From the link above
The GD32F407 MCU is known to be less than 100% equivalent to the STM chips. It seems to me that the latest MCU code changes could push it into the “Deffective hardware” category.
If that is the case the OS on the Pi SHOULD gracefully handle the issue and raise an error flag and continue to run. We all know there are always edge cases where that doesn’t happen.
@dhstsw Do you have any other hardware you can temporally substitute for the Pi3B? In the past I have installed Linux (Debian) on a flash drive (you need 2, one for the bootable installer and 1 for the destination drive) to avoid having to actually dual boot my PC. If the MCU fails attached to a different host that would help sort out your issue.