Linux @lemmy.ml dingdongitsabear @lemmy.ml 7mo ago

AMD Zen3 Linux compatibility upgrade question

I'm considering upgrading to a Ryzen 5 5600, they've finally come down to $100 locally (tray version sans cooler).

currently, I have a 1600AF (lower binned 2600, so Zen+) on a B450 board. the upgrade should be straightforward, my board supports it (latest BIOS) and it has the same power rating, so my cheap-ass PSU and stock cooler don't need upgrading.

reason I want to upgrade is I have a number of issues with it under linux so I'd like to check if someone runs a similar setup.

first, I have Cool & Quiet and C-states disabled and Power Idle Control to "Typical Current Idle"; otherwise the machine freezes when waking from suspend after a short while. the second issue is, I have 3600 MT/s Kingston Hyper-X modules that I have to run at 2400 because both XMP profiles (XMP1-3000 and XMP2-3600) are unstable and cause apps to crash (the latter sometimes won't boot at all, can't unlock LUKS).

supposedly, both those issues are fixed in newer gens; old Zen/Zen+ had issues with faster RAM, and the C-state handling is also better in Zen3. also, I can use the new amd-pstate driver.

my PC is plenty fast as is, I'm only considering upgrading to fix them two issues. if it's the same on the other side of the fence, I'd rather skip it.

anyone had first-hand experiences with this?

edit: thanks everyone who took the time to share their setup, I'm way more optimistic about making the jump!

16 comments

I have a 5600H (not exactly the same as regular 5600) with 32GB of 3200MHz RAM, running Linux for ~18 months, no problem with it, stable, suspend/resume always works, etc
I have a 5900x (zen3), and apparently I got a bit unlucky with the silicon and ended up with a CPU that's slightly unstable at its stock voltages and stock boost clock. The system would freeze and reboot randomly, and the bios would report an MCE error. This crash could be reproduced with near 100% success by doing sha1 hashing specifically for some odd reason. This is not a Linux issue, it's a hardware defect.

It may be an Asus motherboard specific thing, but I found a workaround by going to the bios settings, precision boost overdrive, and increasing the voltage scalar to like 7. Now it's been two years and I have only ever had it happen once since I changed that, so I'm happy.
- You should've RMAed. Maybe you still can?
- Sorry to hear that! Can confirm that I experience none of these issues on Arch with my 5900X and an Aorus pro wifi (mini ITX), so definitely specific to your combination.
For me a 5600 in a B4500 board works perfecly.
- thanks for taking the time to reply. can you expand on the issues I mentioned, did you have to change those BIOS settings and does suspend/resume work? what's your RAM speed?
  
  Suspend and resume work fine. My BIOS settings are basicly stock exept for enabling XMP. My RAM is 4x8GB 3200MHz and im able to run it at full speed.
  
  You can always take a look at https://linux-hardware.org
  
  It is a collection of user reported systems. So you can filter for your cpu, high speed ram and look which kernel versions it works with.
  
  The ui/ux is a bit shotty, but you'll get the hang of it after a while.
I had a 5600x on a b450 board with Kingston pc3600 too. I had no problems running xmp profiles and optimized defaults. If cool & quiet was enabled by default then I didn't mess with it.

I rarely use suspend or hibernate, and I don't encrypt my drives, so I can't speak to those issues. But even though you say you don't need the speed, I think you'll be very pleased with this upgrade if you go through with it.
did the upgrade! aside from a little scare* everything worked out beautifully! it sleeps and wakes without issues and the XMP1-3600 profile works. ran a bit of geekbench6, that used to crash on the old CPU - no such thing here; watching the clock speeds reach 4.4 GHz was surreal.

a bunch of new options in the setup, PBO, overclock, etc. I'll leave them be for now.

also, just checked, I don't have the amd-pstate driver active, I'm still on acpi-cpufreq. I'll tackle that one of these days if everything works fine.

on first power on, there was only the "American Megatrends" logo and no other text, it just stood there. after a quick ddg, found the solution in a reddit thread, you're supposed to press "Y" there and then commences a series of reboots (5-6 or so, didn't count). after that's done with, you're greeted with your normal POST screen. enter the setup, load "Optimized Defaults", activate XMP1, turn off extraneous devices (serial, SATA ports).
- also, just checked, I don't have the amd-pstate driver active, I'm still on acpi-cpufreq. I'll tackle that one of these days if everything works fine.
  
  What kernel are you running ¿?
  
  I'm on 6.8.5. lscpu | grep -i cppc comes up empty, so I guess I need to enable it in BIOS setup or add some kernel switches.
what distro are you using?
- currently Fedora 40, Plasma. upgraded in place from F35 onwards.
- is are
  
  i didn't sleep

16 comments