Discussion Dead or degraded Ryzen CPUs. Ryzen 3600, and Zen 2 and 3 APUs are the SKUs I see reported most.

[DAPUNISHER]

I was just watching a break/fix video, and the culprit was the Ryzen 3600. His anecdotal experience is that he has seen it "a bunch of times" especially the 3600.

Tom's reported on the potential for burnout back in mid 2020 https://www.tomshardware.com/news/ryzen-burnout-amd-board-power-cheats-may-shorten-cpu-lifespan

Greg's video from a couple of years back -

My experiences with AM4 boards, regardless of bios revision, is boards from every brand I've used, have settings too aggressive OOB. I always make UEFI changes immediately. User intervention being required to ensure stability and or longevity of the CPU, is just as unacceptable as it is with Raptor Lake.

There have been threads here about Cezanne APUs -

https://forums.anandtech.com/threads/i-have-lost-2-x-5600g-in-a-span-of-2-months.2601861/

https://forums.anandtech.com/threads/dead-ryzen-5600g.2632291/

Continued in next post.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Brian's video from the same timeframe as his friend Greg's. I think they had compared notes and shared similar experiences -

Another thread about failing Ryzens - https://forums.anandtech.com/threads/did-i-kill-2-different-cpus.2624839/

 

[DAPUNISHER]

AMD's statement doesn't entirely rule out the possibility of a reduced lifespan due to the adjustments, but given the company's engineering teams have obviously studied the matter to some extent, it's obvious they haven't yet seen any adjustments that could result in significant degradation during the warranty period that users should worry about.

What kind of double think bull💩shill language is that? We the users, do not worry about degradation during warranty coverage, we worry about after it expires. "Hey guyz! Enjoy that extra frame or 2 from unsafe bios values care free for the next 3 years!. After that, you are on your own. May the odds ever be in your favor!" - Tom's shill ware.

There are 15–20-year-old CPUs, and older, running fine. The idea that users should only expect a fully functional CPU for the term of the warranty is outlandish. Again, user intervention should never be required.

This will never be a big story like Raptor Lake because of the time spans involved.

I think it serves best as a cautionary tale for DIYers. Trust board makers settings at your own risk. My advice is to do a little UEFI tweaking or use Ryzen Master to help protect your investment.

 

[Markfw]

First, I only believe things that I see. (when it comes to CPU types that I use all the time) Now I will say that quite often I use CPUs hard for 3 years, then upgrade, yes. But I gave my son a 1700 years ago (when they were just out) and he used it every day HARD for like 7 years. I still have it. He finally allowed me to upgrade him to a 7950x. I also have 5950x's (3 of them) that were used HARD for like 5 years. I still have them, but have since upgraded the active HARD used fleet to 7950x, and soon to be all 9950x.

Now I won't say these are all fake. But personally ? I just don't believe it. Someone must have used these TOO hard (as in bad bios settings, not sure that factory was even bad)

Just my 2 cents.

edit: I do think the last line above is good advice though. You can never trust any board maker to always be right.

edit2: I also just noticed the thread title that APUs are the most reported. I have never bought a Ryzen APU.

 

[jpiniero]

The idea that users should only expect a fully functional CPU for the term of the warranty is outlandish.

That's how Intel treats it. Course Intel also used to only make most SKUs for 3 years too.

 

[Markfw]

DAPUNISHER said:
The idea that users should only expect a fully functional CPU for the term of the warranty is outlandish.

That's how Intel treats it. Course Intel also used to only make most SKUs for 3 years too.

I agree with both statements.

 

[Markfw]

I just watched the 3rd video above. Using a CPU hard with a stock cooler on games. I would never do that, however They are stock coolers on stock bios. Just not something I would do, I always use big aftermarket coolers.

 

[aigomorla]

For me it was the 5600G.

I call that my forever cursed cpu.

My cousin still tooting the 3600 i swapped him when him and his daughter both lost the 5600G.

 

[Hans Gruber]

I have a Zen 2 3600 in the garage. An MSI B350 from 2017. Semiconductor degradation is a real thing. Even at stock settings the computer restarted for no reason once. I thought it might be the ram but it was the CPU. There is only one solution, juice the CPU. Not a big deal. Add more voltage. A lot of you believe the way to go is with AMD stock voltage, it's not. The 3600 is 6 years and 4 months old. I should add that my 3600 is on a 240mm AIO for cooling.

I will test my 3600, it just arrived as my main garage PC. I have a 32" 1440p 165hz with my old 1660Super. The monitor is a Gsync LG. 32GB of DDR4 3600mhz running 4 sticks dual rank.

People need to understand how semiconductors technology works. Even ram may need more voltage. Test until everything is stable. Same goes for the motherboard. The SOC made need to be juiced a bit.

If you have instability, always run factory default settings in the bios for two or three days. That will get all the ghost in the machine symptoms out of the way. Then tweak your ram, motherboard and CPU settings.

 

[DavidC1]

I have a Zen 2 3600 in the garage. An MSI B350 from 2017. Semiconductor degradation is a real thing.

Routers for example are on 24/7. After few years you'll see more disconnects, that's when they need to be replaced. Yes they degrade for sure. The whole thing about "Oh so it has no moving parts so it's unbreakable" mindset is very misleading. Even if it was true, they often use the potential for greater reliability and trade it for lower cost, so end up at the same place.

Fixed an old dryer the other day. Had it's own schematic. Couldn't be simpler. Moving parts or not, if there's very few of them, it'll be very reliable, and if it breaks, it'll be much easy to fix.

Intel's Skylake chips have a bit in the datasheet about how AVX-512 performance will degrade after few years of operation by inserting extra latency in it. Yes they do degrade. Also had an SSD in my brother's laptop fail the other day. Well, it works, but the laptop is excruciatingly slow. Nowhere near the lifespan of the NAND used, it's just failing. Just like everything does.

What kind of double think bull💩shill language is that? We the users, do not worry about degradation during warranty coverage, we worry about after it expires. "Hey guyz! Enjoy that extra frame or 2 from unsafe bios values care free for the next 3 years!. After that, you are on your own. May the odds ever be in your favor!" - Tom's shill ware.

Had a Sony monitor for $900 that broke 2 months after warranty ended. A friend's walkman broke shortly after warranty too. Sony again I think.

But yea. My father's desktop is the Core 2 desktop I built long time ago. Works fine. Our internet is 250 or 500. Neither of the speeds can be taken full advantage of by ANY of our devices. None of the people I know have majority USB-C. I personally have only my phone for USB-C. I don't care for the spend-spend-spend mentality. You use it until it doesn't work anymore, and try to fix that and if you can't fix that, that's when it goes to the bin.

 

[Schmide]

Maintain a system for a friend. Has a 3900x in it. (my old system) It failed during a windows update 25h2. I got it. Uninstalled an update, rebooted, got to desktop, did updates again, never got to desktop again. Went to an image I had from a couple months ago. Had the same problems. Blue screen during 25h2 again. Replaced the ssd. Got the update to go through. Had a couple cold boots, checked system with OCCT errors on core 10 on one run. Replace the ram (arrrrr) fixed errors. Great.

Put the ram in the system I took it from and paired it with a 3600 I had laying around. So far it has passed all the tests.

Maybe the Gigabyte x570 aorus elite wifi didn't like the gskill ddr4 3200 but was ok with the newer V-Color sticks. Maybe the cpu is degraded. Either way I'm not buying new ram for either system.

 

[Hans Gruber]

Maintain a system for a friend. Has a 3900x in it. (my old system) It failed during a windows update 25h2. I got it. Uninstalled an update, rebooted, got to desktop, did updates again, never got to desktop again. Went to an image I had from a couple months ago. Had the same problems. Blue screen during 25h2 again. Replaced the ssd. Got the update to go through. Had a couple cold boots, checked system with OCCT errors on core 10 on one run. Replace the ram (arrrrr) fixed errors. Great.

Put the ram in the system I took it from and paired it with a 3600 I had laying around. So far it has passed all the tests.

Maybe the Gigabyte x570 aorus elite wifi didn't like the corsair dominator ddr4 3200 but was ok with the newer V-Color sticks. Maybe the cpu is degraded. Either way I'm not buying new ram for either system.

Run factory safe default settings (bios) for a couple of days and try again. That means DDR4 memory @ 2400mhz or less depending on the default settings and 1.2v.

I think it's the memory and it's not playing nice with the timings or ram voltage. The ghost in the machine effect.

 

[Schmide]

I think it's the gigabyte motherboard. I used it for a while and it was never perfect. The extra machine with the 3600 is on an ASUS Prime B550M-A WiFi II. Maybe it has better termination or bios. It's a $70 motherboard. The gigabyte system has been running for weeks with the V-color 3200 RGB and if everything works, no reason to downgrade it. It was a good buy I got the 32gb V-color and the motherboard from newegg for $135 in September. The ram is listed for $120 now and sold out.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Do you use the board's defaults? It'd be good to start getting feedback on who does. History: How often the systems are used, and how heavily. When the CPUs were purchased.

Could be bad batches, silicon lottery losers, some other factors e.g. cooling issues, that are contributing to CPUs failing with defaults. My experience is that every board so far has pumped excessive vcore with defaults, including PBO on auto.

 

[Schmide]

My 3900x Matisse stories. My nephew and I each bought one fall 2019 same motherboards same ram. I watercooled mine from the start he ran the stock cooler for a few months then got a 360 aio. Bios back then was not great and running at 3200 with the gskill ram was hit or miss. I bought 4 kits of TEAMGROUP T-Force Delta RGB DDR4 32GB (2x16GB) 3600MHz kits. (64gb for each of us) and with newer bois we were able to run at speeds. Ironically in 2021 ram was the only thing you could buy at good prices. I moved on from the 3900x to a 5800x then a 5800x3d. My nephew ran the 3900x till this year when I sent him a 5950x (which he took 3 months to install) My 3900x was reunited with the gskill 3200 ram and built into a system for my friend that does sound and video. (approx 2022) He tortured it along with a 2060 super (the 2080 cutdown version) for ~3 years till the 2060 super died back in September. The ram issues happened 3 weeks ago. He smokes and could be part of the problem.

I set fan profiles flat 40% till 87c then to 100% for 3000 processors. 90c for 5000+.

TLRL: neither were overclocked ram was run at xmp after a year. Both had good cooling for the first couple years. The one that is having issues has ran under poor cooling for a couple years. Neither I believe is actually faulty.

My 3600 is just an extra cpu i keep around in case I ever run into a motherboard that needs an old chip to update bios. It has now found it's home though may be evicted for my nephews 3900x.

The other set of gskills ended up in a 5700x3d rtx 5700 system for my sister.

 

[dr1337]

My 3600 from 2019 is still chugging along, same with the 5600x and 5700g systems I built for work back in 2020-2021. And my 5800x3d main rig is still just as good as launch day when I upgraded to it.

 

[jpiniero]

DAPUNISHER said:
The idea that users should only expect a fully functional CPU for the term of the warranty is outlandish.

I agree with both statements.

Well from Intel's POV, they wouldn't be able to honor the warranty with the same product once they aren't producing it anymore.

Like for instance the last shipment of 13th Gen Desktop is in February.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

My 3600 from 2019 is still chugging along, same with the 5600x and 5700g systems I built for work back in 2020-2021. And my 5800x3d main rig is still just as good as launch day when I upgraded to it.

Any UEFI tweaks i.e. ECO mode, negative CO, manual settings? Or running with board defaults?

Like for instance the last shipment of 13th Gen Desktop is in February.

They were already sending 14th as replacements, last year, to owners with a 13th gen RMA.

 

[fastandfurious6]

these are 24/7 OC chips going bad right? or also stock?

CPUs are normally the part with the highest longevity... should never go bad lol

 

[mikeymikec]

The 5600G that I sold that went bad was running at stock AFAIK and not 24/7.

With the suspicion of these Ryzen-Gs going pop I'm wondering if my stock of used 2200Gs might come in handy (one did already as a stand-in for the 5600G until its replacement arrived on warranty).

 

[dr1337]

Any UEFI tweaks i.e. ECO mode, negative CO, manual settings? Or running with board defaults?

Mostly defaults, the 3600 and 5600x are both PBO'd via BIOS and thats pretty much it.

 

[Josh128]

1700 still rock solid in my HTPC. This CPU is on its third build and has been moved from box to box as those boxes have upgraded. Doesnt get daily use anymore but made it through 2 episodes of Stranger Things season 5 last night no problem, lol. Seriously though, its been a rock.

Only time I ever had some instability was when I had tried a shitty RAM OC attempt, back when it was paired with an RX 580 (2018ish). After a few random reboots in a couple weeks, went back to XMP settings on RAM and never had another problem.

 

[Hans Gruber]

I wonder if it's a bios issue affecting Zen 2 chips. I am not talking about using an old bios from 3 or 4 years ago. A bios that is within 6 months old. AMD has been updating the AGESA code quite a bit in 2024-2025.

 

[thigobr]

I have a Ryzen 7 Pro 5750G running for 4 years 24x7 on an AsrockRack X470D4U (since 2021).

I've had 2x 5950X RMA replaced tough because they were unstable at stock settings, no PBO or any other OC, straight after buying them at launch in 2020. These first 2 samples wouldn't pass Prime95 or Y-Cruncher test overnight. The the 3rd unit, sent by the AMD RMA, has been stable since!

 

[eek2121]

Something that is overlooked is that Zen 1-3 are very finicky when it comes to memory. I had 2 different Zen 3 chips (3900X, 3600XT), same board, 1 works great with 1 memory kit, the other does not. Note that this is at JEDEC speeds/timings, not XMP.

Memory should be ruled out before anything else.