"Ryzen 5000 defective rate is particularly high" Defect controversy surrounding AMD CPU

What's wrong with the Ryzen 5000 chip? At first, the problem seemed serious. However, after investigating the initial claims and the issues surrounding quality control in PC distribution and assembly companies, we concluded that it may not be a serious problem. Let's take a closer look at the defect problem of the Ryzen 5000 chip.

The controversy began last Sunday when the system assembly company PowerGPU, which had 222,000 followers, posted a tweet stating that "the new AMD CPU's defective rate is still too high." It is claimed that 19 out of 320 Ryzen 5000 series CPUs received from Power GPU were in a “DOA (death upon arrival)” status, and the defect rate reached a whopping 6%. Power GPU added that 3 to 5 defective products were found within a week among B550-based and X570-based motherboards.

The Twitter post in question was first reported by HotHardware's Paul Lily, which was further controversial as PowerGPU deleted the Twitter post on Monday. After that, PowerGPU said on Twitter that "we talked with AMD and we are going to test some CPUs and motherboards together."

PowerGPU has not yet responded to PCWorld's request for comment, while PCMac's Michael Kahn has revealed the reason for the deletion of Twitter posts. "I didn't want to inspire fans on both sides." "Fortunately, AMD said they are friendly to Power GPUs and want to help keep the business going." In his column, Khan introduced his personal experience with the rogue Ryzen 5000 chip, saying that the chip was eventually replaced after a cumbersome process.

Is this a concern for Ryzen buyers? 

This news of course raised concerns from Ryzen buyers. An AMD official told PCWorld that the incident was only a one-off.

"AMD is investigating a custom PC assembler's claim that the Ryzen 5000 series desktop processors are failing more than expected, and we know there are no similar problems at this point."

PCWorld has also contacted other PC assembly companies to see if they are going through something similar. To be honest, I decided not to disclose the company name. All three companies appear to have sold more Ryzen-based systems than PowerGPU.com, and the large sample can more accurately indicate the problem.

Other PC assembly companies "Problem? What problem?"

The first company said there were no problems with the Ryzen-based assembly PC. The company closely monitors the assembly line and RMA (return approval). Parts are marked as defective as soon as the defect rate exceeds 2%. 

The second company was the same as the first. It said that no specifics were reported in its quality control, RMA, and technical support lines related to the Ryzen 5000 CPU.

The third company provided more information. It was said that the defect rate revealed by the Power GPU did not appear in the company's system. However, interestingly, according to the data actually shared by this company, the defect rate of Ryzen parts in its internal quality inspection was about three times higher than that of Intel chips.

• Ryzen 5000 series defect rate 2.9%
• Ryzen 3000 series defect rate 3% • ThreadRipper 3000 series defect rate 2.5%

Compared to this, the Intel chip defect rate provided by the company is as follows.

• Intel 9th ​​generation defect rate 0.9%
• Intel 10th generation defect rate 1.2%

Let's define 'defective'. Like most PC makers, the company's Intel-based CPU shipments are still higher than AMD-based CPUs. Sample size affects the data. For example, if one cookie was burned when baking a plate of cookies, it would be more noticeable than two or three cookies burned when baking five plates.

A third vendor puts the maximum load on the memory slot to increase the strength and conducts a PC test (of course not selling the same way). The company added that bad CPUs don't arrive dead as Power GPU revealed. It just doesn't pass its own requirement to run low-latency or high-frequency RAM under maximum load.

Interestingly, the third vendor said there was no obvious reason for a CPU that didn't pass the test. For example, the Core i9-10900K chip is more likely to pass its own test than the Core i9-10850K chip, while the 64-core Threadripper 3990X is more successful than the 32- and 24-core versions. The third company said it would not describe this particular error rate as a 'problem'.

Response from other media “There was no problem”

All of the companies I talked to with PCWorld are in the United States, but other media sites overseas said they had similar problems.

Mark Campbell of Overclock3D.net chatted with a British PC assembly company who had never seen a dead CPU. Overclock 3D.Net said, “Our source claimed that the Ryzen 5000 series had no DOA CPU at all. According to this claim, either the Power GPU wasn't very lucky or the source of this magazine was very lucky.”

Australia's popular YouTube channel hardware Unboxed also spoke with a local popular retailer, which said, "I heard that the defective rate of each part is normal and less than 2%." 

Kitiguru.net's Joao Silva has a European store Mindfactory's return approval rate of 0.77% for the Ryzen 9 5950X, less than 0.37% for the Ryzen 9 5900X, 0.58% for the Ryzen 7 5800X, and the Ryzen 5 5600X. Said there was no big difference, saying it was 0.5%.

What words to believe

From the reports of the three companies interviewed with PCWorld as well as other media, the problem with PowerGPU.com seems to be an unusual event. In the case of the Power GPU, it is possible that some chips, which were caused by various unknown factors, were discovered.

Hopefully, additional information on the cause of the defective rate will be released after testing. But for now, the defective rate of the Ryzen 5000 CPU is not a concern. We have to worry more about whether the product is available at full price.