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Comment by SubiculumCode | Hacker News Reader

A little off-topic, but planning on building a Ryzen 2600x system soon. Does anyone know if Ubuntu works well with Ryzen processors?

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FYI, the problem you might read about with lockups when using Ryzen and Linux are related to old power supplies that don't handle the low power settings well. As long as you have a fairly new power supply you shouldn't have any issues. At least this is the conclusion I drew after doing some research before building a 1600 based system a while back.

The problem that was causing a lot of the lockups was errata #1109 "MWAIT Instruction May Hang a Thread"

See https://developer.amd.com/wp-content/resources/55449_1.12.pd...

Just switched my home desktop to a Ryzen 2600X / Gigabyte AX370M-DS3H motherboard: Only hiccup was having to source a pre-ryzen AM4 cpu to update to BIOS to get Ryzen support, which was a pain - I'd advise making sure that any board you buy has had the BIOS updated if required by the seller.

I run Debian Testing mostly, so a 4.16.16 kernel. Been perfectly stable for me so far.

NB - For anyone hoping to use the the new AMD Vega CPUs with integrated graphics, the Debian kernels don't have the relevant support compiled in, so you'll have to compile a custom kernel & grab the latest firmware files from the linux-firmware git repo if you want accelerated graphics.

Do you mean Ryzen 2200G and 2400G with APU?

That was why I was thinking of going with a X470 mobo, though they are more expensive than the B350 and B370 boards. Id go with the cheaper but it seems that even those advertised as being upgraded to the 2000 have reviews claiming otherwise, so its kind of a mess.

I bought an ASRock B350 a couple of days after the Ryzen 2400G release. It was flashed with a firmware new enough to handle it. The Gigabytes waited a LONG time to bring their boards up.

Yeah, In retrospect I should have done my research on this front. Mea culpa.

Yes - I built a pair of machines - one mini ITX B350 motherboard with a 2400G CPU/GPU & the second an X370 board with a Ryzen 2600 that used a GPU I already owned.[1]

The first came with an updated BIOS & the 2400G worked out of the box. The second came with it's original BIOS. Both were ordered from Amazon. If you order from a smaller outfit they’ll hopefully be able to tell you whether the motherboard box has the sticker on it that says that its BIOS has been updated to cope with Ryzen CPUs.

[1] Still hoping for the great crypto-currency crash in the sky to bring down GPU prices. In the meantime the 2400G is adequate for console grade gaming on the TV.

If you end up getting a motherboard without a compatible BIOS, AMD will send you a temporary CPU for free. (https://support.amd.com/en-us/kb-articles/Pages/2Gen-Ryzen-A...)

Yes, but if you use this program you have to get a RMA from your motherboard manufacturer first stating they wont do anything to help.

Yes, but online reports suggest the round trip time is a couple of weeks. I ended up ordering the cheapest possible AM4 CPU from Amazon Warehouse & returning it after updating the BIOS instead.

A tech forum that's local to me ran a 'CPU forwarding ring' - you could sign up to have a CPU sent to you, and after upgrading your BIOS you'd have to send it to the next person who needed it. I thought that was a genius solution.

Yes, no matter what you get chances are it'll work well. I currently have a 1700X with an Asrock X370 Fatality Mini itx board and it works perfectly. I recommend checking out level1techs on youtube as they test motherboards with linux in mind.

I'm running Ubuntu 18.04 on Ryzen 2400g with 4.17rc kernel with no issues. In stock 4.15 I'm having some issues with vega(g) part of CPU. X shouldn't have this problem.

It will be fine. I'm running Mint and Kali on some slightly older Ryzens for a year now without issue.

I'm using Ryzen 2700X with Debian testing just fine. That lock-up bug[1][2] was common in previous line (1700X for instance). It's way less common in Ryzen 2.

1. https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=196683

2. https://developer.amd.com/wp-content/resources/55449_1.12.pd...

I was using a 1600X and it worked fine. Using a 1950X and still works fine. I pretty frequently put it under heavy load.

On the same note, how about Ryzen laptops? Are there any in the market that work well with linux?

I'm running Ubuntu 18.04 in VirtualBox on a Ryzen 1700 and haven't encountered any issues.

I run Debian (proxmox) on a Ryzen 5 2600. Works well!

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