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Comment by kimixa | Hacker News Reader

Ugh, this has exploded on reddit and through a game of telephone seems to have turned a couple of anecdotes, a single photo of a damaged chip, speculation from users and media and a statement saying "We're aware of the reports and are investigating" into a massive issue that is "Confirmed" to affect all processors and spouting advice and recommendations based on it.

It's a great example of a hype train and something like citogenesis, each loop through comments and media seems to turn more speculation into fact.

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It's not "a single photo of a damaged chip" there are at least 4 different public examples that I've seen. Not that it changes the scale of the evidence much.

The fact that the vendors are acting so quickly about this suggests to me that they have other non-public examples of the problem (from warranty returns, etc.) and the hullabaloo led them to compare notes and determine the root cause rather quickly. Or maybe they're just over-reacting to defuse the mob but I don't think that's super likely.

I am only aware of 2 examples, the one that was posted on reddit and is now apparently being shipped to GamersNexus, and Der8auer, who didn't even notice pad discoloration (so may not have even been caused by an overcurrent event).

I wouldn't bet their "fast" response is due to them internally already knowing, so much as the PR hit from getting to the top of the PC enthusiast forums on reddit. None of the statements so far even suggest they've reproduced anything wrong, leaving vague statements of investigating it or adding more limitations in case that was an issue.

I remember a while ago something similar happened when someone read a lot into a comment into the open source AMD GPU driver as the "Shader Prefetch" feature of their GPUs was broken and disabled. AMD ended up having to issue a statement saying it's enabled and working where it benefits performance - and that shot to the top of those same forums and people "demanded" an explanation, and that was just an internal detail of hardware performance, not even a user-visible feature. To this day some commenters think the performance is somehow hobbled by this, so there may be more pressure to get faster responses.

I personally work on GPU drivers, AMD GPU drivers, but not on windows. I actively avoid commenting on things I have personal knowledge of, so I don't accidently leak something, but also because I see so much /wrong/ stuff repeated on the internet. In fact, I would say the majority of the specifics that are "generally accepted" on those subreddits are wrong to the point of being misleading. And a couple of times I've tried to question things I knew were incorrect I was heavily downvoted and dogpiled, so I gave up.

So while I have no direct knowledge of anything related to the CPU and it's power management, I'm trying to avoid Gell-Mann amnesia on "facts" repeated in those same subreddits.

So my current position is there may be an issue here, it may even be related to the SoC voltage regulation currently being blamed, but the "evidence" so far could also be caused by a thousand other things.

In summary you're saying it's caused by GPU drivers.

The four motherboard makers that have issued public press releases about revised firmware that is designed specifically to limit the SoC voltage to prevent failures would disagree with you here. If that isn't a public admission of this being the source of the failure, what is?

Four motherboard makers jumping on the FUD train isn't proof of anything.

AMD has now specified that the issue is SoC voltage in a follow up statement. https://www.tomshardware.com/news/amd-issues-follow-up-state...

> The four motherboard makers that have issued public press releases about revised firmware that is designed specifically to limit the SoC voltage to prevent failures would disagree with you here.

What I'm seeing is four motherboard makers trying to win customers at the expense of ASUS by taking very public steps to state their product does not suffer from this issue unlike ASUS.

> To this day some commenters think the performance is somehow hobbled by this

There will always be a sizeable subset of people who are utterly convinced that there is an evil cabal of developers who refuse to press the "go faster" button(s) out of personal malice.

Personal malice, no.

Profit, maybe...?

Why did AMDGPU drop support for Hawaii (eg 390) in newer kernel releases?

> The fact that the vendors are acting so quickly about this suggests to me that they have other non-public examples of the problem

In this day and age, if a story is spreading from a small thread on a subreddit to a string of reactions here and there in quick succession, a maker can't just let it run without any statement, even if it was literally a single guy with an unrelated problem.

Getting out a "We're looking into it" statement as soon as possible is the least they can do to manage the PR situation in any sane way, whatever the actual scale of the problem is.

The catch-22 of the PR machine and pretending modern companies love you and are 'good.' Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

> Or maybe they're just over-reacting to defuse the mob but I don't think that's super likely.

I guess you don't believe in "innocent until proven guilty".

> The fact that the vendors are acting so quickly about this suggests to me that they have other non-public examples of the problem (...)

That's quite the extrapolation. It's far more likely that AMD sees the exposure that a hand full of cases is having as a threat to the public's perception of the issues and is actively and very publicly addressing it to contain it.

So far all the reports I've seen about this issue was that it was really a problem with ASUS motherboards which were bricking the processor. The article seems to confirm it, and AMD seemed to have published a mitigation.

This is incorrect. Multiple instances (more than 6) have thus far been reported and pictured. All four major motherboard OEMs have now come forward with patches that are designed to limit the voltage. You can see their press releases in the link below.

These companies aren't making public statements about changes to their firmware to prevent failures for no reason.

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/preventing-ryzen-burnout-m...

It would be so easy to link those 6 reports.

One more report I can find is this:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/12yq4yb/megathread_for...

But they said they didn't enable EXPO, which is directly counter to the current theory being pushed by Toms

https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/12yq4yb/megathread_for...

it's certainly not for no reason, but it could be a PR move not actually backed up by good technical evidence. The public evidence certainly most strongly hints that higher core voltages could be part of the issue, but the motherboard companies responding to that by doing the obvious thing does not necessarily mean they have actually confirmed the issue exists, just that they either think it's worth doing it just in case or as a way to avoid being seen as not doing anything about it.

This is a market segment which has had many a case of mass wild speculation and theories around a small case of reported failures, and most of the theories have turned out to be wrong.

I'm going to wait till Gamers Nexus tells me what to think about this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8h5WGyz4P0

Got a 7700x, I barely hear the fan unless there's the deadly TS+, Eslint, combination on a huge monorepo.

Was heavily interested in undervolting, but I have never been pressed.

We've got the same CPU (a nice little workhorse for a very gentle price I'd say)! I assembled the PC myself (hadn't done that in like 15 years for I had a shop do it for me but decided that this time, to not get too rusty, I'd do it myself) and put a Noctua NH-U12S cooler/fan on it, in a "Be Quiet!" tower (with a Be Quiet! PSU). So I like quiet fans.

Anyway I'm running Linux and put on all (but one) workspaces (or "virtual desktops"), the CPU governor in "powersave" mode, where apparently the CPU doesn't got above 3 Ghz and doesn't go above 45 C. Then on my "dev" workspace, the one where I need the performances, I set the CPU governor to "ondemand" and a single core can boost up to 5.51 Ghz (as reported by Linux) or all cores at once up to 4.9 to 5.1 Ghz with the temp reaching 95 C (which I think is how these 7000 series are meant to operate: they'll boost but then shall lower a clock a bit to not go above 95 C).

I configured my WM to automatically change the CPU governor depending on which workspace I'm on.

I'll never here the CPU cooler's fan when in "powersave" / "max 3.0 Ghz / max 45 C" mode. When the governor is in "ondemand" mode, I'll hear the fan indeed once I start compiling stuff.

I may, sadly, remove the RAM EXPO setting (seen that I bough DDR5-6000) while waiting for an ASUS BIOS / firmware upgrade for my Prime B650-Plus mobo.

It's not cool to run DDR5-6000 at 4800 but I'd rather not fry the CPU/mobo.

I have the same cooler! No expo issues on gigabyte ds3h.

Why haven't you undervolted the cpu with all your interest for noise?

> I have the same cooler! No expo issues on gigabyte ds3h.

Ah I'm less lucky: ASUS Prime B650-Plus mobo and the link says that on the Gamer Nexus forum (?) it could be a problem with ASUS motherboards.

> Why haven't you undervolted the cpu with all your interest for noise?

Honestly I'm not too sure how to do that. I never bother overclocking/underclocking. I like everything stock. I thought running DDR5-6000 from the QVL list in EXPO mode was also something really normal to do.

> Honestly I'm not too sure how to do that.

Quite simple, I always undervolt AMD hardware as they tend to consistently exxagerate on that, gpus too.

https://youtu.be/1pizvaYiVbk

>I thought running DDR5-6000 from the QVL list in EXPO mode was also something really normal to do.

Normal people don't read QVL lists (they wouldn't even know what a QVL is) nor go into the BIOS to overclock RAM (yes, EXPO is overclocking).

I've never heard of QVL before and this comes in great because I want to build a PC. I've been a laptop user for many years.

I considering a build with 13600k, and I am seriously just considering going with DDR5-4800. It's a tad cheaper than the DDR-5600 I was initially going to go with. I honestly do not think I would be able to tell the difference in day-to-day usage between DDR5-4800, DDR5-5200, DDR5-5600, and perhaps higher than that.

With that being said, I acknowledge that I am just making an assumption. Have you noticed any difference outside of benchmarks? I am not looking to go higher in speeds because I have seen videos (e.g. from Buildzoid) talking about how awful the 13th gen memory controller is, so I figured I am not really looking to gamble my time and money on max performance RAM.

I have not measured the impact outside benchs and yes you are probably fine with 4800s, but I use my pc for work and I would avoid slower ram when as a dev all my IDEs and processes do nothing but R/W from memory.

As a dev myself, do you think the difference between DDR4 and DDR5 is actually noticeable? That was mainly my justification for going DDR5 -- not gaming -- but I could step down to DDR4 if the the difference is insignificant.

Every time I'm setting up a new PC, I check the prices on RAM and then check the benchmarks for actual usage, and I always seem to find that buying faster RAM is not a good use of the budget, especially because I need a PC with a lot of RAM.

Currently running a 12900k with DDR4 RAM.

When I checked the benchmarks, DDR4 ended up being about 3% slower than the fastest DDR5 which was more than double the price, which for 64Gb was a significant price increase. Even less difference for gaming, something like 1%.

https://www.techpowerup.com/review/intel-core-i9-12900k-alde...

I'm sure it's a similar story for the different speeds of DDR5. The price premium isn't worth the tiny increase in speed. I guess people see the big numbers like 4800 vs 5600 and assume that means it's that much faster, 17%, when in reality it's something like 1-2%.

Faster RAM has always been a ripoff, and like you said you're risking stability issues. https://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/ddr5_core_i9_13900k_dd...

I'm really considering just going with a 12th gen, and upgrading in a few years vs. trying to stretch the 13th gen 3-5 years. It's a fool's errand trying to keep up with everything, and I need to do more research from a price vs. value point of view.

What motherboard are you using for your 12th gen? It's honestly been the most difficult part of piecing together my build. It seems like all the decent motherboards are plagued with one or more issues e.g. poor VRMs, poor bios/supporting software [1], NIC disconnects randomly [2], coil whine, etc..

I'll admit, I have only seen benchmarks for DDR5 in regards to games which was not impressive. It's disappoint to see that other applications would only have a greater performance of around 3%. Maybe I will just go with DDR4 then...

[1] I have heard Gigabyte boards have a hell of a time getting RBG Fusion 2.0 to work/save settings.

[2] I have also read to stay far away from boards with Intel's I225/226 NICs or to get a secondary NIC.

Gigabyte Z690 AORUS PRO DDR4. I'm very happy with it. Stable and does the job. BIOS seems good to me, no complaints.

Can't comment on RGB stuff because mine's in a closed black box.

Not sure what NIC it has... specs online say "Intel 2.5GbE LAN chip", my router is only 1Gb but it works fine, no disconnects. PC is Windows only though.

I've mostly had Gigabytes over the years (some Asus as well), and haven't had a lemon motherboard yet, maybe I've been lucky. But I am pretty demanding and don't tolerate faulty stuff well.

I'm also quite annoyed by noise, system is set up to be as quiet as possible with passive PSU/140mm fans/etc. Haven't noticed any coil whine.

Wow, that's a pretty cool idea I've never considered. Switching CPU governor based on the virtual desktop.

Even simpler idea is just to disable turbo for "quiet" mode.

>...how these 7000 series are meant to operate: they'll boost but then shall lower a clock a bit to not go above 95 C).

Bah, I have clearly been running my fans too hard. Using stock configuration, my 65W CPU idles in the low 40Cs with slightly audible fan noise. If I disable/super-slow RPM until 45/50 C, presumably that would be completely fine, and give me a near silent build. Obvious in retrospect.

> Anyway I'm running Linux and put on all (but one) workspaces (or "virtual desktops"), the CPU governor in "powersave" mode, where apparently the CPU doesn't got above 3 Ghz and doesn't go above 45 C. Then on my "dev" workspace, the one where I need the performances, I set the CPU governor to "ondemand"

Is that a feature of a particular desktop or did you write a custom daemon to check on which desktop you are currently? I know that KDE has the concept of activities, which is an even different concept than virtual desktop and would be interesting in that regard.

Sorry about the OT but I would love to hear your experience with your build since I'm going to build a very similar one: AMD Ryzen 7k with DDR5 and the exact same mobo. My mail is in my profile

Yep this is gonna be blown out of proportion like the RTX 30XX series capacitor issues that in the end affected almost nobody.

Or the people getting randomly banned for cheating in various games, that all turned out to be small numbers, and actual cheaters.

People will swallow any FUD about anything tech-related they have a semblance of understanding about.

IMO, there needs to be more public shaming by game moderators when someone claims to have been banned for no reason and it turns out they were banned for spamming racial slurs or cheating.

Reminds me of the drama with NVIDIA's new power connectors burning out. Where IIRC it ultimately turned out to only involve a handful of cases where there was a manufacturing issue and the other reported cases were all loose connections by the users.

Thus indicating a design flaw of being prone to user error, but nowhere near the "fire hazard" type comments that were going around at the time (particularly on reddit).

> Thus indicating a design flaw of being prone to user error, but nowhere near the "fire hazard" type comments that were going around at the time (particularly on reddit).

wasn't that an actual fire hazard tho? Gamers Nexus just paid to proved the cause was because users werent connecting them correctly.

Yeah, it's a fire hazard when improperly installed, what I meant is that people were responding as if any nvidia card would just burst into flames even with everything properly connected.

Just to clarify: I'm not saying there isn't an issue, I don't know the "acceptable" failure rates and proportion of sales to judge, but there's certainly enough to investigate.

I'm just questioning the speed at which it went from "A couple of people had a similar looking failure" to "It's CONFIRMED to be due to bad SoC voltage regulation caused by enabling EXPO, and here's what you should do..."

Same with the NVidia filtering capacitor drama - there was an issue, but it ended up being fixed by zero changes to the "Accepted cause" of the filtering caps.

Or the NVidia 12HVPR cable drama - "Everyone Knew" it was due to vendors cheaping out on cables and the cable itself too close to the edge of tolerance to be acceptable for normal use. Until actual failures were analyzed and showed they weren't plugged in properly - which lead to a real fix (Future cables having shorter sense pins to ensure good contact of the power pins before allowing use).

You’re turning fact into speculation.

This damage control, LOL.

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