My 5950x failed after only 8 months of standard usage

DigitalisAkujin

Limp Gawd
Joined
Aug 8, 2004
Messages
187
System Info
Asus ROG Crosshair VIII Dark Hero w/ BIOS version 4006 [released 2022/03/10]
G.SKILL Ripjaws V Series 32GB (2 x 16GB)
XFX Speedster MERC319 AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT Black
NZXT Kraken Z63 water cooling with excellent in-office ventilation

I had actually purchased this CPU a full year before last summer and it was just sitting on my desk in it's box doing nothing for a whole year. In July I finally got around to building the system.

I was running Gentoo Linux on this box and doing compiling and video editing on this box plus gaming. Most of the time the system was at almost idle but I do run my computers 24/7


About a month ago I started to get error code 36 [CPU post-memory initialization] and 56 [Invalid CPU type or Speed] sort of randomly between restarts. Since these could be related to memory I was thinking I had bad RAM so I went and got the cheapest DDR4 and tried it in the system. Same thing. I tried every slot one at a time in every possible configuration. Since CPU failures are fairly rare I assumed it was a motherboard problem so I proceeded to RMA the motherboard. When I got it back Asus support upgraded the BIOS to version 4402 [released 2023/02/08]. With this newer BIOS the error code changed to Q-Code 70 [PCH DXE initialization is started]. I downgraded the BIOS back to 4006 just so I have a base line comparison to other people's reports on the issue. Then I thought maybe it was my PSU so I tried replacing my PSU and that didn't fix the problem either. I even tried a different GPU and no GPU but that didn't change anything either. At this point the only component in the machine that it could possibly be is the CPU. I proceeded to then do some research and it turns out that AMD CPU failures aren't unheard of.

https://forums.tomshardware.com/threads/my-ryzen-5950x-died-after-a-year-and-a-half.3773031/
https://www.pcworld.com/article/394099/ryzen-5000-failure-rates-we-reality-check-the-claims.html
https://old.reddit.com/r/buildapc/comments/ntyqs9/possibly_faulty_cpu_and_bizarre_symptoms_ryzen_5/


I've never done any overclocking, mining, benchmarking, or folding at home type of stuff on this box what so ever. The heaviest load was always compiling, video editing, and gaming. And then only sporadically.

I originally went with AMD because of the better performance for the cost but at this point I've wasted so much time and money troubleshooting this issue that all that benefit has gone right out the window.

Anyway... this is a warning post. AMD Ryzen CPUs do fail and they tend to fail at a much higher rate than Intel.
 
System Info
Asus ROG Crosshair VIII Dark Hero w/ BIOS version 4006 [released 2022/03/10]
G.SKILL Ripjaws V Series 32GB (2 x 16GB)
XFX Speedster MERC319 AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT Black
NZXT Kraken Z63 water cooling with excellent in-office ventilation

I had actually purchased this CPU a full year before last summer and it was just sitting on my desk in it's box doing nothing for a whole year. In July I finally got around to building the system.

I was running Gentoo Linux on this box and doing compiling and video editing on this box plus gaming. Most of the time the system was at almost idle but I do run my computers 24/7


About a month ago I started to get error code 36 [CPU post-memory initialization] and 56 [Invalid CPU type or Speed] sort of randomly between restarts. Since these could be related to memory I was thinking I had bad RAM so I went and got the cheapest DDR4 and tried it in the system. Same thing. I tried every slot one at a time in every possible configuration. Since CPU failures are fairly rare I assumed it was a motherboard problem so I proceeded to RMA the motherboard. When I got it back Asus support upgraded the BIOS to version 4402 [released 2023/02/08]. With this newer BIOS the error code changed to Q-Code 70 [PCH DXE initialization is started]. I downgraded the BIOS back to 4006 just so I have a base line comparison to other people's reports on the issue. Then I thought maybe it was my PSU so I tried replacing my PSU and that didn't fix the problem either. I even tried a different GPU and no GPU but that didn't change anything either. At this point the only component in the machine that it could possibly be is the CPU. I proceeded to then do some research and it turns out that AMD CPU failures aren't unheard of.

https://forums.tomshardware.com/threads/my-ryzen-5950x-died-after-a-year-and-a-half.3773031/
https://www.pcworld.com/article/394099/ryzen-5000-failure-rates-we-reality-check-the-claims.html
https://old.reddit.com/r/buildapc/comments/ntyqs9/possibly_faulty_cpu_and_bizarre_symptoms_ryzen_5/


I've never done any overclocking, mining, benchmarking, or folding at home type of stuff on this box what so ever. The heaviest load was always compiling, video editing, and gaming. And then only sporadically.

I originally went with AMD because of the better performance for the cost but at this point I've wasted so much time and money troubleshooting this issue that all that benefit has gone right out the window.

Anyway... this is a warning post. AMD Ryzen CPUs do fail and they tend to fail at a much higher rate than Intel.
 
My 5950x didn't fail, but it will not boost like it should at stock. Stock all core boost is under 4 GHz for everything. I did a whole thread on it. I have to use PBO on it. I can't get normal stock performance, but I can get PBO level performance. A couple of cores need a positive offset for stability.
 
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Although I have never had a cpu fail in 25+ years of this hobby, I do know I see them time to time talked about on here. I don't think it's un heard for a cpu to fail time to time.
 
Stuff happens. I've had one AMD and one Intel CPU fail on me over the last 30 years.
I used to run a LAN center where I built all the desktops by hand plus been in tech for 20 years myself and have built and worked on hundreds of servers over the years. This is the first CPU I've ever had fail on me. It's so incredibly rare that I'm in shock.
 
AMD Ryzen CPUs do fail and they tend to fail at a much higher rate than Intel.
This is the first CPU I've ever had fail on me. It's so incredibly rare that I'm in shock.
So out of the hundreds of systems you've built, you've seen a single cpu fail, and from that are making the statement that AMD Ryzen CPU's fail at a much higher rate than Intel?

What a rediculous statement.
 
I'm thinking a bad power supply issue with current, bad mobo pin, or a bios "auto default" extra voltage setting. These things are pretty tough.
 
So out of the hundreds of systems you've built, you've seen a single cpu fail, and from that are making the statement that AMD Ryzen CPU's fail at a much higher rate than Intel?

What a rediculous statement.
Did you not read the article I linked? 2.9% failure rate for brand new DOA CPUs is atrocious. Who knows how high that number goes in the years after. Not everyone chooses to RMA and go through the hassle so we'll never know the real number. I suspect 5% is the real number. And who knows how many of them have degraded performance like another person in this very thread has said about their own 5950x.


It's not ridiculous at all to think about these things. If I was bulk purchasing these things for a company I'd think long and hard before commiting to a 5% failure rate.
 
I'm thinking a bad power supply issue with current, bad mobo pin, or a bios "auto default" extra voltage setting. These things are pretty tough.
Unlikely as I gave this machine the white glove treatment. I even went ahead and replaced the power supply though I am not discounting the possibility that the old psu somehow damaged it. But like I said I already sent the motherboard in for an RMA and they do check it for things like that while in the shop so I doubt it's that either.

We'll see. I just picked up another 5950x at my local Best Buy. I'll report back.
 
Boom. Replacement booted on the first try.
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I just hit 8 months with my 5950X
...and its still running beautifully. Aside from windows updates every few weeks (which take 1-2 minutes max to install) and a couple hardware changes that necessitated turning off the computer, its been in use probably 99.9% of the time since I installed it. Great CPU, absolutely happy with my purchase.
 
Did you not read the article I linked? 2.9% failure rate for brand new DOA CPUs is atrocious.
Have you?

"The vendor also explained that its failed CPUs aren’t dead, as PowerGPU reported—they just don’t pass its requirements to run low-latency or high-frequency RAM fully loaded."

"All of the companies PCWorld spoke with are based in the United States, but other media sites overseas reported similar non-issues."

Overclock3D.net’s Mark Campbell spoke with a UK PC builder who said it had seen no dead CPUs. “Our source claimed that they had experienced no DOA CPUs for the Ryzen 5000 series, a claim that either makes PowerGPU incredibly unlucky or our source incredibly fortunate,” Overclock3D.net said.

Australia’s popular YouTube channel Hardware Unboxed said it spoke with a popular local retailer. “…I’ve been told the failure rate for each part is normal and under 2%…”

One last report comes from Kitiguru.net’s Joao Silva, who cited RMAs from European store Mindfactory. The Ryzen 9 5950X rate was 0.77 percent; Ryzen 9 5900X, under 0.37 percent; Ryzen 7 5800X, 0.58 percent ; and Ryzen 5 5600X, 0.5 percent"
 
The first thing I do when I get just about any new component is stress test it. Stress Test a CPU by running it at full load via Prime95, etc. Stress Test a PSU by basically Stress-testing the CPU and GPU at the same time, etc.

Also, I notice that a lot of people are way too casual about static electricity. I'm not suggesting that you wear a grounded wrist strap necessarily but at least make sure you are grounded by touching a grounded object before you handle your CPU, RAM, Mobo, etc. Some people seem to think that static is some kind of joke but it really can and does kill components. In some areas, especially in dry conditions, the static can get really crazy. I can practically shoot lightning-bolts from my fingers at times. If I didn't make it such a habit to constantly ground myself I would be frying stuff left and right.
 
It's really unfortunate and unlucky your CPU failed, but like others have pointed out it seems you're jumping to conclusions that the AMD failure rate is high or higher than the norm.
 
I can see CPU failure rates start climb. Both Intel and AMD are pushing the higher end CPUs to the edge. Not to mention the complexity of making 5nm and small chips.
 
I just hit 8 months with my 5950X
...and its still running beautifully. Aside from windows updates every few weeks (which take 1-2 minutes max to install) and a couple hardware changes that necessitated turning off the computer, its been in use probably 99.9% of the time since I installed it. Great CPU, absolutely happy with my purchase.
I'm almost at 2 years now with my 5950X. Thing is a tank and still works great. Moved form PBO to all core OC on mine a month ago and it works amazing for gaming and productivity even in 2023!

In all of my years building PCs, I'm not sure I have had any Intel or AMD CPU go bad on me... and that's with some horrible OC abuse on many of them.
 
I've never personally had a CPU fail. But I work in the datacenter space and I saw a couple many years ago. Every product can fail.

I also (including my 5800x) often buy used CPUs. Never got a dud yet.
 
The first thing I do when I get just about any new component is stress test it. Stress Test a CPU by running it at full load via Prime95, etc. Stress Test a PSU by basically Stress-testing the CPU and GPU at the same time, etc.

Also, I notice that a lot of people are way too casual about static electricity. I'm not suggesting that you wear a grounded wrist strap necessarily but at least make sure you are grounded by touching a grounded object before you handle your CPU, RAM, Mobo, etc. Some people seem to think that static is some kind of joke but it really can and does kill components. In some areas, especially in dry conditions, the static can get really crazy. I can practically shoot lightning-bolts from my fingers at times. If I didn't make it such a habit to constantly ground myself I would be frying stuff left and right.
I was using Gentoo Linux which means I was compiling everything from scratch. I was completely recompiling things every time there was a version update which includes chromium, Firefox, the Linux kernel, I mean literally everything you'd expect to have on a Linux box. My machine has over 1500 packages and anytime there's an updated it's compiling it from scratch. The only binaries I used were things like discord and Steam which are closed source.

That's actually a huge reason I had a 5950x in the first place. Chromium for example takes about an hour and a half to compile using all the cores at 100%.

In fact one of my favorite benchmarks is how long it takes to compile GCC.


I also just wanna say that it went bad while it was installed. Static electricity was not an issue. In fact when it happened I was actually coming off a big life event and I wasn't using my desktop much in the first place. Only really casually. It was on and I would occasionally come to it to do basic things like transfer files around or hop on discord with my friend but my usage was low.
 
I think you said you replaced your Power Supply. I would make sure to use the replacement with your new 5950x (and hopefully the PS is decent quality).

I'm worried that your old PS was bad-->failed your CPU-->you replaced the PS and ruled that out as a root cause-->but it was already too late for your CPU (the damage was done)
IF that happened (IF!) then you're vulnerable to a 2nd failure with the new CPU if you use the old PS

Otherwise I guess you were just very unlucky.
 
I've had one CPU partially die on me over the years, i7 920 and it started having one of the cores go bad. It was overclocked to like 4ghz and on 24/7 for like 7 years before that happened. longest running CPU i ever had in my main machine without having to upgrade.
 
I think you said you replaced your Power Supply. I would make sure to use the replacement with your new 5950x (and hopefully the PS is decent quality).

I'm worried that your old PS was bad-->failed your CPU-->you replaced the PS and ruled that out as a root cause-->but it was already too late for your CPU (the damage was done)
IF that happened (IF!) then you're vulnerable to a 2nd failure with the new CPU if you use the old PS

Otherwise I guess you were just very unlucky.
It's a Corsair RM850x. I replaced it with the same one cause it made it easy not having to re-run all the cables what with the existing modular cable already being there. The swap out took all of 5 minutes.

Actually not sure. It could have been the PSU. I've been running the desktop now for 24 hours and previously had a GPU crash happen once a day. So far it hasn't crashed once. Not sure. Could have been the CPU too.
 
It's a Corsair RM850x. I replaced it with the same one cause it made it easy not having to re-run all the cables what with the existing modular cable already being there. The swap out took all of 5 minutes.

Actually not sure. It could have been the PSU. I've been running the desktop now for 24 hours and previously had a GPU crash happen once a day. So far it hasn't crashed once. Not sure. Could have been the CPU too.
Corsair RM850x should be plenty good enough. If it were me I'd probably run the new PS with the new CPU going forward.
Unfortunately in that case you'll never know whether it was the PS or the CPU - but at least you should be safe, which is all that matters.
Good luck!
 
The first thing I do when I get just about any new component is stress test it. Stress Test a CPU by running it at full load via Prime95, etc. Stress Test a PSU by basically Stress-testing the CPU and GPU at the same time, etc.

Also, I notice that a lot of people are way too casual about static electricity. I'm not suggesting that you wear a grounded wrist strap necessarily but at least make sure you are grounded by touching a grounded object before you handle your CPU, RAM, Mobo, etc. Some people seem to think that static is some kind of joke but it really can and does kill components. In some areas, especially in dry conditions, the static can get really crazy. I can practically shoot lightning-bolts from my fingers at times. If I didn't make it such a habit to constantly ground myself I would be frying stuff left and right.
Word.
 
Spoke too soon on the GPU issue

The display manager not being able to draw to the screen bug is back (GPU crashing). Restarting /etc/init.d/display-manager works but it kills all my running programs so I might as well restart at that point. Back to the drawing board on that one.
 
I had an issue like that with my GPU before.
The problem was an absolute pain to diagnose.
Turned out the problem was my power OUTLET. Whenever a window AC unit turned on in a different room I was getting enough power fluctuation on the incoming power that it would cause my GPU driver to crash but absolutely nothing else. A UPS solved the issue.

I'll see if I can find the thread.

https://hardforum.com/threads/1080t...months-later-on-512-15-problems-back.2012548/
 
This thread is a testament to how incredibly complex modern PCs are. They are literally the most complicated machines most of us will ever see. Short of a data center
Yeah, if people really knew the technology and level of engineering required to spit out CPU's, Video Cards, etc, they would be surprised the failure rates are not higher. It's amazing.
 
I had an issue like that with my GPU before.
The problem was an absolute pain to diagnose.
Turned out the problem was my power OUTLET. Whenever a window AC unit turned on in a different room I was getting enough power fluctuation on the incoming power that it would cause my GPU driver to crash but absolutely nothing else. A UPS solved the issue.

I'll see if I can find the thread.

https://hardforum.com/threads/1080t...months-later-on-512-15-problems-back.2012548/

I think this might actually be the issue. The house is old (1962) in an area prone to high winds and I do occasionally see my lights flicker. I got solar installed last year and I've been on the waiting list for Tesla Powerwall for a year now. I think I'll pick up a cheap UPS for now just to see.
 
Yeah, if people really knew the technology and level of engineering required to spit out CPU's, Video Cards, etc, they would be surprised the failure rates are not higher. It's amazing.
Remember- EUV (what builds the 7nm stuff we found amazing for Zen2 and beyond) is literally etching silicon by shooting a laser at a flying stream of molten metal and then having the photons emitted by the impact hitting a target that is under water. And doing so accurately enough for 2.1 BILLION transistors in a Zen2 CPU alone...
 
Remember- EUV (what builds the 7nm stuff we found amazing for Zen2 and beyond) is literally etching silicon by shooting a laser at a flying stream of molten metal and then having the photons emitted by the impact hitting a target that is under water. And doing so accurately enough for 2.1 BILLION transistors in a Zen2 CPU alone...
Well sure it sounds impressive if you put it like that...
 
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