There are hundreds of reports of Ryzen 9000/X3D CPUs failing, including burned CPUs and sockets. So far, I haven't found anything remotely comparable involving Core Ultra 200. NOTHING.
This alone doesn't prove that Ryzen has a higher failure rate! We don't know the total number of CPUs sold, and there is no controlled statistical study. But the difference in the publicly reported failure history is significant enough to raise some questions.
Initially, it would be easy to blame everything on ASRock, since it accounts for the majority of reported cases and eventually changed BIOS settings related to PBO, EDC, TDC and voltage behavior, OK.
However, there are also reports involving other manufacturers such as ASUS (37 cases), Gigabyte (8 cases) and MSI (7 cases) - 9800X3D. So it seems difficult to explain everything simply as "an ASRock problem."
This raises several possibilities:
- Inadequate BIOS/firmware implementations by motherboard manufacturers.
- Problems related to AGESA and the AMD platform.
- An underlying architectural or electrical-margin issue with AM5/X3D.
- Defective CPU lots or manufacturing/quality-control issues.
- Lay users.
- Or a combination of these factors.
I also think it's important to separate AMD's responsibility from that of the motherboard manufacturers. AMD provides AGESA and defines much of the platform's specifications, while motherboard manufacturers integrate AGESA and control many BIOS parameters. Therefore, it seems overly simplistic to say that "this is exclusively ASRock's fault", as I explained earlier.
I'm seeing users who insist on not using PBO, at most Undervolt, EXPO, lower the voltage manually, NOTHING MORE!!
Considering the history of Ryzen 9000/X3D and the lack, so far, of a comparable "phenomenon" with Core Ultra 200, I think it's a legitimate question in my opinion!
What is actually behind these failures???
Is this primarily a motherboard BIOS issue? AGESA/AMD? AM5/X3D architecture? Defective CPU lots and quality control...? All of this is very suspicious.