I've got a 5950x that I can reliably crater with a very specific .NET 8 console app when it would otherwise be stable 24/7/365, even under some pretty crazy workloads like Unity.

I think a lot of it boils down to load profile and power delivery. My 2500VA double conversion UPS seems to have difficulty keeping up with the volatility in load when running that console app. I can tell because its fans ramp up and my lights on the same circuit begin to flicker very perceptibly. It also creates audible PWM noise in the PC which is crazy to me because up til recently I've only ever heard that from a heavily loaded GPU.

I wonder if cooling/power is really the key here. I've got a 5950x that ended up getting the water loop I'd intended for my next threadripper - only to find they were not selling the blasted things to anyone but a few companies. With the cooling sized for almost twice what the 5950x could put out, it has been a very stable machine for some crazy workloads. That old dog will likely keep the setup when a zen 5 TR gets swapped in.

For a long time, my Achille's heel was my Bride's vacuum. Her Dyson pulled enough amps that the UPS would start singing and trigger the auto shutdown sequence for the half rack. Took way too long to figure out as I was usually not around when she did it.

> I think a lot of it boils down to load profile and power delivery

You said the right words but with the wrong meaning! On Gigabyte mobo you want to increase the "CPU Vcore Loadline Calibration" and the "PWM Phase Control" settings, [see screenshot here](https://forum.level1techs.com/t/ddr4-ram-load-line-calibrati...).

When I first got my Ryzen 3900X cpu and X570 mobo in 2019, I had many issues for a long time (freezes at idle, not waking from sleep, bios loops, etc). Eventually I found that bumping up those settings to ~High (maybe even Extreme) was what was required, and things worked for 2 years or so until I got a 5950X on clearance last year.

I slotted that in to the same mobo and it worked fine, but when I was looking at HWMon etc, I noticed some strange things with the power/voltage. After some mucking about and theorising with ChatGPT (it's way quicker than googling for uncommon problems), it became apparent that the ~High LLC/power settings I was still using were no good. ChatGPT explained that my 3900X was probably a bit "crude" in relative quality, and so it needed the "stronger" power settings to keep itself in order. Then when I've swapped to 5950X, it happens to be more "refined" and thus doesn't need to be "manhandled" — and in fact, didn't like being manhandled at all!

If you have a double conversion UPS that is complaining about less than 100W deviation, I would recommend you check the UPS for a component that is out of spec or on the way to failure.

I'm sure there are spec's for how fast a PS should be able to ramp up in response to spikes in demand, how a motherboard should handle sudden load changes, etc.

But if your UPS (or just the electrical outlet you're plugged into) can't cope - dunno if I'd describe that as cratering your CPU.