Question "Ryzen Burnout? AMD Board Power Cheats May Shorten CPU Lifespan" - Tom's

UsandThem

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May 4, 2000
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https://www.tomshardware.com/news/ryzen-burnout-amd-board-power-cheats-may-shorten-cpu-lifespan
Unbeknownst to you, your motherboard may be silently killing your Ryzen processor faster than expected. HWinfo introduced a new feature today that the vendor says exposes that some X570 motherboard vendors are clandestinely misreporting key measurements to AMD's Ryzen processors, thus boosting performance. Unfortunately, this tactic is similar to overclocking. It results in higher power draw and more heat production, thus potentially killing Ryzen chips sooner than expected – but all without the user's knowledge.
"I'd like to stress that despite this exploit is essentially made possible by something AMD has included in the specification, the use of this exploit is not something AMD condones with, let alone promotes. Instead they have rather actively put pressure on the motherboard manufacturers, who have been caught using this exploit," The Stilt added.

At least there is a free HWinfo tool (linked to at the end of the article) that lets people see if their motherboard behaves this way.
 
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Iron Woode

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So, what are the good values?

I tried out my system running cinebench r20 and saw this:

current - 94%
minimum - 93%
maximum - 143%
average - 113%
 

Hitman928

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From what I understand, 100% means it is reporting exactly in line with AMD guidelines. The further away you get from 100% on the low side (i.e. how far under 100% you are) the more power the CPU is using and if you are over 100% then the AMD chip is using less power than it thinks it is. Some amount of deviation is expected but I would think the average use under load should probably be at least within +- 10% or so.
 

Iron Woode

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From what I understand, 100% means it is reporting exactly in line with AMD guidelines. The further away you get from 100% on the low side (i.e. how far under 100% you are) the more power the CPU is using and if you are over 100% then the AMD chip is using less power than it thinks it is. Some amount of deviation is expected but I would think the average use under load should probably be at least within +- 10% or so.
From what I read:


my system is pretty normal.

HWiNFO will display "Power Reporting Deviation" metric under the CPUs enhanced sensors. The displayed figure is a percentage, with 100.0% being the completely unbiased baseline. When the motherboard manufacturer has both properly calibrated and declared the reference value, the reported figure should be pretty close to 100% under a stable, near-full-load scenario. A ballpark for a threshold, where the readings become suspicious is around ±5%. So, if you see an average value that is significantly lower than ~ 95% there is most likely intentional biasing going on. Obviously, the figure can be greater than 100%, but for the obvious reasons it rarely is ;)
 

amrnuke

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DrMrLordX

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https://www.tomshardware.com/news/ryzen-burnout-amd-board-power-cheats-may-shorten-cpu-lifespan



At least there is a free HWinfo tool (linked to at the end of the article) that lets people see if their motherboard behaves this way.

Any word on if this is prevalent on Asus x570 boards?

edit: I need to set my LLC settings to stock and get rid of my negative voltage offset, but so far my Aorus x570 Master is showing 77.5% min/max/average in Prime95 SmallFFTs and 80.0% min/max/average in CBR20. Remember folks, reset data recording DURING the run and observe values before the run ends on something like CBR20. That eliminates "noise" data from when you're @ idle.
 
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maddie

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Jul 18, 2010
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Ian Cutress has some thoughts on this article, might want to go through his entire twitter thread.
"There is exactly zero need to be worried about electromigration with this minor voltage adjustment on AMD boards. That's what makes that sensationalist headline so hard to swallow. Even if they are a sister publication."

Well, well, well. There goes another computer site, although, in reality it's been a slow slide.
 

DrMrLordX

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@maddie

The_Stilt has been talking about this for awhile now. He fingered Asus first, but I think Gigabyte may also be guilty. Looking at Gigabyte's ridiculous Z490 crap (see Gamer's Nexus z490 vid) . . .

edit: when I reverted to stock voltage settings, I got 93.2% for Prime95 SmallFFTs and 94.6% for CBR20. Those are averages. Now maybe I understand why my voltage manipulations cause my CPU performance to go up. Intriguing. Looks like at least on the Aorus x570 Master, Gigabyte isn't guilty.
 
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piokos

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Nov 2, 2018
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"There is exactly zero need to be worried about electromigration with this minor voltage adjustment on AMD boards. That's what makes that sensationalist headline so hard to swallow. Even if they are a sister publication."

Well, well, well. There goes another computer site, although, in reality it's been a slow slide.
Wait, so is it now official on this forum?
- High power doesn't kill CPUs.
- OEMs pushing CPUs over default specification is fine.

Isn't these among the most popular Comet Lake-S criticism points? :)

I don't understand the leniency towards AMD in latest comments from Cutress.
Also, I love how he categorized PC users as:
- doing manual tweaking,
- DIY crowd buying excessive cooling,
- DIY crowd doing SFF and monitoring thermals.
:)
 
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Reactions: spursindonesia

DrMrLordX

Lifer
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Wait, so is it now official on this forum?
- High power doesn't kill CPUs.
- OEMs pushing CPUs over default specification is fine.

Yeah, you don't have an axe to grind or anything. And no, it isn't official. He's talking about electromigration. It certainly isn't okay for the board to deliberately misreport power draw to make it run faster than it's supposed to! The only point Dr. Cutress is making is that the CPUs may not burn themselves out any more quickly being manipulated by sketchy AGESA implementations - something AMD definitely didn't authorize from board manufacturers! The_Stilt has been hunting this problem since last July.
 

maddie

Diamond Member
Jul 18, 2010
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Wait, so is it now official on this forum?
- High power doesn't kill CPUs.
- OEMs pushing CPUs over default specification is fine.

Isn't these among the most popular Comet Lake-S criticism points? :)

I don't understand the leniency towards AMD in latest comments from Cutress.
Also, I love how he categorized PC users as:
- doing manual tweaking,
- DIY crowd buying excessive cooling,
- DIY crowd doing SFF and monitoring thermals.
:)
"Isn't these among the most popular Comet Lake-S criticism points?"

Is anyone here saying this? I never knew. I always thought it was the high power consumption, not a shortened lifespan.
 

DrMrLordX

Lifer
Apr 27, 2000
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Has anyone here made wall power observations (via a tool like Kill-a-Watt or otherwise) to try and observe the effect noted by HWiNFO64?
 
Mar 11, 2004
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I was going to say, weren't they caught pulling this stuff with Intel CPUs a few years back? Which that's why there's more leniency with AMD, because we know who's to blame for it because of the previous situation.