Like Intel before it, AMD blames motherboard makers for burnt-out CPUs
24 comments
·August 25, 2025Jhsto
SketchySeaBeast
The fact that the vast majority of these burnouts are on ASRock is a pretty big smoking gun to me. They're an attractive manufacturer because they're cheap, but at what cost?
tempest_
They are not always cheap though. They have been moving upmarket a bit the last 5 years.
dumbfounder
If the motherboards are putting too much power into the chips, why isn’t it their fault?
perihelions
Related thread,
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45041743 ("GMP damaging Zen 5 CPUs? (gmplib.org)"—18 hours ago, 192 comments)
FirmwareBurner
That's why I like Apple's vertical integration. If something breaks it's 100% their fault that they need to make right to the consumer, they can't tell you to GTFO and go blame someone else to escape responsibility.
hu3
Maybe this will open your eyes.
Dell support has flown a repair guy to my place with spare hardware pieces and fixed my pc in front of me. In my office. And I was partially to blame for the problem (I over clocked the CPU). I told them I did oc the CPU, they changed motherboard and processor anyways. For free.
So not only there are other verticals, but they are better.
jamesnorden
Then can, and will, blame the consumer until forced to acknowledge it, sometimes by a class action lawsuit, like they have many times in the past.
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danieldk
You mean like the butterfly keyboard in my MacBook Pro 2016, which could be destroyed by a few specs of dust, and took years for Apple to acknowledge?
trillic
or the iPhone 4
Steve Jobs: "You're holding it wrong"
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redleader55
> they can't tell you to GTFO and go blame someone else to escape responsibility
That sounds good in theory, but if it were true people like Louis Rossman who repair Apple phones and laptops and talk about Apple's treatment of customers wouldn't have millions of followers on YouTube.
taneliv
You can surely buy integrated non-Apple systems like laptops, desktops and servers where the vendor fully bears the responsibility for correct system function.
DIY systems are perhaps the ones most affected by this, but I don't think Apple caters at all to that segment.
bitmasher9
It is nice to be able to replace your cpu, or install new memory, or use expansion slots. Not to mention being able to pick hardware that isn’t locked to a single operating system.
For me that’s well worth being liable for installation issues.
lazide
It doesn’t sound like the concerns are necessarily installation related?
loloquwowndueo
Four words for you:
“You’re holding it wrong”
nashashmi
Apple sells the hardware. That is why they are responsible. If dell sold the hardware , dell would be responsible .
AMD does not sell the motherboard. The motherboard sells the CPU. So motherboard is responsible.
But the relevance here is CPU is burning out because it is being plugged in by the end user. And the manufacturer is blaming the motherboard for their cpu burning. Maybe the cpu should be protective?
Anecdotally, ASRock has been blamed also by Intel for shipping motherboards with NIC debug settings on: https://community.intel.com/t5/Ethernet-Products/1-out-of-2-...