Many AMD Ryzen 7000 CPUs are reportedly burning up, but a fix may be in the works [Update]

Over the weekend, reports started to come in on sites like Reddit from many owners of PCs with AMD Ryzen 7000 series CPUs. They stated the chips were overheating and even burning up inside their motherboards. While the issues appear to be happening more specifically with the Ryzen 7000X3D, they are also occurring in other PCs with other Ryzen 7000 series CPUs.

AMD has been pretty quiet about these problems so far. However, Tom's Hardware has posted an article, using multiple unnamed sources, that has more information on what might be causing these CPUs to burn out. It says the issue is with higher-than-normal SoC voltages. It states:

This can be imposed from either the pre-programmed voltages used in EXPO memory overclocking profiles or when a user manually adjusts the SoC voltages (a common practice to eke out a bit more memory overclocking headroom).

The article also claims that these higher SoC voltage levels can "destroy thermal sensors and thermal protection mechanisms" in the Ryzen 7000 chips. These features are supposed to prevent overheating of CPUs, but if they don't work due to the higher voltage, this can obviously cause an uncontrollable burn up.

The article claims AMD is working on a fix for these problems, that will include a voltage cap for the chip's firmware, but adds that motherboard makers could still allow for voltage changes. Some motherboard makers like ASUS and MSI have released BIOS updates that are designed to help curb these problems The YouTube tech channel Der8auer received a statement from ASUS on this issue:

The EFI updates posted on Friday contain some dedicated thermal monitoring mechanisms we've implemented to help protect the boards and CPUs. We removed older BIOSes for that reason and also because manual Vcore control was available on previous builds. We're also working with AMD on defining new rules for AMD Expo and SoC voltage. We'll issue new updates for that ASAP. Please bear with us.

In the meantime, owners of PCs with AMD Ryzen 7000 series chips can take some precautions:

If you use an EXPO profile, you should check your SoC voltage in your BIOS or with a utility like HWiNFO. If it is at or exceeds 1.4V, you should disable the profile and run the memory at standard stock settings. If you have manually dialed in a 1.4V or higher SoC voltage, dial that back to a safer setting for now.

We will update this post if and when AMD issues an official statement.

Update April 26 6am ET: AMD has now officially released a statement acknowledging the issue, but at the same time they are still actively investigating whether the parts failed within product specifications, or due to unsupported excessive voltage.

We are aware of a limited number of reports online claiming that excess voltage while overclocking may have damaged the motherboard socket and pin pads. We are actively investigating the situation and are working with our ODM partners to ensure voltages applied to Ryzen 7000X3D CPUs via motherboard BIOS settings are within product specifications. Anyone whose CPU may have been impacted by this issue should contact AMD customer support.

The above statement was released to Anandtech.