From jvsala at gmail.com Thu Aug 28 22:57:42 2025 From: jvsala at gmail.com (Josep Vicent Sala i Siscar) Date: Thu, 28 Aug 2025 22:57:42 +0200 Subject: Zen 5 failures Message-ID: Greetings, I have seen the info you posted about the failures running the 9950X and I have a strong suspicion and what has happened. The Asus motherboards that you are using are pretty bad. Asus per se is not a bad brand (I am writing this from a system with an Asus board) but all the vendors have different levels of quality depending on the segmentation that apply to their products and from time to time they release some hardware that is pure garbage. Asus Prime boards are pretty low end stuff. TUF boards are more decent performers. And Strix are more high end. So, getting a low end board for running a high end chip like the 9950X is a bit of gambling, specially if you are torturing the system 24x7. In addition, hardware tests have demonstrated that the Asus B650 prime boards have TERRIBLE VRMs. See this video for more info: https://youtu.be/DTFUa60ozKY?t=743 I think that the voltage was all over the place when running because the motherboard (not the CPU) was overheating all the time. I think that the cooler and mounting has nothing to do with this. If the cooler was not properly mounted you would have noticed lower performance but would not have fried the CPU. I would advise you to get a motherboard with better VRMs (in case you really like ASUS don't get anything lower than TUF) and try again. It would be best if you choose a motherboard that according to reviews or people with hardware knowledge have top of the line VRMs. Best regards.