Motherboard manufacturer MSI starts investigation

Following reports of burnt Ryzen 7 9800X3D CPUs installed in MSI motherboards, the manufacturer has now issued an official statement. You want to investigate the cause of the problem in order to rule out errors in your own products.

Pictures of burned Ryzen processors

A Reddit user’s post caused a stir a few days ago. Pictures he published showed his brand new Ryzen 7 9800X3D and his MSI Mag X870 Tomahawk Wifi motherboard. Both components showed clearly visible signs of fire. For some users, this immediately brought back memories of a problem with the AMD 7000 series processors that had caused similar symptoms.

However, after a closer analysis of the shared images, some details on the base of the motherboard were noticed, which tended to indicate an installation error on the part of the user. However, a second post from a user appeared on the Quasarzone platform reporting exactly the same problem. Interestingly, it was again the combination of a Ryzen 7 99800X3D and the Mag X870 Tomahawk Wifi motherboard from MSI. Just a coincidence?

MSI speaks out

In a short opinion MSI has now spoken out on its own website. The text does not make any assumptions about the possible causes of the banned processors. Probably also because there is currently still the possibility that the problem could have been caused by a faulty batch of mainboards in which the sockets were already damaged or deformed from the factory. Even if the probability of this is rather low, MSI would like to investigate it.

We recently received a user report indicating damage to an AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D processor on an MSI Mag X870 Tomahawk Wifi motherboard. We at MSI are committed to the quality of our products and have begun investigating this incident. We are also working closely with AMD and are in contact with Gamers Nexus, who is independently investigating this incident. We will provide further updates as the investigation progresses. MSI

Probably more isolated cases

In any case, the problem does not seem to be comparable to the one with the Ryzen 7000 series. At that time, burned CPUs occurred due to high SoC voltages caused by the firmware of some motherboards.

In the current case, everything points to user error when installing the CPU or a problem with the motherboard socket. Nevertheless, the investigations from MSI and the YouTuber Gamer Nexus, who bought the Reddit user’s chip, should be awaited.