Can you install a Ryzen 3600 into a powered on computer socket without damaging it?

A

Andrew_Carr

2[H]4U
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Feb 26, 2005
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Yes, yes you can. I know this question has been on everyone's minds, but according to my mishap... er "experiment" this weekend, you can in fact turn on your computer with power to the motherboard, and then insert the CPU into the socket with no ill effect. Your CPU should come out unscathed and work fine. Experts still recommend that you put together your computer without having it powered on, but luckily some engineer kept in mind retards like me and apparently designed these systems to be mostly idiot proof.

Test system:
CPU: Ryzen 5 3600
Motherboard: MSI B450 tomahawk max
PSU: Cheap 500W thermaltake
Memory: Misc. 3600MHz DDR4 2 x 8GB sticks
1TB Samsung 860 Evo
 
there is still a chance you could kill it, but if you drop it in as normal, should be fine. If you put some pins in and not others, and left it like that, it could potentially pull extra amps through power and ground pins that are usually running in tandem with other power and ground pins, and burn out a power trace or something. But given that the board was in a no post situation, it wasn't calling on the cpu to do any real work. I think removing a cpu from a running system would be a lot worse than installing one in a powered motherboard.
 
Andrew_Carr said:
Yup. I was doing a cpu free bios flash and then my brain went on auto-pilot and I dropped it into the motherboard after the BIOS flash was complete, but I forgot to turn off the power first.
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Well, I'm glad it worked out with no ill effects.
 
Definitely ballsy of you. ;) The only thing I've hotswapped like this was a BIOS chip years ago and luckily for me it all worked out fine.
 
We should start a club. Just did that with a 3700X, lol.
I was troubleshooting a random freeze, swapping parts in and out and around between 2 rigs, forgot to turn off the PSU at one point in time and dropped the CPU into a powered motherboard. The PC turned on. I flipped the power switch on the PSU a second later, then promptly went to the bathroom to change my diaper.
Fortunately, no ill effects have surfaced. So far at least.
 
SmokeRngs said:
Definitely ballsy of you. ;) The only thing I've hotswapped like this was a BIOS chip years ago and luckily for me it all worked out fine.
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hot-flashing BIOS chips! good times, back when whey were socketed and one could actually do that. Haven't thought about that in awhile lol Recovered a couple bricked mobos that way
 
KATEKATEKATE said:
hot-flashing BIOS chips! good times, back when whey were socketed and one could actually do that. Haven't thought about that in awhile lol Recovered a couple bricked mobos that way
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It was back in the Socket A days. I don't remember if I did this on an Asus A7V-133 or A7V-266 but it was likely one of those two. I don't know how but the BIOS got corrupted and the board wouldn't work. I had the same motherboard as a friend and used his board to hot-flash my BIOS chip. Worked great after that.
 
Wow, I am surprised that it did not immediately thermal load shutdown. But very cool in a pinch to test out functionality.
 
robijito123 said:
Wow, I am surprised that it did not immediately thermal load shutdown. But very cool in a pinch to test out functionality.
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It seemed to reset immediately, but I'm not sure. The only indicators I had were some blue LED lights that flickered.
 
Andrew_Carr said:
Yup. I was doing a cpu free bios flash and then my brain went on auto-pilot and I dropped it into the motherboard after the BIOS flash was complete, but I forgot to turn off the power first.
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Was it powered up?
 
robijito123 said:
Wow, I am surprised that it did not immediately thermal load shutdown. But very cool in a pinch to test out functionality.
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It takes some time for them to come up to temp. Should have tried to mount a heatsink while it was running and see he could have gotten it tightened down in time.
 
Why the hell would you do that?!

That goes against the very basics of common sense.
 
ND40oz said:
It takes some time for them to come up to temp. Should have tried to mount a heatsink while it was running and see he could have gotten it tightened down in time.
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I know from experience a Core 2 Duo can run a LONG LONG time with no heatsink. Like, almost 5 years. Granted it runs at something like 125mhz under thermal throttling but hey.

Probably this chip would be fine for a few minutes as well.
 
The issue is not running the CPU without heatsink - any modern CPU will thermal throttle and worst case shut down. Not since very first Athlon and Duron CPUs has that been an issue.
The problem is with potential arching when the CPU is dropped into the powered socket, and the fact that the CPU powered on before it was even latched. Could've burnt up ram or mobo easily.
 
Basically anything with a non-exposed core should run at least the bios without a heatsink installed.

Hot-swapping the CPU is rich though!
 
I did this with a 5900x...it didn't work out for me.. It's maybe the dumbest thing I've done building a PC..
 
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Yea, I was feeling pretty dumb and lucky when it happened.
What happened to your 5900X?
 
I made an AMD K6-2 into a hand warmer doing this once...
 
Coming next Win 10 version!!
lol.jpg
 
slavie said:
Yea, I was feeling pretty dumb and lucky when it happened.
What happened to your 5900X?
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It worked perfectly initally, but then the system started boot looping at Windows boot...reboot, Windows logo...reboot.. I could mess around in BIOs with no problems. I replaced the PS, same issue. Swapped back to the 5600x i still had in case the board was borked...nope....ran like a champ again. I have to conclude the chip got screwed up somehow.. very weird behavior as I imagined it would have been all or nothing. Thankfully it in was in the returns window still..
 
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Well I learned something wild & crazy tech support-wise today. Good tip. Now I know as long as I drop an AMD CPU into the AM4 socket clean and correct with the power turned on it might still power on and boot up. Don't know if I'll ever try it on purpose myself but good to know it's there if/when I need it. Now I wonder if anyone will try this with an Intel based CPU and motherboard? Out!
 
RareAir23 said:
Well I learned something wild & crazy tech support-wise today. Good tip. Now I know as long as I drop an AMD CPU into the AM4 socket clean and correct with the power turned on it might still power on and boot up. Don't know if I'll ever try it on purpose myself but good to know it's there if/when I need it. Now I wonder if anyone will try this with an Intel based CPU and motherboard? Out!
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You dont know!
It could have died depending which pins made contact first.
He got lucky.
 
I installed a supermicro 10gb nic in my truenas server yesterday in a rush before work. Turns out I didn't even shut it down, it was still booted up and running. I only noticed when the card sparked a bit while I was plugging it in. A quick reboot and it picked it right up, no issues so far.

Feels a little early in the year to use up all my I.T. luck...
 
lilfiend said:
I installed a supermicro 10gb nic in my truenas server yesterday in a rush before work. Turns out I didn't even shut it down, it was still booted up and running. I only noticed when the card sparked a bit while I was plugging it in. A quick reboot and it picked it right up, no issues so far.

Feels a little early in the year to use up all my I.T. luck...
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Lucky you. I was hot unplugging molex connector to case fans, touched my Intel X1 NIC card and fried the M.2 slot. No idea how that happened, but NVMe started randomly freezing after that incident. Tried a different NVMe drive, tried a different CPU, NVMe freezing. Mobo was working fine for few years before that. Also, it would work just fine with a SATA 2.5" drive, but not the NVMe slot. Did not have any SATA M.2 drives to test. Sold the mobo as-is.

A little voltage spike is all it takes to fry things.
 
Talk about lucky! I am amazed that the CPU and motherboard were unharmed by this. I do my best to remember to unplug the power supply before working-on computer components ever since I had a computer power-on while I was plugging in a graphics card. I bumped the power button and on came the computer. Thankfully, the card was seated before I bumped the power button.
 
Andrew_Carr said:
Yes, yes you can. I know this question has been on everyone's minds, but according to my mishap... er "experiment" this weekend, you can in fact turn on your computer with power to the motherboard, and then insert the CPU into the socket with no ill effect. Your CPU should come out unscathed and work fine. Experts still recommend that you put together your computer without having it powered on, but luckily some engineer kept in mind retards like me and apparently designed these systems to be mostly idiot proof.
Click to expand...
Definitely lucky! I think the biggest risk of hot plugging in something that wasn't designed for it is the potential for CMOS latch-up which can be destructive.
 
on that same token.... I accidentally electrocuted myself when over stretching to plug something in. I didn’t die. So no need to worry guys, electricity doesn’t kill.
 
So while you're working on Windows , if you need some punch in your multitasking , you just have to replace your 4 core with the 16 core of your other computer ?
 
Jandor said:
So while you're working on Windows , if you need some punch in your multitasking , you just have to replace your 4 core with the 16 core of your other computer ?
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Yeah, basically. As long as you use a bunch of thermalpaste the coolers should stay attached, so just pop off the whole unit and hot swap.
 
Andrew_Carr said:
Yeah, basically. As long as you use a bunch of thermalpaste the coolers should stay attached, so just pop off the whole unit and hot swap.
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Had a link to a build from some guy...think on The Verge. Can't find it for some reason. :/
 
slavie said:
The issue is not running the CPU without heatsink - any modern CPU will thermal throttle and worst case shut down. Not since very first Athlon and Duron CPUs has that been an issue.
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The Athlon 64 was the first AMD CPU line to have thermal throttling afaik, Intel did it much earlier back in the Pentium 3. Thermal shutdown is entirely up to the motherboard, via an option in the BIOS which is usually disabled by default. I always went in and enabled it on all of my classic Athlon builds, as well as the overheat alarm usually set to 10C before thermal shutdown to have some warning before it did.

The Athlon had no mercy if there was a cooling problem.


No heatsink? 700 degrees for you.
 
GiGaBiTe said:
The Athlon had no mercy if there was a cooling problem.


No heatsink? 700 degrees for you.
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Depends on the mode of failure. If the heat sink falls off, you’re screwed. If it was clogged with dust you’d be fine. You could lose data due to a lockup but you shouldn’t experience hardware failure, provided you fix the issue in a reasonable amount of time. It’s not that those older Socket A CPUs had no thermal protection at all, it’s that the rate of polling was way too slow to react to the very sudden temp spike you’d see if the heat sink fell off completely. As you stated, Athlon 64 fixed this oversight. Still wasn’t as good as the P4 but much better than what came before it from AMD.
 
LigTasm said:
I know from experience a Core 2 Duo can run a LONG LONG time with no heatsink. Like, almost 5 years. Granted it runs at something like 125mhz under thermal throttling but hey.

Probably this chip would be fine for a few minutes as well.
Click to expand...

I found out that a FX 6300 also works without a HSF for a little while also.
 
I means there's "running" and then there's "running". Changing a car's tire while in motion.... different sort of game.
 
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