Earlier this month, reports of AMD Ryzen 7000X3D CPUs burning holes in motherboards swept the internet. Now, AMD says that it’s issued a new BIOS update to its partners that fixes the problem.
In a statement provided to The Verge, AMD spokesperson Matthew Hurtwitz said the following: “We have root caused the issue and have already distributed a new [AMD Generic Encapsulated Software Architecture] that puts measures in place on certain power rails on AM5 motherboards to prevent the CPU from operating beyond its specification limits, including a cap on SOC voltage at 1.3V.”
Though the actual cause of the issue hasn’t been confirmed publicly, it seems to be related to running these CPUs at a higher voltage, which is a part of manual overclocking. Ryzen X3D chips are supposed to have a hard-coded voltage limit, and exceeding that limit would cause instability and other issues.