An AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D owner took to Reddit to post photos of what looks like a physically damaged, or burnt-out processor and motherboard socket. This could be an isolated incident from the user getting unlucky with the processor or motherboard, or even a case of user-error when installing the processor, but it's hard to ignore the historic baggage AMD Socket AM5 processors gathered since 2023. Last year, there was a spate of incidents where improper voltage regulation caused Ryzen 7000 series Socket AM5 processors to exhibit a socket burnout near specific power-delivery pins on the land-grid. This would show up as a physical deformation caused by melting of the fiberglass substrate near the bad pins.

The images posted by the Reddit user shows no physical deformation of the substrate, however, there is charring of several pins near the central region of the land-grid. There is, notably, some deformation and charring is seen on the pins of the motherboard's CPU socket, which would be consistent with arcing and shorting. The motherboard in question is an MSI MAG X870 Tomahawk WiFi, and so MSI came out with a statement on Saturday (11/16). The company said that it is investigating the incident.