Igor’s laboratory discovered A major glitch in the MSI Center Windows app can overvoltage and overclock AMD’s top gaming CPU, the Ryzen 7 5800X3D, beyond its limits. At first glance, this looks like a win for enthusiasts and overclockers. However, the application completely bypasses all artificial voltage and clock speed limits, making this a big danger for the unwary 5800X3D owner. To make matters worse, the issue was also found in his Asus, Gigabyte, and ASRock software and marked as a platform-wide issue.
Igor of Igor’s Lab was able to demonstrate the danger of this bug on his 5800X3D. After overvoltageing the chip above his 1.3v at MSI Center, the 5800X3D reportedly died almost immediately. I’m not sure how the chip specifically died, but apparently Igor pushed the core voltage past his 1.3v after his two manual tweaks. After the second voltage adjustment, the PC immediately shut down and never restarted.
For starters, AMD’s Ryzen 7 5800X3D is AMD’s first CPU with gaming-boosting 3D-VCache technology. This tech adds his 64MB L3 cache slab right on top of the Zen 3 die, boosting his L3 capacity on the chip to his 96MB. However, this additional L3 cache will severely impact the heat dissipation of the CPU, making the chip run at a lower frequency.
The issue is so severe that AMD previously blocked overclocking of the chip altogether, lowering the maximum core voltage from 1.5v to 1.35v. AMD says the voltage limitation is due to the voltage limitation of the added cache, but our testing indicates that the limitation is almost certainly related to the chip’s heat dissipation issues.
To confirm Igor’s findings, I went to MSI Center on a personal rig with an MSI B450 Pro Carbon AC and Ryzen 7 5800X3D and found the same unlock feature in the “User Scenarios” subsection. Manual core voltage found he could go up to 1.55v and the core multiplier was fully unlocked. I didn’t know the limit of the magnification, but I was able to enter 80 times (for 8 GHz).
Of course, I didn’t apply those settings because I wanted to keep using the CPU. However, based on the fact that you can enter these settings at all, without any restrictions or greyed out tabs, we confirm that this is a big deal.
There is no deadline for a possible fix, but we are confident AMD will get to the root of this issue as soon as possible. Especially since YouTuber Der8aur killed his 7950X3D while he was playing around with similar settings less than two weeks ago.
It is unknown if the fix will come in a new AGESA microcode update, chipset update, or software side change. But for now, if you own a Ryzen 7 5800X3D, don’t look into your motherboard’s overclocking software and tweak your overclocking settings.
