We Exploded the AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D & Melted the Motherboard

GRAB THE LIMITED GN15 ANNIVERSARY FOIL SHIRT! https://store.gamersnexus.net/products/limited-edition-foil-gn15-tshirt-design | Grab one of the brand new, LIMITED EDITION FOIL 'GN15' shirts to help out while getting something commemorative for 15 years of GamersNexus in return! This research piece took us a straight week of nonstop work to complete. We're beyond excited to have worked on this -- it's exactly what we love doing here.

This video benchmarks and tests various points of failure for the AMD X3D CPUs in particular, but also just generally AM5 / Ryzen 7000 (Zen 4) CPU failures. The most eye-catching failure mode is catastrophic: Users have posted photos of exploded CPUs with blown-out motherboard sockets and melted plastic. We bought those parts from the users to perform a failure analysis, then set forth testing our own AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D CPUs to see if we could make them explode. Spoiler alert: It worked. We were able to melt new AMD X3D CPUs in the socket of an ASUS X670E Crosshair Hero motherboard, but we also found severe BIOS bugs in Gigabyte's BIOS. SOC voltage isn't the only concern, here. It's also poor OCP implementation on at least the ASUS board we used, plus a combination of the erosion of thermal and over-current protections. As stated in the video, no test of this type is fully conclusive: These are complex issues with functionally infinite variables between users (and possible error), manufacturers, BIOS versions, and AMD itself. As such, we can only speak to our findings in some instances -- but we have some that do point to specific issues.

We killed 2x 7800X3Ds and 1x ASUS motherboard, but we also had 2 failed CPUs and 1 failed board from viewers.

We will have at least 1 more part following this video up. We've sent parts out to the same failure analysis lab we worked with in our NVIDIA 12VHPWR content - it'll take a few weeks to put together.

Big thanks to Wendell at @Level1Techs - check out his channel!
Thanks to @der8auer for his guidance on delidding safely!
Check out Elmor's super cool utilities: https://elmorlabs.com/

Watch our last failure analysis video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ig2px7ofKhQ

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TIMESTAMPS

00:00 - INVESTIGATING
02:11 - GN’s 15 Year Anniversary!
03:23 - The Story So Far
05:58 - Hypotheses & Plans
08:52 - Test: Low-Resistance Shorts
10:56 - Test: Accelerated Aging & Failed OCP
16:28 - DAMNING & How to Fix
20:04 - DELIDDING Exploded CPUs
21:31 - MICROSCOPE
24:48 - Wendell’s Voltage Differential Theory
26:14 - ASUS’ Wildly Overvolted EXPO
29:10 - Gigabyte, ASRock, & MSI ft. Level1 Techs
30:44 - Expo Isn’t Guilty
31:39 - Conclusion & Tons of Other Bugs

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Host, Testing, Writing, Editing: Steve Burke
Testing, Research: Patrick Lathan
Video Editing, Camera: Vitalii Makhnovets
Guest support: Wendell of Level1 Techs (linked above), der8auer, Elmor, lots of people we can't name or who requested not to be named

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