A user reported the death of his CPU twice on his ASRock motherboard. Unfortunately, the BIOS update couldn't save his CPU the second time.
It must be extremely frustrating to see a component dying twice. Unfortunately, that's how it's going for many ASRock motherboard owners. The reports of dying Ryzen 9000 CPUs on ASRock 800 series motherboards keep emerging every week, and despite multiple BIOS updates, the problem hasn't been mitigated completely. Once again, we are seeing a dead Ryzen 7 9800X3D CPU, but this time, we have the same user reporting this issue.
According to a Redditor u/RedYourDead, this is the second time his CPU died on his ASRock motherboard. The first incident took place after six months of usage on an ASRock B850i Lightning WiFi motherboard. He received another CPU through the RMA process, but unfortunately, this time the CPU didn't survive more than two months. Despite updating to a newer BIOS, it didn't seem to have solve the issue, which is obvious since ASRock or AMD aren't yet sure about the exact root cause.
AMD recommends updating to a newer BIOS and blamed it on the motherboard manufacturers, claiming their BIOSes don't comply with AMD guidelines. However, updating the BIOS doesn't seem to fix the problem since the user updated to a newer BIOS version 3.25, which was released in May, and still got his Ryzen 9800X3D killed much sooner than the first time. His CPU worked for longer with the first-ever BIOS v3.15, which was released in December 2024 and ASRock released multiple newer BIOSes after that.
ASRock recently released BIOS v3.40, which reportedly aims to enhance CPU compatibility. We don't know if it guarantees CPU stability, but it's the only thing users can do currently to remain on the safe side. The latest BIOS fixes the VDDC_SOC Voltage to 1.20V and also puts the LLC to Level 3, which was at Auto by default previously. This should help in preventing degradation, but we have to wait and see if this resolves the issue. Looking at how many such issues are being reported every week, it must be unsettling to be an owner of an ASRock 800-series motherboard.