At this point, there have been over 100 documented cases of Ryzen 7 9800X3D CPUs failing to boot, most of which use ASRock motherboards. ASRock has responded to the issue, pointing to "socket cleaning" it did for one affected user, but AMD has been silent on the issue up to this point. The company has finally broken its silence, more than three months after the first issue was reported, but we still don't know what the cause of the problem is.

AMD isn't spilling the beans

Memory compatibility is apparently to blame

"We are aware of a limited number of user reports involving ASRock AM5 motherboards failing to complete POST. Following a joint investigation, AMD and ASRock identified a memory compatibility issue present in earlier BIOS versions, which has been rectified in the latest BIOS," AMD said in a statement to PCGamer. "It’s worth noting that a failure to POST can be caused by a range of factors and does not necessarily indicate a non-functional CPU. We recommend users start by updating their BIOS to the latest version available for their specific motherboard model."

This largely mirrors ASRock's statement on the issue, which it shared following a BIOS update that supposedly solved the memory compatibility issues. User reports undermine what ASRock and AMD are saying, though. A thread on the ASRock subreddit has gathered 108 reports, some of which failed POST prior to the BIOS update and others that only failed after.

More concerning is the fact that several Ryzen 7 9800X3D have burned up in the socket, suggesting the issue goes further than memory compatibility. In these situations, some CPUs died within a matter of hours while others lasted months without issue. Although it's possible memory compatibility is to blame for some portion of the dead Ryzen 7 9800X3Ds, there are several reports of burn marks, suggesting a larger issue within the BIOS or microcode.

AMD says users who aren't able to fix their issue with a BIOS update should contact AMD for a replacement or repair. The saga of dead Ryzen 7 9800X3Ds largely mirrors the instability issues that Intel faced with its 13th-gen and 14th-gen CPUs. Intel found itself in a PR nightmare following months of silence on the issue, and AMD is following a similar path. The most we've heard on the burn marks is from ASRock, which says it found debris within the CPU socket that led to the burn marks.

Hopefully we'll hear more on the issue soon. Up to this point, the problem has mostly shown up on the Ryzen 7 9800X3D with ASRock motherboards, but there are also reports from users with other motherboards, as well as one report of a dead Ryzen 9 9950X3D.