AMD’s Ryzen 9000-series CPUs may have been delayed because of a typo on the heatspreader, which is definitely not the sort of mistake I’d ever make

Delays on an upcoming piece of hardware are nothing new. So when AMD pushed its Zen 5-powered Ryzen 9000 series CPUs back by a week or two for failing a final stage of checks, we weren’t entirely surprised, but definitely curious: What could possibly have caused them to be pushed back at such a late stage?

A possible answer is that, rather embarrassingly, there may have been a “mistake at the printers”. An early, unofficial review, that now looks to have been taken down, posted to BiliBili (via Tom’s Hardware) showed images of what appears to be a Ryzen 7 9700X with the laser-etched markings on the heatspreader denoting it as a “Ryzen 9 7900X”. Whoopsie.

Ryzen 7 chips traditionally come with eight physical cores (as does the 9700X), while the Ryzen 9 designation is usually reserved for top-end chips featuring more cores and potentially higher clocks. Unless there’s been a huge change to AMD’s model designations since the Zen 5 announcement, that’s a typo, sitting right on the physical CPU itself.

Of course, the chip featured in the photos may simply have been a poor mockup, or badly image-edited to look like one of AMD’s latest chips. However, Tom’s Hardware says that it has learned of Ryzen 9600X models that were shipped to retail outlets, also labelled as Ryzen 9 CPUs.

AMD’s statement regarding the delays is as follows:

“We appreciate the excitement around Ryzen 9000 series processors.  During final checks, we found the initial production units that were shipped to our channel partners did not meet our full quality expectations.  Out of an abundance of caution and to maintain the highest quality experiences for every Ryzen user, we are working with our channel partners to replace the initial production units with fresh units.”

Given that the Ryzen 7 9700X and Ryzen 5 9600X have been pushed back by just over a week to August 8th, and the Ryzen 9 9950X and Ryzen 9 9900X by just over two weeks to August 15th, it would follow that it was potentially something as simple as a typo printed on the chips.

As someone who has occasionally been known to publish a typo of my own, I can hardly get on my high-horse about anybody else doing the same—and changing something physically printed is a lot more difficult than a sneaky little grammar edit. Regardless, the CPUs are still reportedly on their way, and I’ll be willing to bet the ones that reach the shelves will have printing that’s as accurate as you like.