There’s another report of a damaged AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D CPU, but this time it’s not the ASRock 800-series motherboards at fault. The latest incident involves an MSI X870E Tomahawk Wi-Fi motherboard. A user highlighted his experience in a Reddit post, where an unfortunate situation unfolded after enabling AMD EXPO, a feature designed to boost memory clock speeds with tighter timings. Shortly after activating this, the system failed to boot, displaying a perplexing ’00’ postcode on the error code reader.
Despite efforts to resolve the issue, including a BIOS flashback to a version dated December 23, 2024, the problem persisted. The result? A damaged Ryzen 7 9800X3D CPU with a noticeable bulge at its center, signaling permanent damage. What’s intriguing is that the motherboard sustained no damage, and the pins remained in pristine condition.
Though previous cases have often implicated ASRock’s X870/X870E motherboards in similar incidents, the MSI models are now also under scrutiny. This raises questions about the potential underlying causes, whether from BIOS or unexpected voltage spikes.
The user in this scenario insists that no installation errors were made, as the system functioned perfectly before engaging AMD EXPO. In the aftermath, the user successfully booted the system with a Ryzen 8500G, indicating the problem solely affected the 9800X3D CPU.
ASRock recently released a 3.20 Beta BIOS to tackle similar issues, signaling that MSI could be the next manufacturer required to address this worrying trend. It’s an unfolding situation that tech enthusiasts and Ryzen users will want to watch closely as potential solutions or further insights emerge.
