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>We are aware of a limited number of reports online claiming that excess voltage while overclocking may have damaged the motherboard socket and pin pads. Well,

by xxpor 4y ago

>We are aware of a limited number of reports online claiming that excess voltage while overclocking may have damaged the motherboard socket and pin pads. Well, if the overclocking part is true, shrug. Not that it's great, but it's also not completely unexpected for bad things to happen when you OC.

wmf 4y ago
AMD recommends that customers use EXPO then they claim it's warranty-voiding unsafe overclocking.
- derefr 4y ago
  And doctors recommend safe-injection sites, while also claiming that shooting heroin is unsafe. Shocking! It’s called “harm reduction” — i.e. “if you’re going to do stupid thing X anyway, you may as well use our weak guardrails for it, to hopefully minimize the damage you’re causing compared to doing it through some random third-party solution.”
  - Sakos 4y ago
    Oh please. They advertise their performance based on using things like EXPO. It's insanely anti-consumer for them to turn around and say "if you want to reach the performance we sold you this CPU on, you need to turn in this feature that voids your warranty and could potentially blow up your CPU". I don't understand why you're defending them here.
  - formerly_proven 4y ago
    AMD has generally presented benchmarks with market-typical XMP/A-XMP/EXPO memory; their CPUs benefit more than the competition from that. Now some people have the urge to turn around and go “well why you’d do that, what are you, stupid?” for some reason.
Dylan16807 4y ago
"the pre-programmed voltages used to support EXPO memory overclocking profiles" Bad things shouldn't be expected when using pre-programmed voltages. And chips shorting out beyond thermal limits shouldn't be expected ever.
trey-jones 4y ago
Indeed. Overclocking in 2023 is different than it was 20 years ago. You probably weren't overclocking back then without some inkling of the risks/dangers of eg. increasing the voltage to your CPU. And because you knew the risks you were probably stepping up very, very slowly and stress testing at each increment. Now you can kinda just grunt "me want faster computer" and push a button and it works. Unless it goes horribly wrong and catches your CPU on fire. Chipmakers meanwhile can have their marketing cake by selling chips with certain properties, but pushing software that makes them "better than advertised" which seems like a great value. And then eat the legal cake by avoiding liability when chips fail because "running this hardware outside of the default specs is not supported."
protastus 4y ago
In the old days that would be true but nowadays OC is so mainstream that temperature sensors are expected to keep the SoC within safe limits, shutting down if needed but preventing damage. Something escaped design models and test scenarios for this to happen with end users.
- xxpor 4y ago
  This doesn't sound like a thermal issue with the chip itself though, more in the physical socket.
  - ilyt 4y ago
    In the article it said that apparently in some cases excess voltage damaged the temperature sensor which caused chip to not register overheating and just ask VRM for more power
    - __turbobrew__ 4y ago
      Sounds like the thermal sensors don’t fail safe. If the thermal sensor isn’t returning readings or those readings are not within a reasonable range the CPU should shut down and then fail subsequent POST tests with a descriptive error.
      - ilyt 4y ago
        Overvolting can do funny stuff to electronics. It could "just" go out of spec and start lying by some degrees. I wouldn't be surprised if next gen had that duplicated, it can't cost that many extra transistors
- Alupis 4y ago
  > In the old days that would be true but nowadays OC is so mainstream I do not agree with this statement. If anything, overclocking is less prevalent than ever before, despite what all of the LTT's and friends make videos about. The reality is modern CPU's are crazy fast, and auto-overclock (boost/burst) all on their own. There's little reason to push the CPU's further - and more significant gains can be had much safer by upgrading CPU generations than squeezing out a few extra percent of performance in benchmarks. There will always be enthusiasts that want to overclock - but I don't think we can consider overclocking mainstream.
pizza234 4y ago
This specific case (EXPO) is a grey area. I personally don't like overclocking, yet I've always enabled EXPO, for many reasons. First, because the producers of my RAM modules advertise it very clearly as feature; AMD advertises it quite loudly (https://www.amd.com/en/technologies/expo https://www.amd.com/en/technologies/expo) as well. I think (not 100% sure) that it's even often set in RAM benchmarks . Modern systems have very aggressive frequencies/dynamic frequency scaling, which blurs the limit of what constitutes overclocking. Intel sells unlocked models of CPUs that are supposedly can be "overclocked" (https://www.intel.co.uk/content/www/uk/en/gaming/overclocking-intel-processors.html https://www.intel.co.uk/content/www/uk/en/gaming/overclockin...). Many RAM producers sell modules based on their tolerance, so the fact that they're pushed to the limit - within the spec - is part of the sale. Having said that, I definitely draw the line to using voltages (or anything else) that are outside the specification, and I consider crossing it overclocking. Ultimately however, EXPO is a specification, so I don't consider it overclocking.
- formerly_proven 4y ago
  On AM4 many boards set too high IOD voltages when enabling XMP. Afaik no detrimental impact except about 10 W superfluous power draw. It doesn’t seem particularly far-fetched that EXPO might suffer from the same issue except it accidentally sets batshit voltages instead of just too high. Afaik the SoC and IMC supplies are unsophisticated, there is no DVS going on, just BIOS setting a particular voltage in the VRM.
- vel0city 4y ago
  I agree. If the RAM module is on the QVL, the RAM module has an EXPO profile, the EXPO profile should be considered as in spec IMO.
- Dalewyn 4y ago
  >Ultimately however, EXPO is a specification, so I don't consider it overclocking. The O in EXPO stands for overclocking, and if that wasn't clear enough AMD themselves state using the whole word that EXPO is overclocking numerous times repeatedly.[1] [1]: https://www.amd.com/en/technologies/expo https://www.amd.com/en/technologies/expo
ilyt 4y ago
> Well, if the overclocking part is true, shrug. Not that it's great, but it's also not completely unexpected for bad things to happen when you OC. IIRC the core issue is that some motherboards loaded EXPO overclocking profile (basically, overclocking parameters for memory that are written on memory stick for "guranteed", "tested" OC performance) and caused overvoltage of CPU. I don't remember if they found whether that's mobo reading profile wrong and burning up CPU or just some RAM sticks coming with too optimistic profile and mobo doing "well, I trust you, here are extra volts". The wild part is that it is AMD tech (Untel has similiar equivalent in XMP), yet it also voids warranty as any other overclock
vondur 4y ago
I believe we've seen issues like this before from motherboard manufacturers, who are pushing more voltage to the CPU to get more performance out them. Recently is was on the Intel side of things.
- qball 4y ago
  This sort of thing was even a problem 13 years ago. (https://www.overclockers.com/socket-1156-burning-issuesis-fire/ https://www.overclockers.com/socket-1156-burning-issuesis-fi...) It's not new- component OEMs just screw up sometimes. I suspect that PGA sockets have less problem with this, though AMD has had just as long to get LGA right given their server processors have used it for nearly as long as Intel has so while it does happen, there really isn't any excuse for it.

by xxpor 4y ago

wmf 4y ago

AMD recommends that customers use EXPO then they claim it's warranty-voiding unsafe overclocking.

derefr 4y ago
And doctors recommend safe-injection sites, while also claiming that shooting heroin is unsafe. Shocking! It’s called “harm reduction” — i.e. “if you’re going to do stupid thing X anyway, you may as well use our weak guardrails for it, to hopefully minimize the damage you’re causing compared to doing it through some random third-party solution.”
- Sakos 4y ago
  Oh please. They advertise their performance based on using things like EXPO. It's insanely anti-consumer for them to turn around and say "if you want to reach the performance we sold you this CPU on, you need to turn in this feature that voids your warranty and could potentially blow up your CPU". I don't understand why you're defending them here.
- formerly_proven 4y ago
  AMD has generally presented benchmarks with market-typical XMP/A-XMP/EXPO memory; their CPUs benefit more than the competition from that. Now some people have the urge to turn around and go “well why you’d do that, what are you, stupid?” for some reason.

Dylan16807 4y ago

"the pre-programmed voltages used to support EXPO memory overclocking profiles" Bad things shouldn't be expected when using pre-programmed voltages. And chips shorting out beyond thermal limits shouldn't be expected ever.

trey-jones 4y ago

Indeed. Overclocking in 2023 is different than it was 20 years ago. You probably weren't overclocking back then without some inkling of the risks/dangers of eg. increasing the voltage to your CPU. And because you knew the risks you were probably stepping up very, very slowly and stress testing at each increment. Now you can kinda just grunt "me want faster computer" and push a button and it works. Unless it goes horribly wrong and catches your CPU on fire. Chipmakers meanwhile can have their marketing cake by selling chips with certain properties, but pushing software that makes them "better than advertised" which seems like a great value. And then eat the legal cake by avoiding liability when chips fail because "running this hardware outside of the default specs is not supported."

protastus 4y ago

In the old days that would be true but nowadays OC is so mainstream that temperature sensors are expected to keep the SoC within safe limits, shutting down if needed but preventing damage. Something escaped design models and test scenarios for this to happen with end users.

xxpor 4y ago
This doesn't sound like a thermal issue with the chip itself though, more in the physical socket.
- ilyt 4y ago
  In the article it said that apparently in some cases excess voltage damaged the temperature sensor which caused chip to not register overheating and just ask VRM for more power
  - __turbobrew__ 4y ago
    Sounds like the thermal sensors don’t fail safe. If the thermal sensor isn’t returning readings or those readings are not within a reasonable range the CPU should shut down and then fail subsequent POST tests with a descriptive error.
    - ilyt 4y ago
      Overvolting can do funny stuff to electronics. It could "just" go out of spec and start lying by some degrees. I wouldn't be surprised if next gen had that duplicated, it can't cost that many extra transistors
Alupis 4y ago
> In the old days that would be true but nowadays OC is so mainstream I do not agree with this statement. If anything, overclocking is less prevalent than ever before, despite what all of the LTT's and friends make videos about. The reality is modern CPU's are crazy fast, and auto-overclock (boost/burst) all on their own. There's little reason to push the CPU's further - and more significant gains can be had much safer by upgrading CPU generations than squeezing out a few extra percent of performance in benchmarks. There will always be enthusiasts that want to overclock - but I don't think we can consider overclocking mainstream.

pizza234 4y ago

This specific case (EXPO) is a grey area. I personally don't like overclocking, yet I've always enabled EXPO, for many reasons. First, because the producers of my RAM modules advertise it very clearly as feature; AMD advertises it quite loudly (https://www.amd.com/en/technologies/expo https://www.amd.com/en/technologies/expo) as well. I think (not 100% sure) that it's even often set in RAM benchmarks . Modern systems have very aggressive frequencies/dynamic frequency scaling, which blurs the limit of what constitutes overclocking. Intel sells unlocked models of CPUs that are supposedly can be "overclocked" (https://www.intel.co.uk/content/www/uk/en/gaming/overclocking-intel-processors.html https://www.intel.co.uk/content/www/uk/en/gaming/overclockin...). Many RAM producers sell modules based on their tolerance, so the fact that they're pushed to the limit - within the spec - is part of the sale. Having said that, I definitely draw the line to using voltages (or anything else) that are outside the specification, and I consider crossing it overclocking. Ultimately however, EXPO is a specification, so I don't consider it overclocking.

formerly_proven 4y ago
On AM4 many boards set too high IOD voltages when enabling XMP. Afaik no detrimental impact except about 10 W superfluous power draw. It doesn’t seem particularly far-fetched that EXPO might suffer from the same issue except it accidentally sets batshit voltages instead of just too high. Afaik the SoC and IMC supplies are unsophisticated, there is no DVS going on, just BIOS setting a particular voltage in the VRM.
vel0city 4y ago
I agree. If the RAM module is on the QVL, the RAM module has an EXPO profile, the EXPO profile should be considered as in spec IMO.
Dalewyn 4y ago
>Ultimately however, EXPO is a specification, so I don't consider it overclocking. The O in EXPO stands for overclocking, and if that wasn't clear enough AMD themselves state using the whole word that EXPO is overclocking numerous times repeatedly.[1] [1]: https://www.amd.com/en/technologies/expo https://www.amd.com/en/technologies/expo

ilyt 4y ago

> Well, if the overclocking part is true, shrug. Not that it's great, but it's also not completely unexpected for bad things to happen when you OC. IIRC the core issue is that some motherboards loaded EXPO overclocking profile (basically, overclocking parameters for memory that are written on memory stick for "guranteed", "tested" OC performance) and caused overvoltage of CPU. I don't remember if they found whether that's mobo reading profile wrong and burning up CPU or just some RAM sticks coming with too optimistic profile and mobo doing "well, I trust you, here are extra volts". The wild part is that it is AMD tech (Untel has similiar equivalent in XMP), yet it also voids warranty as any other overclock

vondur 4y ago

I believe we've seen issues like this before from motherboard manufacturers, who are pushing more voltage to the CPU to get more performance out them. Recently is was on the Intel side of things.

qball 4y ago
This sort of thing was even a problem 13 years ago. (https://www.overclockers.com/socket-1156-burning-issuesis-fire/ https://www.overclockers.com/socket-1156-burning-issuesis-fi...) It's not new- component OEMs just screw up sometimes. I suspect that PGA sockets have less problem with this, though AMD has had just as long to get LGA right given their server processors have used it for nearly as long as Intel has so while it does happen, there really isn't any excuse for it.