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.

  • Pantherina@feddit.de
    1011·
    9 months ago

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

    Just buy used

  • catloaf@lemm.eeEnglish
    51·
    9 months ago

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

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

        • TCB13@lemmy.worldEnglish
          4·
          9 months ago

          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.

      • catloaf@lemm.eeEnglish
        6·
        9 months ago

        Yes.

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

      • Deckweiss@lemmy.world
        4·
        9 months ago

        ltt made a video recently-ish showcasing a multi threaded arm cpu desktop. Not sure how availabe that is to the market though.

  • d3Xt3r@lemmy.nzM
    39·
    9 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.

  • ProgrammingSocks@pawb.social
    4216·
    9 months ago

    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.

    • root@precious.net
      2612·
      9 months ago

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

    • onlinepersona@programming.devEnglish
      154·
      9 months ago

      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

      • ProgrammingSocks@pawb.social
        2·
        9 months ago

        Voting is good because elections can be won by a few votes and ARE won by a few votes consistently. The tiny fraction off the top of your CPU purchase that might end up possibly supporting Israel is doing nothing compared to the hundreds of millions that, may I remind you, you cannot opt out of sending to Israel.

        Changing what products you consoom is literally feel-good liberal shit to make you feel like you’re doing something. Talking to representatives and protesting is way more effective, in the sense that one of them does nothing and the other actually does something.

        • onlinepersona@programming.devEnglish
          2·
          9 months ago

          Changing what products you consoom is literally feel-good liberal shit to make you feel like you’re doing something.

          This is why big companies continue making money, influencing politics, and can have more profits than some countries have budgets. Then people like you turn around and say “ermagerd, companies are destroying the world” with an iPhone in one hand and a venti in the other while wearing fast fashion. But at least you voted, amirite?

          CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

          • ProgrammingSocks@pawb.social
            11·
            9 months ago

            You are severely overestimating the amount of people who, to put it the shortest way I can think of rn, are not NPCs.

            Yes, what you say could be true in a perfect world where everybody or even a majority of people participate in boycotts. I still believe it’s a distraction from capitalism’s structural problems but they could still be effective that way. The difference is that the world we live in is not that world and therefore small-scale boycotts like this do basically nothing. The average person does not care what companies support Israel. Also a lot of those lists are literally wrong but that’s a different issue. Also also, the government STILL sends a SHITTON of money to Israel whether you personally support it or not.

    • communism@lemmy.mlOP
      2515·
      9 months ago

      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

      • Shareni@programming.dev
        1713·
        9 months ago

        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

        • communism@lemmy.mlOP
          104·
          9 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

        • SkippingRelax@lemmy.world
          116·
          9 months ago

          Omg such a waste of time that could have been spent scrolling through memes instead of trying to do the right thing.

        • catnash [she/her, ae/aer]@lemmy.blahaj.zone
          11·
          9 months ago

          Making a post takes a minute. Responses will take less than a minute. They were crowdsourcing specific and quite niche knowledge. In that time between making the post and reading them after a wait OP was able to do literally anything else instead of searching and trying to pull out decent looking CPUs they couldn’t guarantee. If you were buying any CPU you would hopefully look for reviews or comparisons, BDS or not, to inform you.

    • merthyr1831@lemmy.world
      41·
      9 months ago

      This smells of reductionist “no ethical consumption under capitalism” ideology.

      That just means living in capitalism doesn’t exempt you from criticising the system, not that you can’t and shouldn’t use the mechanism of capitalism to help make life difficult for fascists.

      It might not “fix” the problems but it sure as hell is making Israel pay while our national governments do fuck all.

  • bzLem0n@lemmy.ca
    16·
    9 months ago

    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.

    • Buffalox@lemmy.world
      8·
      9 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.

    • communism@lemmy.mlOP
      5·
      9 months ago

      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

      • bzLem0n@lemmy.ca
        8·
        9 months ago

        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.

        • communism@lemmy.mlOP
          111·
          9 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 :)

  • addie@feddit.uk
    13·
    9 months ago

    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.

    • RedWeasel@lemmy.worldEnglish
      7·
      9 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.

  • SnowySkyes [she/her]@hexbear.netEnglish
    12·
    9 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.

  • oscardejarjayes [comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
    9·
    9 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.

    • communism@lemmy.mlOP
      61·
      9 months ago

      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

      • KaRunChiy@kbin.run
        9·
        9 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.

    • merthyr1831@lemmy.world
      2·
      9 months ago

      A few more years until RISC-V is at 1st-gen ryzen levels (though it looks like RISC-V is accelerating every day)

  • bruhduh@lemmy.world
    6·
    9 months ago

    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

    • Norah - She/They@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
      4·
      9 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.