicate this. You will inevitably cause irreparable damage to your valuable CPU. The current version of the MSI Center allows for voltage and clock…
www.igorslab.de www.igorslab.de

There is a known fault in Ryzen supporting mainboards that can cause them to kill the CPU while tinkering with overclocking settings.

I'd say your diagnosis regarding the Intel platform is correct with the dead mainboard. But everything AMD is suspect right now that has a child anywhere near it. Attempt to overclock an AMD, and you risk cooking the chip right now.... And not in the usual thermal way either, just "poof" dead.

Issue has been confirmed on MSI, ASUS, Asrock, and GigaByte mainboards. Ergo, it's industry wide. Tweak the wrong voltage setting and click OK, and BOOM dead AMD CPU.
 
Last edited:
I've seen 2 failed CPU's in over 10 years working IT.

One of those was because the owner tried installing themselves and bent the pins.
 
I had a real estate office that had a few of our white box computers back in the day. I don't recall exactly but they either had a UPS or surge protector. Some kind of surge happened and two computers got KIA. Both processors were dead. If I recall the motherboards were still good. I kept those two and another dead processor on my bench next do my monitor.
 
JoelM said:
struggle with a bias against AMD to this day.
Click to expand...

Not that I think anyone needs to purge their biases, per se, but they sure need to be examined. A sample size of 2, two and a half decades ago?

It might be time for revisitation (as well as looking at the stats collected by entities that collect that sort of stat).

Given that I've had a sample size of zero failed CPUs since starting in computing in the mid-1980s and with my business in 2008, and have had mostly AMD processor machines in my own household but Intel, too, for me they're the same, reliability wise.
 
timeshifter said:
Two of the three are AMD. That doesn't help my bias against AMD.
Click to expand...
AMD makes a fine CPU. They just however have always made, or been forced to make use of relatively crappy chip sets. This results in mainboards that can be... dubious.

Intel's Q/A issues in the driver department aren't much behind AMD in terms of general faults these days.

It really doesn't matter anymore. I prefer Intel because I'm more used to their specific brand of stupidity, not because I feel they're inherently superior these days.
 
britechguy said:
As seems to be the case, pretty much universally and cyclically, regardless of maker. And even that's rare.
Click to expand...
Relatively yes, still highly annoying when it hits. If you're system building you probably have a stack of the bad ones in play when it's your turn. Exactly the sort of thing that causes people to burn a vendor forever.
 
My bias is based on a few experiences over the years. Most notable in my mind happened during the XP SP3 days. There were HP computers that I'd work on and part of the service was upgrading them to SP3. They would become unbootable, BSOD after the upgrade. Only on HPs and only the ones that had AMD CPUs. Similar models with Intel no problem.

In the end it was mostly HP's fault, I forget why exactly, had to do with not properly identifying a driver or something on the AMDs. But, for the end user and me by proxy, it was an AMD problem.

There were some other minor examples too. In my mind you're really splitting hairs when comparing the CPUs for most uses and the minor difference wasn't worth it.

I have a friend who's an engineer at Dell. One of his roles there was designing server motherboards. He dislikes AMD too. He said it was because of the really poor documentation - things the chip could do were not documented or incorrect or whatever. I forget what he said exactly, but he found it very frustrating to work with compared to Intel. Intel had excellent resources for their chips.
 
Sky-Knight said:
If you're system building you probably have a stack of the bad ones in play when it's your turn. Exactly the sort of thing that causes people to burn a vendor forever.
Click to expand...

The problem being, you eventually run out of vendors. That was, at least somewhat, my point. The situation is inescapable, and cyclical, with the specific vendor being largely irrelevant (as often its a component part or parts they do not manufacture themselves that is the cause of the failure).

In an age where almost everything anyone puts together is made to spec by the lowest bidder, these things are bound to happen on occasion. Heck, they even happened, on fewer occasions, when all things were in-house. QC has never been perfect.
 
AMD were the first to reach 1GHZ, first to 64bit architecture and first "Multicore" processors for consumer use.

My only grievances toward AMD (CPU's) are that they run hotter and consume a lot more power than Intel.
Apart from those two things I have no problem with AMD.

In my 20+ years in IT I have had 1 dead CPU; an Intel Pentium 4 in a laptop.
 
@Sky-Knight I do recall when AMD broke the 1GHz the issue was back then bus and memory clock speeds were tied directly to CPU clock speed and to hit the 1GHz or better many ended up with slower memory and internal bus speeds which did limit performance depending on application and such. When the was not an issue their CPUs from that time were great and did far better than Intel CPUs which were hitting lower speed ceilings.

@GTP I don't find the power consumption or temps of AMDs 5000 series or before to be notably worse than Intel if at all as I am not sure it holds true across all their product line. I can't speak about the 7000 series as with a new socket and significantly higher cost I have little interest in it at this time.
 
I used to be biased against alternative CPUs...AMD and....anyone remember "Cyrix Instead?" Like Rob mentioned above...not so much the fault of the CPU, but..the super crappy cheap motherboards and chipsets.

When AMD came out with the Athlon XP "Palomino" CPU....and there were these nice nForce based motherboards to run them, I built a few honking gaming rigs based on those, including my own.

Did really look at AMD again until the Ryzens started ....and they got darned good, they're still kicking Intels butt all over the boxing ring.
I finally replaced my old old Carbon X1 laptop with a P14S with an 8 core Ryzen Pro 7...thing flies! When I'm selling laptops and desktops...I'm trying to get the Ryzen based ones....sending lots of them to clients.

As for CPUs dying...in my ~30 years...can barely remember 1 or 2.
 
Just wanted to throw in an update - the additional 2 bad CPU's were replaced, and are up and running. Confirmed bad CPU's. Nuts!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

Kitten Kong
Major customer issue.. any help appreciated :)
2
Replies
35
Views
6K
goldmercury
goldmercury
Back
Top