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As there is ongoing drama with Zen 5 and power issues, there are people with the instruments and the motivation to investigate this. You should consider conta

As there is ongoing drama with Zen 5 and power issues, there are people with the instruments and the motivation to investigate this. You should consider contacting Gamers Nexus, and help them to get your test suite running. They can measure power draw and do a thermal analysis of this CPU, and they'd likely be eager to do it, given the possibility of making a bunch of dramatic YouTube content about design flaws in widely used hardware. That's pretty much their whole schtick in recent years. > Modern CPUs measure their temperature and clock down if they get too hot, don't they? Yes. It's rather complex now and it involves the motherboard vendor's firmware. When (not if) they get that wrong CPUs burn up. You're going to need some expertise to analyze this.

fxtentacle 1y ago
He's a bit sensationalist, yes, but I am thankful that he saved us from buying affected Intel CPUs.
- spookie 1y ago
  Not sure of sensationalist or just doing great reporting. I take him as one of the last good tech journalists on the platform.
- hnuser123456 1y ago
  GN wasn't the first to break the story the 13/14th gen was defective. The thousands and thousands of users experiencing the issues collectively noticed pretty quick. If anything, there was a period where he was saying "We've talked to Intel but we won't say anything yet until they do."
  - BoorishBears 1y ago
    [flagged]
    - wiredpancake 1y ago
      The only real problem with GN is Steve is a bit of an egotist when it comes to content creators who do less technical analysis, like LTT or Jayz. He never really got over the stuff with Linus and doubled down on stupid things. I think they both have a great place in the tech scene and LTT's videos of recent have been a lot better quality and researched then yesteryear.
- tpurves 1y ago
  Yes. When he's right, he's right. However the main issue I have with GN is how Steve tends to go full Leeroy Jenkins pitchforks and torches for 9 out of every 5 actual scandals in the tech industry.
  - CaptainBanger 1y ago
    I felt the same way, but over time I have come to respect those with the Crusader personality archetype, we need these people to do their thing and they need us to balance them out.
  - jchw 1y ago
    When it comes to interpersonal drama, the "Shoot first, ask questions later" style of reporting is terrible. However, for consumer advocacy it's basically the opposite, especially because in most cases it's easy for companies to turn the narrative around by simply handling the issue well. It's almost more about how they handle it than the actual issue in many cases.
- bayindirh 1y ago
  He's a "student" and friend of late Gordon Mah Ung. He's carrying his torch forward. This was Gordon's style, and Steve is continuing it. He has the courage to hit Bloomberg offices with a cameraman, so I don't think his words ring hollow. We need that kind of in your face, no punches held back type of reporting when compared to "measured professionals".
  - mft_ 1y ago
    Absolutely - this is the sort of direct citizen journalism I expect (sort of hope?) we'll see more and of as traditional investigative journalism dies its slow death.
MrGilbert 1y ago
> [...] a bunch of dramatic YouTube content [...] That framing doesn't do him and the team justice. There is (or better, was) a 3.5h long story about NVIDIA GPUs finding their ways illegaly from the US to China, which got taken down by a malicious DMCA claim from Bloomberg. It is quite interesting to watch (Can be found archive.org). GN is one of the last pro-consumer outlets, that keep on digging and shaking the tree big companys are sitting on.
- topspin 1y ago
  For the record, I think GN is excellent and highly credible.
  - spoaceman7777 1y ago
    [flagged]
- TiredOfLife 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - bayindirh 1y ago
    Have you seen and watched their longer form content, esp. lately?
    - TiredOfLife 1y ago
      Yes. It's hours and hours of rambling.
- themafia 1y ago
  > which got taken down Not everywhere: https://archive.org/details/the-nvidia-ai-gpu-black-market-investigating-smuggling-corruption-governments https://archive.org/details/the-nvidia-ai-gpu-black-market-i...
  - 1y ago
nerdsniper 1y ago
Wendell at Level1Techs often goes more in-depth on the software testing and datacenter use-case analysis through partnerships with friends who run lots of machines in datacenters. GN is unique in paying for silicon-level analysis of failures. der8auer also contributes a lot to these stories. I tend to wait for all 3 of their analyses, because each adds a different "hard-won" perspective.
trebligdivad 1y ago
They don't say what temperature the CPU was reporting which seems like an odd omission. Whatever the specs of your cooler etc check the temperature it's actually running at. Go by what the CPU is saying! I've got the older 3950x, and the first one died after a few months (still in warranty) with a cooler in spec, but it would go into the 90s at full load just doing big builds. I replaced the heatsink with a basic watercooler when the replacement chip arrived and it's running at least 20c cooler at full load.
- wkat4242 1y ago
  Maybe they didn't have anything logging the temperature. They didn't expect it to die after all.
- account42 1y ago
  Zen 2 is supposed to be able to work up to 95 C so that shouldn't have caused your CPU to fail. And it should clock down before it fails anyway, way below the specified "minimum" frequency if needed - got to experience that with a failing AIO. A better cooler should only be required to make full use of your CPU not to protect it.
  - trebligdivad 1y ago
    I kind of agree with you and Symmetry; but having had a fried CPU I'm more careful. No electronics like running very hot - so even if you're just inside spec on something for the heat it's likely to live a shorter life than if you kept it more comfortable - and it'll let it clock faster if you keep it cool! And really my points are: * the standard spec coolers just don't manage that on these hot CPUs, even if they claim to. * If you're building a machine and you know you're pushing it hard, just check the temperatures to check that cooling you bought is working.
- Symmetry 1y ago
  A modern CPU should be able to detect temperature excursions and bring itself to a safe halt even if you power it up without any cooler attached. It's normal and expected that people making mistakes around the cooling systems of their CPUs will accidentally give themselves terrible performance. It is not normal that the CPUs will break.
spoaceman7777 1y ago
All you really need to see is the picture of the CPU with thermal paste only on one half. Thermal throttling is tuned to work when there is 1. a sufficient heatsink (theirs was significantly below requirements) and 2. it is installed correctly so that its triggers for downclocking happen with the correct timing. This is just another instance of ridiculous PEBCAK error
- userbinator 1y ago
  I'm not as sure about AMD CPUs (and they were known for having far worse overheat behaviour back in the early 2000s) but there are plenty of stories of Intel CPUs working for many years, sitting at the thermal limits, with the (stock) heatsink not even in contact, thanks to their cheap push-pin retention mechanism.
  - munchlax 1y ago
    Those dreadful plastic knobs never want to sit right. Simple lever over that shit any time of day, pls.
- ndiddy 1y ago
  This is per design. On AM5 processors, there's a hotspot on the lower half of the processor where the dies that contain the CPU cores are located. Noctua recommends that AM5 users mount their coolers shifted towards the lower side of the processor for optimal cooling performance, see https://noctua.at/en/offset-am5-mounting-technical-backgrounds https://noctua.at/en/offset-am5-mounting-technical-backgroun... . You may have missed the paragraph in the article that explicitly points this out: > We use a Noctua cooling solution for both systems. For the 1st system, we mounted the heat sink centred. For the 2nd system, we followed Noctua's advice of mounting things offset towards what they claim to be the hotter side of the CPU. Below is a picture of the 2nd system without the heat sink which shows that offset. Note the brackets and their pins, those pins are where the heat sink's pressure gets centred. Also note how the thermal paste has been squeezed away from that part, but is quite thick towards the left.
  - 1y ago
RachelF 1y ago
AMD has failed to be reliable with its Zen 4 and Zen 5 consumer CPUs, just at the same time Intel did the same with their 13k and 14k higher end CPUs. AMD is somewhat worse than Intel as their DDR5 memory bus is very "twitchy" making it hard to get the highest DDR5 timings, especially with multiple DIMMs per channel.
- akimbostrawman 1y ago
  I don't think it's reasonable to call memory timing tweaking stability issues worse than a cpu dying from heat under normal usage.
- a-french-anon 1y ago
  What do you mean? Is your second sentence the only reason for the first?
- Auracle 1y ago
  I had to put together an AM5 computer pretty quickly after I accidentally fried some components in my last computer, so I got a Microcenter bundle. I got 2x32GB sticks of RAM with the plan to throw in another two sticks later. I had no idea that was now a bad plan. I wish manufacturers would have just put 2 DIMM slots on motherboards as a “warning.”
- rangestransform 1y ago
  I think that's just a result of being at the limit of what a right-angle memory slot can handle, it's about time that desktop move to CAMM or soldered memory
adrian_b 1y ago
The small coolers used by them are not recommended by Noctua for 9950X. Noctua recommends only bigger coolers for 9950X, which dissipates 200 W permanently on a workload like theirs (which is much less than the over 250 W dissipated in similar conditions by the competing Intel CPUs). Despite this, the overtemperature protection of the CPUs should have protected the CPUs and prevent any kind of damage like this. Besides the system that varies continuously the clock frequency to keep the CPU within the current and power consumption limits, there is a second protection that stops temporarily the clock when a temperature threshold is exceeded. However, the internal temperature sensors of the CPUs are not accurate, so the over-temperature protection may begin to act only at a temperature that is already too high. So these failures appear to have been caused by a combination of not using the appropriate coolers for a 200 W CPU, combined with the fact that AMD advertises a 200-W CPU as an 170-W CPU, fooling naive customers into believing that smaller coolers are acceptable, and with either some kind of malfunction of the over-temperature protection in these CPUs or with a degradation problem that happens even within the nominal temperature range, but at its upper end.
- ollien 1y ago
  > The small coolers used by them are not recommended by Noctua for 9950X Noctua's CPU compatibility page lists the NH-U9s as "medium turbo/overclocking headroom" for the 9950X [0]. I don't think it's fair to suggest their cooler choice is the problem here. [0] https://ncc.noctua.at/cpus/model/AMD-Ryzen-9-9950X-1831 https://ncc.noctua.at/cpus/model/AMD-Ryzen-9-9950X-1831
  - adrian_b 1y ago
    That means pretty much "not recommended". On the same page linked by you, Noctua explains that the green check mark means that with that cooler the CPU can run all-core intensive tasks, exactly like those used by the gmplib developers, only at the base clock, which is 4.3 GHz for 9950X, with turbo disabled in BIOS. Only then the CPU might dissipate its nominal TDP of 170 W, instead of the 200 W that it dissipates with turbo enabled. With "best turbo headroom", you can be certain that the CPU can run all-core intensive tasks with turbo enabled. Even if you do no overclocking, but you run all-core intensive tasks with turbo enabled, this is the kind of cooler that you need. Noctua does not define what "medium headroom" means, but presumably it means that you can run with turbo enabled all-core tasks that have medium intensity, not maximum intensity. There is no doubt that it is a mistake to choose such a cooler when you intend to run intensive multi-threaded computations. A better cooler, but not much bigger, like NH-U12A, has an almost double cooling capacity. That said, there is also no doubt that AMD is guilty of at least having some bugs in their firmware or in failing to provide adequate documentation for the motherboard manufacturers that adapt the AMD firmware for their MBs.

fxtentacle 1y ago

He's a bit sensationalist, yes, but I am thankful that he saved us from buying affected Intel CPUs.

spookie 1y ago
Not sure of sensationalist or just doing great reporting. I take him as one of the last good tech journalists on the platform.
hnuser123456 1y ago
GN wasn't the first to break the story the 13/14th gen was defective. The thousands and thousands of users experiencing the issues collectively noticed pretty quick. If anything, there was a period where he was saying "We've talked to Intel but we won't say anything yet until they do."
- BoorishBears 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - wiredpancake 1y ago
    The only real problem with GN is Steve is a bit of an egotist when it comes to content creators who do less technical analysis, like LTT or Jayz. He never really got over the stuff with Linus and doubled down on stupid things. I think they both have a great place in the tech scene and LTT's videos of recent have been a lot better quality and researched then yesteryear.
tpurves 1y ago
Yes. When he's right, he's right. However the main issue I have with GN is how Steve tends to go full Leeroy Jenkins pitchforks and torches for 9 out of every 5 actual scandals in the tech industry.
- CaptainBanger 1y ago
  I felt the same way, but over time I have come to respect those with the Crusader personality archetype, we need these people to do their thing and they need us to balance them out.
- jchw 1y ago
  When it comes to interpersonal drama, the "Shoot first, ask questions later" style of reporting is terrible. However, for consumer advocacy it's basically the opposite, especially because in most cases it's easy for companies to turn the narrative around by simply handling the issue well. It's almost more about how they handle it than the actual issue in many cases.
bayindirh 1y ago
He's a "student" and friend of late Gordon Mah Ung. He's carrying his torch forward. This was Gordon's style, and Steve is continuing it. He has the courage to hit Bloomberg offices with a cameraman, so I don't think his words ring hollow. We need that kind of in your face, no punches held back type of reporting when compared to "measured professionals".
- mft_ 1y ago
  Absolutely - this is the sort of direct citizen journalism I expect (sort of hope?) we'll see more and of as traditional investigative journalism dies its slow death.

MrGilbert 1y ago

> [...] a bunch of dramatic YouTube content [...] That framing doesn't do him and the team justice. There is (or better, was) a 3.5h long story about NVIDIA GPUs finding their ways illegaly from the US to China, which got taken down by a malicious DMCA claim from Bloomberg. It is quite interesting to watch (Can be found archive.org). GN is one of the last pro-consumer outlets, that keep on digging and shaking the tree big companys are sitting on.

topspin 1y ago
For the record, I think GN is excellent and highly credible.
- spoaceman7777 1y ago
  [flagged]
TiredOfLife 1y ago
[flagged]
- bayindirh 1y ago
  Have you seen and watched their longer form content, esp. lately?
  - TiredOfLife 1y ago
    Yes. It's hours and hours of rambling.
themafia 1y ago
> which got taken down Not everywhere: https://archive.org/details/the-nvidia-ai-gpu-black-market-investigating-smuggling-corruption-governments https://archive.org/details/the-nvidia-ai-gpu-black-market-i...
- 1y ago

nerdsniper 1y ago

Wendell at Level1Techs often goes more in-depth on the software testing and datacenter use-case analysis through partnerships with friends who run lots of machines in datacenters. GN is unique in paying for silicon-level analysis of failures. der8auer also contributes a lot to these stories. I tend to wait for all 3 of their analyses, because each adds a different "hard-won" perspective.

trebligdivad 1y ago

They don't say what temperature the CPU was reporting which seems like an odd omission. Whatever the specs of your cooler etc check the temperature it's actually running at. Go by what the CPU is saying! I've got the older 3950x, and the first one died after a few months (still in warranty) with a cooler in spec, but it would go into the 90s at full load just doing big builds. I replaced the heatsink with a basic watercooler when the replacement chip arrived and it's running at least 20c cooler at full load.

wkat4242 1y ago
Maybe they didn't have anything logging the temperature. They didn't expect it to die after all.
account42 1y ago
Zen 2 is supposed to be able to work up to 95 C so that shouldn't have caused your CPU to fail. And it should clock down before it fails anyway, way below the specified "minimum" frequency if needed - got to experience that with a failing AIO. A better cooler should only be required to make full use of your CPU not to protect it.
- trebligdivad 1y ago
  I kind of agree with you and Symmetry; but having had a fried CPU I'm more careful. No electronics like running very hot - so even if you're just inside spec on something for the heat it's likely to live a shorter life than if you kept it more comfortable - and it'll let it clock faster if you keep it cool! And really my points are: * the standard spec coolers just don't manage that on these hot CPUs, even if they claim to. * If you're building a machine and you know you're pushing it hard, just check the temperatures to check that cooling you bought is working.
Symmetry 1y ago
A modern CPU should be able to detect temperature excursions and bring itself to a safe halt even if you power it up without any cooler attached. It's normal and expected that people making mistakes around the cooling systems of their CPUs will accidentally give themselves terrible performance. It is not normal that the CPUs will break.

spoaceman7777 1y ago

All you really need to see is the picture of the CPU with thermal paste only on one half. Thermal throttling is tuned to work when there is 1. a sufficient heatsink (theirs was significantly below requirements) and 2. it is installed correctly so that its triggers for downclocking happen with the correct timing. This is just another instance of ridiculous PEBCAK error

userbinator 1y ago
I'm not as sure about AMD CPUs (and they were known for having far worse overheat behaviour back in the early 2000s) but there are plenty of stories of Intel CPUs working for many years, sitting at the thermal limits, with the (stock) heatsink not even in contact, thanks to their cheap push-pin retention mechanism.
- munchlax 1y ago
  Those dreadful plastic knobs never want to sit right. Simple lever over that shit any time of day, pls.
ndiddy 1y ago
This is per design. On AM5 processors, there's a hotspot on the lower half of the processor where the dies that contain the CPU cores are located. Noctua recommends that AM5 users mount their coolers shifted towards the lower side of the processor for optimal cooling performance, see https://noctua.at/en/offset-am5-mounting-technical-backgrounds https://noctua.at/en/offset-am5-mounting-technical-backgroun... . You may have missed the paragraph in the article that explicitly points this out: > We use a Noctua cooling solution for both systems. For the 1st system, we mounted the heat sink centred. For the 2nd system, we followed Noctua's advice of mounting things offset towards what they claim to be the hotter side of the CPU. Below is a picture of the 2nd system without the heat sink which shows that offset. Note the brackets and their pins, those pins are where the heat sink's pressure gets centred. Also note how the thermal paste has been squeezed away from that part, but is quite thick towards the left.
- 1y ago

RachelF 1y ago

AMD has failed to be reliable with its Zen 4 and Zen 5 consumer CPUs, just at the same time Intel did the same with their 13k and 14k higher end CPUs. AMD is somewhat worse than Intel as their DDR5 memory bus is very "twitchy" making it hard to get the highest DDR5 timings, especially with multiple DIMMs per channel.

akimbostrawman 1y ago
I don't think it's reasonable to call memory timing tweaking stability issues worse than a cpu dying from heat under normal usage.
a-french-anon 1y ago
What do you mean? Is your second sentence the only reason for the first?
Auracle 1y ago
I had to put together an AM5 computer pretty quickly after I accidentally fried some components in my last computer, so I got a Microcenter bundle. I got 2x32GB sticks of RAM with the plan to throw in another two sticks later. I had no idea that was now a bad plan. I wish manufacturers would have just put 2 DIMM slots on motherboards as a “warning.”
rangestransform 1y ago
I think that's just a result of being at the limit of what a right-angle memory slot can handle, it's about time that desktop move to CAMM or soldered memory

adrian_b 1y ago

The small coolers used by them are not recommended by Noctua for 9950X. Noctua recommends only bigger coolers for 9950X, which dissipates 200 W permanently on a workload like theirs (which is much less than the over 250 W dissipated in similar conditions by the competing Intel CPUs). Despite this, the overtemperature protection of the CPUs should have protected the CPUs and prevent any kind of damage like this. Besides the system that varies continuously the clock frequency to keep the CPU within the current and power consumption limits, there is a second protection that stops temporarily the clock when a temperature threshold is exceeded. However, the internal temperature sensors of the CPUs are not accurate, so the over-temperature protection may begin to act only at a temperature that is already too high. So these failures appear to have been caused by a combination of not using the appropriate coolers for a 200 W CPU, combined with the fact that AMD advertises a 200-W CPU as an 170-W CPU, fooling naive customers into believing that smaller coolers are acceptable, and with either some kind of malfunction of the over-temperature protection in these CPUs or with a degradation problem that happens even within the nominal temperature range, but at its upper end.

ollien 1y ago
> The small coolers used by them are not recommended by Noctua for 9950X Noctua's CPU compatibility page lists the NH-U9s as "medium turbo/overclocking headroom" for the 9950X [0]. I don't think it's fair to suggest their cooler choice is the problem here. [0] https://ncc.noctua.at/cpus/model/AMD-Ryzen-9-9950X-1831 https://ncc.noctua.at/cpus/model/AMD-Ryzen-9-9950X-1831
- adrian_b 1y ago
  That means pretty much "not recommended". On the same page linked by you, Noctua explains that the green check mark means that with that cooler the CPU can run all-core intensive tasks, exactly like those used by the gmplib developers, only at the base clock, which is 4.3 GHz for 9950X, with turbo disabled in BIOS. Only then the CPU might dissipate its nominal TDP of 170 W, instead of the 200 W that it dissipates with turbo enabled. With "best turbo headroom", you can be certain that the CPU can run all-core intensive tasks with turbo enabled. Even if you do no overclocking, but you run all-core intensive tasks with turbo enabled, this is the kind of cooler that you need. Noctua does not define what "medium headroom" means, but presumably it means that you can run with turbo enabled all-core tasks that have medium intensity, not maximum intensity. There is no doubt that it is a mistake to choose such a cooler when you intend to run intensive multi-threaded computations. A better cooler, but not much bigger, like NH-U12A, has an almost double cooling capacity. That said, there is also no doubt that AMD is guilty of at least having some bugs in their firmware or in failing to provide adequate documentation for the motherboard manufacturers that adapt the AMD firmware for their MBs.