I have a Ryzen 3 1300X at the moment and it’s always had this soft lock freezing bug on Linux. I used to dual-boot Windows on this machine and Windows never had the same problem, so I think it is an issue with the Linux kernel (I’ve also replaced nearly every bit of hardware that I originally built the PC with, except for the CPU and motherboard, so it probably is an issue the kernel has with my CPU, or possibly the motherboard firmware).
I’ve changed the kernel parameters as suggested by the Arch Wiki. The bug is pretty inconsistent about happening so only time will tell if this solves the issue. But if it doesn’t solve the issue, I’d honestly consider just getting a new CPU that doesn’t have this issue, as completely freezing up, unable to get to a tty or anything, and only being able to power off by physically holding down the power button, is a pretty major issue, even if it only happens sometimes.
So if I do get a new CPU, or maybe just for when I’m next buying a CPU for reasons unrelated to this bug (been considering an upgrade to something that’s better for compiling anyway), are there any good options out there? Intel is investing $25 billion into Israel and the BNC has called for “divestment and exclusion” from it (it’s not officially on the BDS consumer boycott list, but I’m still very much not comfortable buying from Intel). But the Arch Wiki article seems to suggest this bug is applicable to Ryzen CPUs in general, or at least it never specifies a particular model or range of models. So maybe I’m limited to non-Ryzen AMD CPUs?
I’m guessing this is one of the situations where two companies have a complete duopoly over the market and there isn’t an all-round good solution, but thought I’d ask in case anyone had some useful input.
I think if you start with political positions of bigtech companies…
Just buy used
What is BDS?
I’ve never had any issues with Ryzen, but I never had first gen. If you don’t want Ryzen, and Intel is unethical, maybe you could try a Epyc /s?
Buying used Intel stuff might also be an option. No more money would go to Intel, and using used stuff is good on the e-waste front.
My Ryzen 5700u work great with Debian, so as others said, consider upgrade CPU on your am4 motherboard, better buy apu since it always feels good to have backup gpu in your system in case main gpu breaks
I don’t think getting an APU ‘just in case’ is a good idea. It limits your turbo frequency and halves your L3 cache compared to the equivalent CPU variants. It also limits you to PCIe 3.0 only. Some AM4 boards have a single 4.0 x16 slot for graphics cards, so getting an APU could directly affect the graphics performance from a discrete GPU. OP should get the chip that is more suited to their typical use case.
I’ve no ideia what you’re rambling about. I can attest that the Ryzen 5 1600 and the Ryzen 5 2600 that aren’t even new CPUs run perfectly fine with Debian.
Ah, that sounds a bit unfortunate. I’ve run AMD CPUs on Linux desktops with Bulldozer / Piledriver / Ryzen 7, my current laptop is a Ryzen 7 as well, never run into that at all. Hopefully the Arch wiki will sort you out. If not that, the third option would be ‘install Linux on an M-series Mac’ - don’t know how feasible it is at the moment, and paying the ‘Mac premium for hardware and software integration and then overwriting the software’ doesn’t make a lot of sense to me.
I have has zen2 and zen3 systems and haven’t run in to that either. So Zen2+ systems should be mostly fine.
If you get an M1 or M2 mac it should mostly work. If you need thunderbolt(WIP) or vulkan(WIP) then you will have to wait. Otherwise accelerated desktops work and audio is working now. Honestly if you compare performance to competing systems, they end up pretty similar in pricing.
Buy Intel used so that you’re not directly contributing?
Other than that or AMD, your only other option is ARM.
Can you go and buy an ARM CPU and build a desktop system with it?
Yes.
Not many, but they exist. I think most of them come soldered to the board like laptops.
ltt made a video recently-ish showcasing a multi threaded arm cpu desktop. Not sure how availabe that is to the market though.
Check out the Ampere Altra Developer Platform
The OP is concerned about stability and you’re suggesting an experimental CPU that is plagued by UEFI bugs and is overly expensive? From what I’ve been even a cheap Chinese SBC with a Rockchip CPU is more stable and reliable than that thing.
As I understand, early ryzen processors are generally more buggy. I run 5800x on my desktop and a 5600(x?) in my server. You could try a newer ryzen and see if it works. I would recommend shopping around for a decent warranty.
That’s good to hear that you’re not having problems on newer Ryzen. Although not sure if I want to risk buying a new Ryzen CPU if there’s a chance I could have the same problem
I have a Zen 2, Zen 3+ and a Zen 4 system and they all work well very with various Linux distros (Arch, Fedora) and recent kernels.
It’s very likely that your bug is specific to early Ryzen CPUs/chipsets. A couple of folks on those reports mentioned their issues went away after a motherboard/BIOS upgrade. So I think you’ll be fine if you went for a more recent AMD CPU+mobo.
What kernel version are you seeing that lockup bug on? I have a similar bug on Ryzen 5 2600x with kernel versions >= 6.7. 6.6 is fine.
More directly: Buy used. Lots of reputable sellers on eBay and their returns policy for defective products is unbeatable.
hardened kernel v6.7.9, but I also had the same problem on the regular Linux kernel a while back. It’s been a while since I’ve used the regular Linux kernel though so it might have gotten fixed on the regular kernel but not the hardened version?
I have a system with a Ryzen 1700 with the same issue and have found the only reliable way to run it is by installing and enabling the disable-c6-systemd package from the AUR. The other fixes provided in the wiki article you linked are correct but aren’t sufficient on my system, the CPU keeps reenabling the C6 state on its own and the disable-c6-systemd package works to counter that. The reason it works on Windows is they’ve disabled the C6 state by default for the CPU.
Ah, thanks. I’m using runit not systemd (although this was happening on systemd when I was on systemd too) but I saw
amd-disable-c6in the AUR so I’ve installed that now, fingers crossed it works (the fixes in the Arch Wiki article haven’t fixed it for me, it just happened again rip)Edit: nvm, looks like that package is a systemd service
The package is just a systemd unit to run the command
python zenstates --c6-disableso if you install the zenstates-git package and get runit to run that command at startup it would be equivalent.Thank you!!
Edit: Tried running that, I’m getting the error that
/dev/cpu/0/msrdoesn’t exist.dev/cpudoesn’t seem to exist at all on my machine. HmEdit 2: You need to run
sudo modprobe msr. All good now :)
This is amazing to find out now after 7 years:) I actually adjusted voltage manually on my Ryzen R5 1600, and it became 100% reliable, apparently the fix you mention prevent voltage below 1v at idle. I wondered why my CPU wasn’t reliable unless I made manual OC with some voltage tweaks?
I never looked it up, because my OC solved the issue, but I always thought it was a bit weird.
Risc v maybe? Rock 64?
A few more years until RISC-V is at 1st-gen ryzen levels (though it looks like RISC-V is accelerating every day)
I appreciate you raising this question, thank you.
Here I was hoping we would get a breakdown on the companies making ARM processors … Still an informative comments section.
Get another AMD chip, you’ve just been unlucky. I’ve had AMD running Linux for 5 years with no issues.
