Two Ryzen 7 9800X3D CPUs burned out on X870 motherboards — vendor investigates the Ryzen burnout issues

One Redditor and one user from the Quasarrzone forums have provided feedback on how their Ryzen 7 9800X3D, one of the best CPUs, has burned out. Since the MSI MAG X870 Tomahawk WiFi motherboard was the common denominator in both cases, we’ve contacted MSI for comment.

MSI told Tom’s Hardware that a team is investigating the issues. The team could only replicate the issue when the CPU was improperly installed in the socket. The company continues to look for other ways to reproduce the problem. MSI also confirmed to Tom’s Hardware that it hasn’t received any reports of RMA.

The two Ryzen 7 9800X3D owners shared photographs of the CPU with burned contacts and the AM5 socket with burned pines. The pictures suggest that improper CPU installation was the probable cause of the burnouts. The chip likely wasn’t seated correctly into the socket, so not all contacts made firm contact with the socket pins underneath, resulting in a short.

As MSI alluded to, there is also a huge likelihood that user error was the culprit. AMD’s mainstream Ryzen CPUs take advantage of a square form factor, making it very easy to install the CPU in the wrong orientation. Specifically, the user who published the Reddit report seems particularly likely to have inserted the CPU in the wrong orientation, as the user notes he could not post at all with the CPU installed.

However, the two photographs of the MAG X870 Tomahawk WiFi socket contain one interesting detail. Closer inspection shows that the socket’s plastic borders appear to be damaged. The protruding plastic may have prevented the users from adequately setting the CPU into the socket. If that’s the case, there may be a bad batch of MAG X870 Tomahawk WiFi with defective sockets.

However, we shouldn’t get ahead of ourselves for now. The two cases of the Ryzen 7 9800X3D mishaps are different from the Ryzen 7000 burnouts. The former resulted from user error or a bad socket, whereas the latter was the product of motherboard firmware over-pushing the SoC voltage.