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Like Intel before it, AMD blames motherboard makers for burnt-out CPUs
- FirmwareBurner 1y agoThat's why I like Apple's vertical integration. If something breaks it's 100% their fault that they need to make right to the consumer, they can't tell you to GTFO and go blame someone else to escape responsibility.
- jamesnorden 1y agoThen can, and will, blame the consumer until forced to acknowledge it, sometimes by a class action lawsuit, like they have many times in the past.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- taneliv 1y agoYou can surely buy integrated non-Apple systems like laptops, desktops and servers where the vendor fully bears the responsibility for correct system function. DIY systems are perhaps the ones most affected by this, but I don't think Apple caters at all to that segment.
- wat10000 1y agoRight, Dell or Lenovo can no more tell their customer "not our problem, talk to Intel" than Toyota can say, "not our problem, talk to Takata." If you buy a motherboard and buy a CPU and put them together, only then do you get the opportunity to play these games.
- folsom 1y agoYeah, next thing you know AMD will tell consumers they are holding it wrong.
- bitmasher9 1y agoIt is nice to be able to replace your cpu, or install new memory, or use expansion slots. Not to mention being able to pick hardware that isn’t locked to a single operating system. For me that’s well worth being liable for installation issues.
- lazide 1y agoIt doesn’t sound like the concerns are necessarily installation related?
- gwbas1c 1y agoI had one of the giant Mac Pros from 2007, and I was able to change drives, RAM, and even replace the included graphics card when it fried. I even fixed my first Macbook pro from 2006. My more recent Macbooks haven't needed repair before the OS was end-of-life. Personally, I don't miss it, as I'm 100% laptop. If I was into PC gaming, I'd probably have a desktop, but I prefer the simplicity of consoles. FWIW: Most people who buy laptops are buying at a price point where it's "not worth it" to repair.
- wat10000 1y agoThe current Mac Pro offers upgradeable storage, and PCIe slots (but they don't support video cards). The CPU and RAM can no longer be upgraded. It's also tremendously expensive, $7,000 for the base model. (That 2007 model started at $2,200!) I miss it a little. I have a 16GB MacBook Pro that I wouldn't mind adding more RAM to. But I think it's a worthwhile tradeoff for better performance, size, and power consumption.
- loloquwowndueo 1y agoFour words for you: “You’re holding it wrong”
- redleader55 1y ago> they can't tell you to GTFO and go blame someone else to escape responsibility That sounds good in theory, but if it were true people like Louis Rossman who repair Apple phones and laptops and talk about Apple's treatment of customers wouldn't have millions of followers on YouTube.
- sofixa 1y agoLike the butterfly keyboard, which required a lawsuit for Apple to agree was defective and offer repairs for free in the first 4 years after buying it?
- Ygg2 1y ago> If something breaks it's 100% their fault that they need to make right "You're holding it wrong", Steve Jobs to a customer that covered their invisible antenna.
- branko_d 1y agoMost other brands had very similar problems (including my trusty Nokia at the time). You can still attenuate antennae on modern phones if you hold it just right. It's just a matter of physics. Here is what Nokia N97 does when you "hold it wrong": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shR4jITiG48 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shR4jITiG48
- Ygg2 1y agoThat's not as bad as Apple's. https://archive.is/20240401152946/https://www.wired.com/2010/06/iphone-4-holding-it-wrong/ https://archive.is/20240401152946/https://www.wired.com/2010...
- mrheosuper 1y agoPretty sure they blamed the user holding their iphone wrong.
- nashashmi 1y agoTo Be fair, you are not supposed to hold in the one place where it disconnects
- loloquwowndueo 1y agoTo be fair, it should not disconnect if you hold it in a place that’s not clearly marked “it will disconnect if you touch here”. :)
- fwip 1y agoWas there anything in the product manual or packaging to tell the user this?
- microtonal 1y agoYou mean like the butterfly keyboard in my MacBook Pro 2016, which could be destroyed by a few specs of dust, and took years for Apple to acknowledge?
- trillic 1y agoor the iPhone 4 Steve Jobs: "You're holding it wrong"
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- rwmj 1y agoOr the Apple iBook G3 which had faulty soldering. (This affected mine.) Apple never acknowledged it.
- mft_ 1y ago...or the widespread issue with the screen ribbon connector on the first generation of touchbar Macbook Pros (aka "Flexgate") which despite apparently identical symptoms and failure modes was fixed for free on the 13" model, but not on the 15" model? (At least, this was the outcome when I took mine to the Apple Store...)
- sroussey 1y agoFunny, but I had that butterfly keyboard for many years (until I got an M2) and never had a problem. It’s no mechanical keyboard to the fingers, but it worked fine.
- throwaway48476 1y agoLike the flex connector on the display that was too short and cracked when you closed the lid?
- nashashmi 1y agoApple sells the hardware. That is why they are responsible. If dell sold the hardware , dell would be responsible . AMD does not sell the motherboard. The motherboard sells the CPU. So motherboard is responsible. But the relevance here is CPU is burning out because it is being plugged in by the end user. And the manufacturer is blaming the motherboard for their cpu burning. Maybe the cpu should be protective?
- nashashmi 1y agoLooks like the motherboard might be sending more voltage than allowed causing the CPU to burn. So it is the motherboard's fault.
- hu3 1y agoMaybe this will open your eyes. Dell support has flown a repair guy to my place with spare hardware pieces and fixed my pc in front of me. In my office. And I was partially to blame for the problem (I over clocked the CPU). I told them I did oc the CPU, they changed motherboard and processor anyways. For free. So not only there are other verticals, but they are better.
- runjake 1y agoWe just had a similar oopsie (water ingress) happen with a very expensive Dell server. We were upfront about what happened and wanted to pay for service. But in the end, they deployed a tech to repair it under warranty anyway. That was a huge boost for Dell in my mind.
- hu3 1y agoYeah their warranty is legendary. In my case, flying someone to my place alone was more expensive than the parts they replaced.
- Spooky23 1y agoAll of these companies have good and bad stories. I’ve been in the IT biz for a long time and have lots of stories of heroics and villainy. I can think of a bad one where a significant number of laptops and 1st party docking stations were deployed. There was an issue where in certain scenarios plugging into the dock would brick the dock. It affected ~5% of the population in 90 days. Vendor response: fuck you. One of the interns working on desktop support at the org figured out that certain laptop serial number ranges were affected. She then popped it open and found what turned out to be a counterfeit chip. Flying monkeys were released and the CEO of the vendor got a call. End result: ~$40-50M redeployment of everything, eaten by the vendor. If they had been accountable from the beginning, they likely would have recalled $3-5M of devices and spent $300-500k on deployment. On the flip, I remember one scenario where an off warranty device failed before its replacement was ready (and the replacement was another vendor). The part wasn’t available locally, and the account exec ditched a conference in Chicago, picked up the part from a depot in Indiana and drove it to Massachusetts overnight, with a CE waiting for it in the lot.
- atwrk 1y agoApple is the only company where I ever had to involve a lawyer to exercise my consumer rights (in Germany). They made notebooks with a design flaw that resulted in broken display cables from opening and closing the devices. My notebook broke 3 times, and at the third time I have the right to get my money back, which they refused (before involving said lawyer).
- izacus 1y agoWho asked you to drop an Apple ad in a completely unrelated topic?
- anvuong 1y agoAntenna gate? Bend gate? Butterfly keyboard? This kind of Apple fanboyism is why I hate Apple, even though I really enjoy using their Macs at work.
- hangonhn 1y agoDid you forget the iPhone 4 antenna debacle? Not only was the design problematic but Apple's gaslighting of everyone was terrible. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPhone_4#Antenna https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPhone_4#Antenna Or what about the butterfly keyboard issue? https://www.pcmag.com/news/apple-finally-begins-distributing-payments-from-butterfly-keyboard-settlement https://www.pcmag.com/news/apple-finally-begins-distributing.... I can't believe I had to periodically use compressed air to get my keyboard working again. Again, they kept denying it was an issue.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- brokenmachine 1y agoCheck out Louis Rossmann's youtube channel for how well that logic works out. God, there's SO many examples of Apple being terrible.
- Jhsto 1y agoAnecdotally, ASRock has been blamed also by Intel for shipping motherboards with NIC debug settings on: https://community.intel.com/t5/Ethernet-Products/1-out-of-2-10Gbe-X550-port-not-usable-after-firmware-upgrade/m-p/1278411/highlight/true#M25018 https://community.intel.com/t5/Ethernet-Products/1-out-of-2-...
- SketchySeaBeast 1y agoThe fact that the vast majority of these burnouts are on ASRock is a pretty big smoking gun to me. They're an attractive manufacturer because they're cheap, but at what cost?
- tempest_ 1y agoThey are not always cheap though. They have been moving upmarket a bit the last 5 years.
- Xss3 1y agoIve always liked asrock because they had a lot of control in the bios
- tester756 1y agoMy Ryzen recently died on Gigabyte.
- SketchySeaBeast 1y agoDamn. What chip was it, and how long did you have it? Did you do anything to it (overclock, change the voltage)?
- tester756 1y agoRyzen 7 5700X3D >and how long did you have it? 9 months >Did you do anything to it (overclock, change the voltage)? Nothing, I just enabled resizable bar in bios and that's it
- perihelions 1y agoRelated thread, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45041743 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45041743 ("GMP damaging Zen 5 CPUs? (gmplib.org)"—18 hours ago, 192 comments)
- dumbfounder 1y agoIf the motherboards are putting too much power into the chips, why isn’t it their fault?
- kvemkon 1y agoIsn't it the small embedded support CPU core within the CPU I/O die that controls voltages and frequencies? Sure it depends of what is configured in BIOS.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- philjohn 1y agoThat I/O die will do little if sent hundreds of amps all of a sudden.
- kickopotomus 1y agoIn part, yes, but the whole picture is a bit more complex. Intel and AMD both work with vendors to work out reference designs and power regulator configurations that are compatible with their CPUs. Modern power regulators are relatively complex, especially when you get into the high-end desktop and server space. There are a lot of things that can be done wrong and cause issues, such as voltage or current overshoot when the CPU moves between different power states (e.g. low to high load).
- mort96 1y agoNot a huge fan of that headline. It's completely plausible that motherboard vendors aren't following AMD's guidance and push the chips past their documented limits. It wouldn't be the first time, and it won't be the last. The problem with Intel blaming 13th and 14th gen failures on motherboard manufacturers was that it happened even on motherboards which followed Intel's guidance to a T. This Ars Technica article doesn't seem to even try to make the argument that motherboard manufacturers are innocent, so the comparison to 13th and 14th gen failures is completely unwarranted. Further, the article doesn't even investigate whether or not AMD's claim is correct. They could've compared AMD's max voltage specifications to the default settings configured by various motherboards.
- glimshe 1y agoArs Technica is far from what it once was. It's now more political and leaning heavy on click bait.
- cptnapalm 1y agoI started seeing this more than a week ago on r/ASRock. There was a BIOS update and loads and loads of people reported that their CPUs fried.
- hirvi74 1y agoCall me paranoid, but I never update the BIOS unless I have no other option. I have seen way too many examples of things going wrong. Although, that was many moons ago, and perhaps with the reset switches and stuff these days things are not as bad as they once were. Regardless, if ain't broken, don't break it.
- Avamander 1y agoWell, seeing how buggy motherboards are in general, I rather believe AMD when they say they're ignoring yet another crucial detail. My previous Gigabyte motherboard had unstable TSC, incorrect IOMMU configuration, broken PSP and CPPC. My current Asus board also has C-state weirdness and broken ASPM and it killed one CPU(!) on default settings. I won't even go into all the bugs I've encountered with Lenovo laptops, ACPI bugs, ASPM bugs, Pluton bugs and so on and on.
- rectang 1y agoI would hate life if I had to debug those. The idea that there’s an entire market segment of people who tolerate such instability or even relish the task of debugging unreliable hardware boggles my mind.
- nchmy 1y agoHetzner recently underwent a major maintenance project to replace all motherboards for their Ryzen 7xxx servers. Dont know if they used ASRock for those or not https://docs.hetzner.com/robot/dedicated-server/general-information/mainboard-replacement-for-several-dedicated-servers/ https://docs.hetzner.com/robot/dedicated-server/general-info...
- mason_mpls 1y agoI’m far more inclined to trust any CPU manufacturer over a motherboard manufacturer.
- NoPicklez 1y agoAfter what's happened with Intel with their 13th and 14th gen CPU's that thought of mine is changing.
- bicepjai 1y agoIt’s normal to expect AMD to put out list of supported motherboards and also test their chips on it right ? Then they can make the statement that the motherboard is not in our recommended list. Why do the blame game
- SilentM68 1y agoHaving worked with a MOBO manufacturer, I would say that this is somewhat plausible though not necessarily the fault of the engineers. In my experience, both users and company administration, e.g. sales, CEOs have a lot to do with failures. An example, users are used to a particular MOBO brand, they want to try the new gadget-a video card usually, which requires much more power than the recommended power supply. They call tech support asking for an opinion, tech support talks to sales, sales will want to make the, well, sale. They typically did not ask the engineers for an opinion, as they are overseas, and instead query a direct manager, who will typically test the compatibility of the device and for a few days. When the device passes the test, they relate the good news to the sales department, who will then contact the user with the good news, an offer of a complete system. The user buys the system with the new video card, takes it for a ride. Three months later the user calls in reporting heating issues, tech support walks the user through some test, the user typically provides the results, tech support does not have an answer for the issue, they ask the user to send the unit in for testing and repair. Unit comes into the shop, board gets replaced, tested for three more days, passes all tests, gets shipped back to the user and issue pops up again, user gets irate, threatens to sue, nothing gets fixed. All because the bottom line is the $3000 dollars that was made in the sale. The issue eventually gets sent up the chain to engineers, they provide a BIOS fix, given to the user, user flashes. Issue is fixed, two years later, new Video Card comes in, user decides he needs that vid card, the never-ending cycle continues anew. I remember an instance where machines from a former employer was touted as a small low-heat server, really tiny, machine was made with substandard components, basically, cost-cutting at its best. Machines overheated, CPUs damaged, real shit show. So yes, MOBO manufacturers, users bare equal responsibility, a chance to make lots of money & commission from the former, the need to be the first to try cutting edge technology without regards for proper safety, limitations and hardware compatibility, from the latter. It seems that over the decades, people have failed to learn or neglected, Moore's Law's increasing physical limitations, because hey why not ;)
- brokenmachine 1y ago>users bare equal responsibility, a chance to make lots of money & commission from the former, the need to be the first to try cutting edge technology without regards for proper safety, limitations and hardware compatibility, from the latter. The users do not bear responsibility here. It's up to the manufacturer to say no if it's not possible. And why are managers testing new GPU/mobo combinations? A company run like that and not learning lessons deserves to fail.
- johnspy 1y ago[dead]
- ASMVal 1y agoEh, AMD did the same thing literally last gen. Telling us that moob manufacturers didn't follow spec while they did, it's just that the spec wasn't clear and amd changed it intel style right after it came out. But it has to be said, that it in this specific instance it seems that only asorck is affected (and has been for months at this point thanks to GN investigation) so my bet is to just wait and see what happens.