this post was submitted on 24 Mar 2024
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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.

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[–] [email protected] 96 points 7 months ago

I think if you start with political positions of bigtech companies...

Just buy used

[–] [email protected] 49 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Buy Intel used so that you're not directly contributing?

Other than that or AMD, your only other option is ARM.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 7 months ago (3 children)

Can you go and buy an ARM CPU and build a desktop system with it?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 7 months ago

Yes.

Not many, but they exist. I think most of them come soldered to the board like laptops.

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[–] [email protected] 38 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

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.

[–] sentient_loom 32 points 7 months ago (5 children)

I've heard that newer Ryzens play nicer with Linux.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Yeah, my 5800X3D works perfectly; absolutely zero issues. I'm guessing it's making use of the 3DvCache too since I don't notice any performance degredations compared to Windows.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 7 months ago (11 children)

Yeah First Gen Ryzens definitely had a Linux lock up bug. My x1700 had it all the time and could never fix it.

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[–] [email protected] 24 points 7 months ago (5 children)

This is pointless. Your tax dollars are doing MUCH more for Israel than what products you buy. Boycotts are a capitalist distraction from the real systemic issues.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 7 months ago (1 children)

His point wasn't to find a CPU, it was to make a political post in a tech community.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago

I agree. We need more of these!

[–] [email protected] 10 points 7 months ago (3 children)

Buhruh! Why not just stop voting since "your vote is only a drop in the ocean" or "it only legitimises a broken system"?

Every action towards progress counts. It's better than nothing, which is what people do if you ask them to change the world in one go. Change is gradual, change is slow, change can be achieved by the small actions of many. Not everybody has the time to "tackle the systemic issues" you perceive to be true nor does everybody agree that those are the core issues.

Belittling action, no matter how small, is discouraging and counterproductive.

CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 7 months ago

What if you live in a country that doesn't send any money to Israel? Also, boycotts do work.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Not when there's an organised boycott, called for by Palestinians. You can do multiple things at once. Not buying something takes 0 hours of your time lol

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago (3 children)

Not buying something takes 0 hours of your time lol

It takes so little time you needed to make a post to ask for help lol

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago

Making a post takes a few mins of time. Not boycotting is taking so little of your time that you needed to make 2 comments about it, wow

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 7 months ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

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-c6 in 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

[–] [email protected] 8 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

The package is just a systemd unit to run the command python zenstates --c6-disable so if you install the zenstates-git package and get runit to run that command at startup it would be equivalent.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Thank you!!

Edit: Tried running that, I'm getting the error that /dev/cpu/0/msr doesn't exist. dev/cpu doesn't seem to exist at all on my machine. Hm

Edit 2: You need to run sudo modprobe msr. All good now :)

[–] [email protected] 13 points 7 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 7 months ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Well, that brings to light why I had an issue with my 3900x. Couldn't find it on google to save my life, but then it shows up randomly here, lol.

If it means anything, my 7800x3D doesn't have that bug. I've been using it now for about 3 months without issue. So maybe the rest of the 7000 series is good to go?

EDIT: I'd also like to mention that I'm heavily biased against Intel processors for that long line of severe security issues that they had on their processors a few years ago. I don't trust them at all.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 7 months ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Print your own

...in 10 years

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 7 months ago (1 children)
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[–] [email protected] 7 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I never managed to fix this bug with my first gen Ryzens. Worth upgrading to something newer for sure.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Ah. I'm getting this answer a lot actually. I might try a newer Ryzen then if a lot of people are saying the newer Ryzens work

[–] [email protected] 9 points 7 months ago

Newer ryzens are better, especially because they get frequent updates to their microcode that fixes a lot of the issues you're experiencing.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Modern Ryzen are fine on Linux. Not sure where they're declaring it happens for "all Ryzen" from.

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[–] HumanPerson 6 points 7 months ago (1 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 7 months ago (3 children)
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[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago

Get another AMD chip, you've just been unlucky. I've had AMD running Linux for 5 years with no issues.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago

RK3588 is used in many Linux devices, but I'm not sure if Rockchip is in the BDS list. I don't know which factory was RK3588 from.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

I had a similar problem with a Ryzen 5 1600, at first it worked flawlessly when I did a manual OC, then when I made a reset, I didn't care to OC again, and it began to occasionally freeze, usually when idle. When I made my manual OC again including upping voltages a bit for CPU and RAM it worked flawlessly again???

Weird since motherboard defaults aught to be stable IMO, but apparently they aren't always.

I've been using this CPU for 7 years now, and it still runs like a champ, as long as I don't use the motherboard defaults. I can't remember last time it crashed or froze.

EDIT:

I just found out the package "disable-c6-systemd" mentioned in your link, is exactly to prevent voltage drop below 1v at idle, which sounds exactly like the bug I had. which is funny to learn 7 years later. ;)

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago

I have this same bug on the same platform! It was infuriating to track down. I was able to get around this by disabling c-states in the bios. I've heard that updating your aesga firmware also helps, but I can not confirm that.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Here I was hoping we would get a breakdown on the companies making ARM processors ... Still an informative comments section.

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