Motherboards can brick cpus right?

thesilverderp · May 18

So I had an issue a few months ago where my PC stopped working, only getting a cpu red light. I took out my amd 7800x3d from my refurbished MSI x670e tomahawk and tested it in a brand new motherboard from amazon (after many other troubleshooting steps), and I still got a cpu red light, so I assumed the cpu was busted. I sent it into AMD to fix, so it is all good, but now I want to sell the refurbished motherboard (the refurbisher never responded to me), since I think it might have broken my cpu. But, I dont want to claim that the motherboard broke the cpu in the listing if it isn't likely it was the problem, so I wanted to ask: modern motherboards can break cpus right? Its not just a fringe thing, right? The motherboard had broken pins that were fixed by the refurbisher, so I assumed those not actually being fixed caused it.

danalog · May 18

That'll only happen if too high of a voltage is sent to the CPU, or voltage is sent down a data pin. Bent pins on the board can cause shorts that send voltages down the wrong parts of the CPU, so if the bent pins are fixed, the issue should be fixed too.

RONOTHAN## · May 18

2 minutes ago, thesilverderp said:

modern motherboards can break cpus right?

Yeah it's possible. If one of the voltage regulators, for instance, has a dead MOSFET, it will likely send 12V into the CPU which will likely kill it. I don't think this is the case though, since usually this will trigger a PSU protection rail. There are other ways it can kill it, say a BIOS bug that causes the voltage to be just high enough to rapidly degrade the chip (see the 7800X3D explosion issues from early in the AM5 lifespan, and if you never updated the BIOS of the refurbished board I'd say this is likely what happened), though they pretty much all involve the motherboard providing too much voltage in one way or another.

8 minutes ago, thesilverderp said:

The motherboard had broken pins that were fixed by the refurbisher, so I assumed those not actually being fixed caused it.

That I doubt. Only way this would kill a CPU is if something shorted, and realistically that would've happened within the first week of ownership if not the first time you tried to power on the system, not a few months later.

10 minutes ago, thesilverderp said:

But, I dont want to claim that the motherboard broke the cpu in the listing if it isn't likely it was the problem

Say you had a CPU die in the socket. You don't necessarily have to say it was the motherboard's fault, but realistically if you have a CPU die, especially this early, one way or another it was the motherboard's fault and should be mentioned.

thesilverderp · May 18

7 minutes ago, RONOTHAN## said:

Yeah it's possible. If one of the voltage regulators, for instance, has a dead MOSFET, it will likely send 12V into the CPU which will likely kill it. I don't think this is the case though, since usually this will trigger a PSU protection rail. There are other ways it can kill it, say a BIOS bug that causes the voltage to be just high enough to rapidly degrade the chip (see the 7800X3D explosion issues from early in the AM5 lifespan, and if you never updated the BIOS of the refurbished board I'd say this is likely what happened), though they pretty much all involve the motherboard providing too much voltage in one way or another.

That I doubt. Only way this would kill a CPU is if something shorted, and realistically that would've happened within the first week of ownership if not the first time you tried to power on the system, not a few months later.

Say you had a CPU die in the socket. You don't necessarily have to say it was the motherboard's fault, but realistically if you have a CPU die, especially this early, one way or another it was the motherboard's fault and should be mentioned.

Got it. I did upgrade my bios, as the old bios wouldn't work with my ssd. I will adjust some of my language in the listing to be more precise, but I will still sell it as for parts.