The ryzen 5 3600s with dead memory channels would be worth something to dell so they have an excuse to use single channel ram

Fix or flop is getting intense!

Brian at Tech Yes City had similar issues with some Ryzen chips and found that some had bad cores and was able to get them working by disabling a core

I love how you take everything as a learning experience, to many people want to just be right all the time instead of realizing that there is always something to learn. Keep up the good work greag! awesome video!

This video's great! the monologue of troubleshooting shows how people may want to try to do when they encounter problems with their systems.

The 3900x was a hot chip, and if not properly cooled I could see the IHS becoming partially unsoldered from one or both of the CCX's. This would make it pretty much impossible to thermally manage from then on.

Great vid and quite helpful- I build a lot of Ryzen based computer systems and this helps with a "heads up" of possible outcomes. I have not yet witnessed these symptoms, but good to have this knowledge.

for the chips that do boot in to bios you could try turning cores off, first try to see if it works ok with only 2 cores then enable 4 and so on to find out maybe a 6 core can work fine with 4 cores

So the first 2 that get stuck on Dram light, I think you are correct mostly...I've seen this a bunch of times...It usually happens when the SOC voltage gets set too high and damages the memory controller...It really doesn't like getting overvolted too much unless you have extreme cooling...

Good vid, love the troubleshooting.

Greg your channel is sooo good! I am really enjoying it. Please keep it up. 👏🏼

Love you vids again Greg, anyways that Blue Eyes Toon Dragon was cool at your back

Hey Greg, thanks to you & your fix or flop series i was able to fix my 10 year old desktop, so let me share what happened the. Out of the blue the system started Blue screen of deaths different error everytime so i thought maybe the windows was corrupt and tried to fresh install the windows but it wouldn't let me boot via the Pendrive, so i thought maybe the HDD had given up the ghost. Had a spare HDD lying so decided to swap it and sometimes it would just bootloop and sometimes it would just give no output to display so started by disconnecting RAM's to narrow down the problem so guess what 1 of the RAM sticks had gone faulty so tried putting it in the other slot to rule out defective slot but the RAM was at fault so finally the system started with the other 4 gig stick. I didn't go to any repair shop as most of them just try to rip off, so thanks to you my potato pc started again.

Ahh, the joys of troubleshooting used components. Loving this series, keep them coming!

I would love to try to delid that 5900x and see if it's a contact issue. Maybe there's an internal issue where the chip is barely touching lid. Or maybe try turning one of the CCDs off amd try running at stock settings.

Great video man. I also like to revisit things to update that mental database where you think you had it figured it out, but in fact did not. Wonder if mem controller is getting torched or an issue with going to aggressive on the F-CLOCK damaging Infinity Fabric? I wouldn't know, I'm only a measly ZEN+ owner and haven't over clocked anything since boost clocks have been implemented in CPUs/GPUs. I'm from the old era. Overclocked my Athlon with a #2 pencil and then a car defogging repair kit. 🔥

Tech Yes City has had similar problems with AMD cpu's recently. Great video as always, Greg. Much respect.

This should become a super sub series where every 45 videos or 5 bad cpus or any part really of Fix/Flop you should go back and see if you cant fixate or if they are truly broken

The 5900x seems similar to a few cases of degraded silicon I've seen. With some time you could probably dial in the voltage/clocks to get it running pretty close to stock. Not perfect but would still work well as a homelab CPU or something.

I was looking forward to this, since you had quite a collection of dead 3000s. To be honest I recently built two absolute equal 7600x systems, did the same settings on boths, same gpu, same EVERYTHING aside hard drives. One was running at 1.4v, the other at 1.29. The former was almost hitting 95°C (on a Dark Rock pro 4!!) the other was running relatively cool in the 80ish pumping better scores all over the place. I've ended up forcing a Curve optimizer on the 1.4v basically that reduced it to the voltages of the other (even less at -30) and the thing began running cooler than the other and posting roughly the same results if not a tad better. For safety I set the owner to -20, then instructed him how to lower it by time as soon as he checked that he was stable in his editing/gaming/daily routine. He now runs it at -30 and at least in Cpu-z/R23 he gets results slightly better than the other that I've left at stock all while running about 5°C cooler overall. The above was kinda strange tbh.. same b650M-A pro from MSI, same coolers, same Asus Tuf 6800Xt, same evga supernova G6 850, same g.skill 6000 c36 kit 2x16, same crucial P5 plus, same bios version, same bios settings (at default + just enabled XMP and fan profiles), same Phanteks p500 the only difference was one rig has a 2Tb HDD + 256 sata SSD, the other one just a 3Tb HDD carried over from their previous builds. But that can't be the humongous vcore difference. The only test I didn't do is to swap CPUs between the motherboards, but looking at how the CO cure turned out, I thought I didn't wanted to dismount and remount two Dark Rock Pro 4s 4 times in a day..

For the ones with dram led... Tech Yes Bryan found he could revive a "dead" 3600 by undervolting in the bios with a good cpu, and then switch to the dead one. It would be interesting if you could make any of yours work by undrvolting or reducing the clocks. [edit] lol, just got to the last one where you did just that. Worth re-checking some of the others similarly.

I just want to say thank you for the fix or flop content! Thanks to your methodology I was able to fix a friend's "dead" PC in less than 15 minutes. He thought the mobo was dead and asked me if I could look at it knowing that I have experience building PCs, and I was quickly able to narrow it down to just 1 dead RAM stick. I cleared the CMOS, swapped in a known working GPU, and then tested RAM one stick and one slot at a time. It was so satisfying being able to save that PC as it is still a relatively powerful system.. i7 9700k on a gigabyte z370 motherboard with an RX 6700xt.

Choosing a motherboard with a Post Code display would have provided much more useful information.

Was wondering when we'd get this video since you've hinted at it a few times

I had the exact same issue as the last CPU that you tested here. Tried underclocking as suggested and everything seems to be working now! Thought I had tried everything... Thanks!

Another great video. Always learn something new

Been waiting for this!

Thanks for the follow up. I would like to see if any of the mobos are salvageable.

With the overheating CPUs, try delid and liquid metalling the CPU and putting the IHS back. The thermal glue inside might've dried out or not making contact with the IHS anymore

Just hanging on the dram light...great video

Quite funny to see this video because I do the same from time to time. Go back to hardware lying around trying to fix it again and again - and often forgot what was the problem. I got some things repaired tho so it's always good to try it later again. Hope AMD will accept that they'll take a look at it. It would be interesting to know what happend to the cpus.

Hi Greg Thanks for the always informative, and thorough videos. I wonder if you would share some Fix or flop statistics? Do you have as many faulty intel processors as ryzens? Put up against how many you got it in?

I reckon it would be interesting to see these delidded and see what the components inside look like or if there is any thermal damage to the silicon dies

for giggles I tried a older weed pen that stopped working (as they all do when the battery dies)....but today, I got two hits (with lights) and it still seems like it can give me more. I know it's not the same but I'm pretty stoked, literally :) Good vid Greg -- you're a genuine dude.

Great video thanks Greg.

17:55 recently I also experienced this issue (boot to automatic repair), my solution is disable fast boot and longer time for display bios (3s to 5s)

some AMD chips that have dual CCD(x900, x950, or some x600 series) may experience some impedance between CCDs especially when theres a degradation problem related to the silicon, their voltage needs heavy adjustment to work normally. TechYESCity demonstrated that by disabling cores/limiting boost frequencies some of these chips could be salvaged.

I have a viewsonic version of that portable monitor. I absolutely love it. High refresh rate and relatively good brightness and color. It’s a really nice thing to have around.

Hey Greg, love your Videos. There is a possible workaround for those 3600's that are sticking on dram, Put in a working CPU, then goto BIOS and undervolt and downclock the ram speed. I have seen a LOT of 3600 and 3600x that after a couple of years developed a problem with ram speed

Great episode! Very curious if AMD ever tests these, too.

I have a Ryzen 72700X. Where one memory channel crapped out. What happened was I changed my cooler for one of those tower coolers and the weight on the tower cooler ripped the Ryzen out of its socket, and I am guessing that that caused some sort of electrical faultin the CPU, as it doesn't like being pulled out of its socket when the power is on. But that's what happened. The main fault lies with the top-heavy weight of the tower cooler and the CPU retention arm. The weight of the cooler pulled the arm out of its socket. There was an easy fix for this and that was to bend the arm towards the socket again, making a better contact with the catch. But by then it was too late. My verdict is --- Tower coolers are too top-heavy and the CPU retention arms are too weak and don't latch hard enough.

Love this series

Any troubleshooting is a great thing.

Greg your videos are the highlight of my day

I am curious what speeds the RAM was running at in the systems these CPUs with dead memory channels came from. Because, if I remember correctly, the RAM speed could affect the Infinity Fabric speed, and maybe there's a certain speed that, on certain chips, causes the Infinity Fabric to damage the Memory Lanes? Idk, I am just spouting off ideas that are popping into my head at 1 AM. Great work as always Greg!

Make sure to disable some cores in the BIOS to see if chips will run afterwards. You can try manually increasing voltages or lowering clocks too. Sometimes some cores will die completely, other times just enabling PBO or even any boost frequency at all will be the issue. I've also seen it where it would basically need an extra 50mV to hold the advertised boost frequency. Mostly, these chips can be saved if you're willing to make compromises.

Hey Greg, found a intresting thing!! 16:30 / 16:37 time in the video when u press on the ram with your finger (Dram) light Changes to CPu , i dont know im the only one noticing it.. Love ur Content!!

A motherboard with debug codes instead of just LEDs (and a power button) would've probably been beneficial for these tests. Or regarding the power button, you could just use one from an unused case to connect it to the pins instead of having to short the jumpers all the time.

Where did you get that motherboard speaker from? I’ve tried those super tiny ones in the past, but they exude the shrillest, most unpleasant beep. This one was much better!

good video, my only concern was when you put thbe second cpu on the board and had the same issue, I wondered if the previous cpu might have damaged the mother board. you should have off camera,put a known good cpu in and made sure the mother board and stuff was still good.

@12:35 hahah this happened to my first Ryzen 9 5950x after trying out the dynamic oc feature on the Asus Dark Hero x570 it kept cycling between this and corrupted boot device.

Should try de-lidding the ones that you think overheat internally. it might be interesting to see if there's something odd with the compounds between the chips and the IHS. Also, lol suggested re-naming your old videos in comments during one of your recent videos.

Used your code and got Win 11 key for $21- Thanks man!!

That suborn one you could probably try deluding it and clean it up and relate it to see if that fixes it

G'day Greg, This was really interesting, just a couple of thoughts for some more testing, Do you have another 5900X to get some BIOS 'Full Auto' Setting Stats running GB to compare Score, Temps, Core Voltage & so on, it would be interesting to see how this 5900X performs if you increase the Multiplier to see where it fails at 1.1v, also see if it boots with Volts - Auto at 3GHz & some other testing of this type, 🤔Maybe it could be a Live Sream ???

Greg , disabling bost overdrive on bios and put it on eco mode could do the trick on the 1st cpu that posted.

So question is there a possibility that improper instillation could have caused these chips to fail? Also maybe not having proper cooling?

Maybe contact Steve from gamer nexus. This sort of situation might be down his alley. Especially if it shows to be a batch wide situation There could be hundreds of Ryzen 3000 chips on the verge of going bad and could open exactly why they could be turning. Might turn into an interesting collab.

Hey Greg, Did you check thermals with the 5900x or not? Would have been easy to see if it's a thermal issue once in windows, because if it still goes up to the 90s in temperature with reduced settings like this, there must be Some kind of IHS contact issue internaly causing thermals to rise. Greetings!

I’m able to boot in b1 & b2 but anytime I try to use a1 or a2 I get error code 55 yellow light on ram everything lights on pc but no display on keyboard and mouse. Do you think this is a problem with the cpu or motherboard slits please let me know anything is helpful.

Love the graded Yu-Gi-Oh cards in the back !

After you underclocked and undervolted the last cpu, did you see what the high temp was after running the stress test?

I find it interesting the number of memory issues. Just replaced my 2700 X as the memory controller is depredating. It stopped being able to run the memory on XMP, so I had to drop the voltages and speeds down a few months ago(6) and it was stable until yesterday when the problem made a return. However, I believe a bad bios was to blame in my case as I found that the XMP had gone 1.45 V on Auto which was fixed with a bios update.

I also have a pc here that has AMD A10 apu in it. Everything was fine and stable in the bios(updated and set to defaults) but everytime i install an os, it keeps crashing and giving me bsod. I already tried changing the ssd, sata cable, and sata port but still same issues. When i install an os from a different pc(intel) then put back together to this pc it will boot up but after a few minutes it will crash and show bsod again.

The labeling of the cpu as "bad" reminded me of a system one of my clients asked me to diagnose and the only information I had to go on was the label which read "doesn't".

Is that a Blue-Eyes Toon Dragon in the background? 😍 I think I also see The Winged Dragon of Ra and Relinquished, I could be wrong. I can’t tell what the other two are.

Hey so I have a question about dram channels on cpus. Is there anyway you can fix the cpu like take it apart at all or no

What percentage of the systems you've gotten in for repair are AMD vs Intel?

Nice work. But heck you need to document what is wrong with these things.... just a post it note with each one...

17:29 a spark was there under the motherboard :))

On the CPU around 1230 did you attempt to stop c-states? It might be undervolting not overvolting?

I had a boot looping 7700K and was behaving like a bad overclock even though it was on stock settings. So I increased the voltage and lowered the clock speed. It then worked without crashing and after a couple of weeks set back to stock and it worked perfect.

i would reset the cmos every time when swapping the cpu. maybe it does not wanna work with various speeds or timings. just to be sure.

Commenting before I finish the vid, I've only hit the 5 min mark. But what you said in the 4:30 - 4:59 is exactly why you're one of my favorites.

Love your debug GPU! Cute

Would love to see a further video with a deeper dive somehow, or if AMD gets back to you with an update. And I love how you said at the start about learning from mistakes, that is one of the best ways, especially showing it off to us viewers.

But can any of these get replaced under warranty?

Love the Yu-Gi-Oh cards in the background.

Greg, I don't know whether this interests you, but for bench testing a motherboard, I use a removable, external power switch. I like this better than physically shorting the power switch pins when I have to start up the same board many times. Of course, if you are working with a number of different boards at the same time, this would be more time consuming than shorting with a screwdriver.

I was wondering.. with some of the ryzen 5 3600s with dead memory channels, could tighter timing ram in single channel perform as good as dual channel ram with looser timings ???

At 17:28, was that a spark under the motherboard when he flipped the switch on his PSU?

At 16:37 debug light cycles just as Greg pushed on the memory stick...coincidence? :P

Recently I had a family member complain that shortly after plugging in his new WD 2TB Elements portable USB 3.0 (the next day actually) his monitor, keyboard, and mouse quit working. I saw that his MSI X470 Gaming Plus Max AM4 MB had every USB port filled with various crap...looked like a porcupine. His poor Corsair VS 450 PSU had to handle a Kingston 120GB SSD (OS boot drive), a WD 250GB HDD, a Seagate Barracuda 500GB HDD, the Ryzen 5 3600 w/stock cooler, 16GB G. Skill Trident Z Neo 3600, 5 UpHere RGB case fans, MSI GTX 1650 Super GPU with 2 monitors plugged in, and some gadget that appeared to have a few mini monitor screens. All the fans and lights were working, as well as the GPU fans. I noted the PSU didn’t have a connector for the 4-pin CPU PWR2 on the board, which I’ve read the MB only really needs the 8-pin CPU PWR1 but I can’t help but wonder so I suggested he buy a more powerful PSU to handle all the stuff he had plugged in and to make sure it had the connector to fill that void. Well a new Tier A Corsair RM1000e PSU didn’t help so I tried a known working GPU but that didn’t help either. I should note that no settings were ever tinkered with. Everything was totally factory and his Metallic Gear Neo case w/2 Skiron RGB fans, plus the 5-pack of UpHere RGB fans offered plenty of ventilation. I thought for sure the motherboard had an issue. The next stop was Micro Center for component isolation, which took 3 weeks and they said the problem was the Ryzen 5 3600 failed and it would be $180 to fix. He added that although he just bought everything last summer, (from MC) he didn’t buy the warranty so that’s something he’d have to handle himself through AMD. Noting how many of those chips have been diagnosed as “bad” plus the one I mentioned, I’m beginning to think AMD may have a dependability issue starting to emerge. EDIT: MC scared the kid by saying the new CPU would require a new OS and it would wipe everything on the drive. When the kid asked about saving his games and the cost of the next CPU upgrade. The tech said the ($129.99) Ryzen 5 5600 was actually just $20.01 more than the ($109.98) Ryzen 5 3600 and mentioned flashing the MB. So with another $150 to save his data, the price approached $500. I suggested that since his OS was on a cheap $20 120GB SSD that he should just put in a higher capacity & faster NVMe for the OS and the old SSD wouldn't have to be touched. Plus he already had the activation key from the previous OS installation. Next thing I know, the tech installed the ($49.99) Inland QN322 1TB NVMe and ended up costing “$200 something.” (his words)

I was expecting you to talk about these dead ryzen CPUs. Also, we may need another video about dead ryzen mobo as well

6:27 There was a spark on the cpu socket when you turned the power on

Hey Greg! I hope that you having a good day, I was wondering if there is a significant difference between a 360 mm aio with fans set to exhaust and a 280 mm aio with a push pull configuration.

Hey Greg! Thank you so much for all the content! The PC:DC and fox or flop playlists are amazing! However I do need your help with something else. I reached out via Instagram but haven’t heard back. Is there a better way to ask you for help?

For the first two, it could be a problem with the memory controller rather than the individual channels. Perhaps use a basic single rank module at 2400mhz or a "non-OC" speed, something of a long shot but it's worth a shot. As for the 5900X, those chips run extremely hot. Mine for instance ran at 80c idle on a really beefy air cooler. It currently has an aggressive under-volt using PBO2. (-30 PB02 voltage curve all cores plus a -0.045v core voltage offset plus a +200mhz max boost. Max 130w TDP limit) Runs rock solid although the under volt took some time to dial in. The other problem is the PBO2 defaults to pushing them until a thermal or electrical limit, meaning the chips are working themselves to death right out of the box. Mine throttled instantly before I tweaked it's behaviour. You'll find the owners of those chips didn't under volt the chips to a tolerable level and the default behavior caused the chips to die.

Hi Greg, I have a ryzen 5 3600 with aorus b450 elite. My pc wont start, and no light debug show in motherboard. Is the motherboard dead or my processor was dead? Help me, thank U

interesting on the first cpu tested, i also had that same exact issue on my R5 2600X on a B450 Aorus Pro. The error lights on the mobo would be solid dram with a flash of cpu sometimes. The thing is that my computer would actually boot after i let it blink the error for a while (sometimes a few minutes, sometimes like 10mins. other times it wouldn't boot for a long while so i would turn the psu off and on and it would hopefully boot soon later, also i would reset cmos sometimes if it doesn't want to boot for a good while and resetting psu didn't help. also i don't remember if this did anything but i recall sometimes flipping the psu switch off and back on really quickly as a potential fix) I upgraded to a R5 5600 not long ago and it wouldn't really do it anymore. Not sure if it was an issue with the CPU, or maybe an incompatibility with something in the Bios? potentially also memory, when the pc would boot after doing this (this error thing would only really happen on 1 in 6 boots or after the Psu was turned off and on) the memory xmp profile would be off and going into bios it would say it was reset to default settings. edit - specs - initially - R5 2600X RX 580 2x8GB 3200 ripjaws V noir CL16 B450 Aorus Pro (bios was up to date although sometimes got reset to a lower version when the error occurred) Later upgrades, in order - 5700 XT, still had issue 2x8GB 3200 Corsair Vengeance CL16, still had issue. ran both in configs 16GB corsair and later 32GB mix. R5 5600, 'fixed' issue of this error recurring for no reason, though it would usually still do it on first boot after the psu was turned off. 🤷‍♀️

Greg, I envy your access to hardware, but I don't envy how much thermal paste you must go through in a week. I'd love to know what brand you use though.

I always learn so much more from making a mistake then I ever would from getting it right every time.

Would it help if you had a board that displayed numbers and not just lights?

Just a thought. With multiple generations of Ryzen CPUs and a b550 board. Often the qvl list varies between each Ryzen generation when it comes to supported ram on an individual motherboard. Ram could be a factor too.

I have a suggestion. Would be interesting to try a direct die cooling in the stubborn CPU.

I have a brand new ryzen 9 5900x and it was bootlooping exactly the same as yours straight out of the box is it safe to assume that the issue isn't to do with my pc or compatibility issues and instead just a faulty chip straight out of the box? Should I return it and try a new chip? I also have a ryzen 5 3600 and it runs perfectly fine with that and yes I did update my bios before installing the ryzen 9 5900x.

I am wondering if the silicon shortage over the last two years has contributed to this issue, are manufacturers reducing the failure threshold/overhead to pump out their products? I am in the process of building my new 13th gen system and it is a major concern that component quality might be compromised by the current lack of raw materials globally.

TechYesCity also had this overheating issue with ryzen 3600s. You can also try disabling cpu cores if undervolting doesn't work and see if it works.

Delid the ones with temp issues, and also add the app "core temp" to the system tray and have it boot with windows, that gives instant temp and freq values as u are getting started up

Would slowing down RAM speed affect the capability/function of the CPU memory channel?