PC seller claims Ryzen 9 failure rate is higher than other Ryzen 5000 CPUs

When dealing with large quantities of hardware, you're going to have some units fail from time to time. Normally for CPUs, this failure rate falls into single-digit percentages but according to one custom PC builder, the failure rate for AMD's Ryzen 9 5950X is significantly higher than normal. 

The statistics shared by PowerGPU (via HardwareTimes) shows that out of 50 Ryzen 9 5950X, 8x CPUs were DOA (dead on arrival). The Ryzen 9 5900X failure rate is about half of that, with 4x DOA processors out of 50 (8%). The 8-core Ryzen 7 5800X failure rate reduces by another half, with 4x DOA processors out of 100 (4%). Lastly, the lower-end Ryzen 5 5600X has the lowest failure rate with 3x processors failing out of 120 units (2.5%). Putting all into perspective that's about 6% for the whole Ryzen 5000 series. In comparison with Intel processors, the same retailer said that it only received a DOA Core i7-9700K in its time of business.

Of course, this is a very limited sample size. If we take a look at Mindfactory's statistics, the RMA rate of these processors don't seem to match. In Mindfactory's case, with a much bigger statistical population, the RMA rate never exceeds 1%. According to Mindfactory, the Ryzen 9 5950X has an RMA rate of 0.77%. The RMA rate of the other Ryzen 5000 CPUs is even lower, with the Ryzen 9 5900X having 0.37%, the Ryzen 7 5800X with 0.58%, and the Ryzen 5 5600X with 0.50%.

PowerGPU statistical population might be too low to draw conclusions. There are multiple reasons for such a high failure rate. For example, if PowerGPU received a bad batch of CPUs, and given their low statistical population, the failure rate is inflated. If the following batches of CPUs received by PowerGPU don't have any issues, the failure rate would reduce significantly.

KitGuru says: Have you had any issues with a new Ryzen 5000 series processor? 

Become a Patron!