Tuesday, April 25th 2023

ASUS Releases Official Statement Regarding Ryzen 7000 Issues
ASUS has released an official statement regarding the recently discovered issues with AMD Ryzen 7000 series CPUs, especially the Ryzen 7000X3D series. ASUS has also released EFI updates on Friday, that include thermal monitoring mechanism to protect motherboards and CPUs and is working on new updates that should be available soon and define new rules for AMD Expo and SoC voltage, which appear to be the main issue related to the CPU VDDIO/MC voltages.
We have already covered the first reports of damaged Ryzen 7000X3D series CPUs that suffered physical damage, and some motherboard manufacturers have already released new BIOS updates, including MSI. In the meantime, Roman "Der8auer" Hartung has also discovered that the issue might not be just limited to the Ryzen 7000X3D series, but could also impact the Ryzen 7000 X-series CPUs. Although there were no earlier reports on such issues, AMD Expo appears to be the main source of the problem and users can either disable it or manually set the SoC voltage, at least until motherboard makers come up with new BIOS updates or we hear an official statement from AMD.
Sources:
Roman Hartung (Youtube), via Videocardz
We have already covered the first reports of damaged Ryzen 7000X3D series CPUs that suffered physical damage, and some motherboard manufacturers have already released new BIOS updates, including MSI. In the meantime, Roman "Der8auer" Hartung has also discovered that the issue might not be just limited to the Ryzen 7000X3D series, but could also impact the Ryzen 7000 X-series CPUs. Although there were no earlier reports on such issues, AMD Expo appears to be the main source of the problem and users can either disable it or manually set the SoC voltage, at least until motherboard makers come up with new BIOS updates or we hear an official statement from AMD.
37 Comments on ASUS Releases Official Statement Regarding Ryzen 7000 Issues
I'd also point out that Ryzen 7000 series has been out since October 2022 and we are only seeing issues now, which could mean this issue is the result of a recent update. EXPO profiles have a set voltage in the profile and even the more aggressive kits are very safe as far as DRAM voltages go. What you are likely referring to is the SoC voltage set by the motherboard but that has nothing to do with EXPO itself. Each vendor tends to have a slightly different approach to SoC voltage but that's down to the motherboard.
This wouldn't be a case of just aggressive voltage, you'd need vastly too much voltage in order to cause an issue. DerBauer tried all the way up 1.8v on the SoC, which is way past extreme, and did not run into an issue. There's also the problem that the SoC rail cannot provide enough power to cause that sort of damage. There'd need to be some kind of short.
Just because you have more CPUs encountering the issue with EXPO enabled does not mean EXPO is at fault, correlation does not equal causation. It could very well be an AGESA bug applying too much SoC voltage when EXPO is enabled or simply abnormal defective CPUs.
At the end of the day everyone is guessing and it'd be better to wait than jump the gun.
All of this without a source. Fact of the matter is you never know.
One thing is for sure, if CPUs actually are at any risk from mem OC alone, AMD / Intel would have done something about it long ago. Yeah the main reason that AMD went with EXPO is actually to avoid trademark issues with Intel. XMP is an Intel trademark.
The profiles stored in SPD chip do not contain much, mostly just the primary timings and tRFC etc an voltage of the memory sticks. The motherboard if free to apply whatever preset to the other timmings an voltages.
BTW one oddity with ASUS statement, all the CPUs that died on their boards have burnt Vcore pins not VSOC or imc.
Edit: From GN
That is dies sense reported directly from the CPU on what it is getting, the other can be what the motherboard VRM claims to be sending.