It’s been well over a year since the dreaded voltage spike issue plagued Intel’s top-tier 13th and 14th Gen Core i9 processors and caused irreversible damage pre-BIOS patch. And just when we thought we’d heard the last of it, one YouTuber is claiming that the problem has returned, this time for AMD’s Ryzen 9000 Series CPUs.
In a video titles “I think I know why Ryzen 9000 Series CPUs are Dying” posted by Techtuber Tech YES City, the creator of the video claims that intermittent spike in CPU voltages are killing AMD’s Zen5 CPUs, such as the Ryzen 7 9800X3D, which is a current favourite among PC gamers.
Tech YES City says that they discovered the alleged issue appeared consistent with ASRock motherboards, as they tend to use less power and run lower voltages with Ryzen 9000 Series CPUs. Meanwhile, motherboards from brands like MSI and Asus consume substantially more power, both during peak and idle loads.
Breaking it down further, Tech YES City found that running a Ryzen 9 9950X on an ASRock B850 motherboard consumed a peak of 39W and an average 33W playing a video file, while an MSI X870E reached 58W and 40W in the same action.
Now, lower power and voltage consumption would seem to be better but in Tech YES City’s test, the ASRock motherboard’s power consumption was punctuated by severe, if not dynamic micro-spikes, while the other boards displayed static or very nearly static power consumption.
“Perhaps with the Ryzen 9000 Series, there’s some sort of request going on that’s causing this very minuscule—it might be microseconds or milliseconds—where it’s requesting so much voltage, and that’s just killing the CPU.” Tech CITY Yes says.
Is there a solution to this? Tech CITY Yes says yes – by ticking the “SoC OC Mode” in the ASRock motherboard’s BIOS, the voltage remains static and, technically speaking, eliminates any potentially devastating effects to Ryzen 9000 Series CPUs.
Tech CITY Yes says that they have reached out to ASRock regarding the issue but while the voltage spiking issue seems more prevalent with the brand’s boards, the issue still lies predominantly with the Ryzen 9000 Series CPUs.
