AMD B450 Motherboard for Linux


second exodous

second exodous

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I'm upgrading my desktop PC that is ancient, it pre-dates Ryzen so it is old. My notebook has integrated Intel graphics and overheats with minecraft! I'm thinking of getting a 'G' Ryzen processor, so integrated graphics, to start off with. I'm looking at AMD Ryzen 5 3400G with 32GB of 3200 MHz DDR4 (16GBx2) memory.

Later I might throw a GPU in it but for now my budget is $500. I have about $180ish to spend on the motherboard after the memory and the CPU. I checked my power supply and it should work, I have lots of headroom with it, it is 850 Watt. I always wanted to do a SLI setup but never did. My case supports a full ATX motherboard so I'm not really restricted on motherboard size. And no need for on-board wifi, I have a PCI wifi card I like and I have Ethernet in the room I'm going to use it in anyway.

So, here is what I'm looking for:

- Really good Linux support(most important)
- Less than $180(shouldn't be a problem)
- AMD B450 chipset
- Can be any size
- Need to be able to upgrade the GPU to something decent
- Possibly USB 3.1 Gen 2

Yeah, the Linux support is most important. On Amazon and Newegg I search for 'Linux' in the reviews and man lots of non working sound cards and poor support in general. The reviews I don't trust all the time, sometimes I bite the bullet on Linux support and it turns out the reviews didn't know what they were talking about or must have been using Linux for the first time.

I'm asking here because lots of Linux users. I might copy/paste this in other Linux forums, so if you see it repeated that is me!
 
second exodous said:
So, here is what I'm looking for:

- Really good Linux support(most important)

...
Click to expand...

Are you looking for official Linux support from the motherboard manufacturer or for something that "runs well on Linux"?

AFAIK there are no B350/B450 motherboards that officially support Linux, but I might be mistaken, it's been a while since I last bought one.
 
second exodous said:
The reviews I don't trust all the time, sometimes I bite the bullet on Linux support and it turns out the reviews didn't know what they were talking about or must have been using Linux for the first time.
Click to expand...
Yeah, either first time users or old posts running at the time current kernels that today are ancient. Or weirdos booting old boot discs and reporting that it fails without even trying an update I guess.

In my experience, apart from UEFIs not including the key that all linuxes are built against, and not letting you do an unsecure boot, everything else gets better with time.

If the worst that happens is the sound card is broken, buy a cheap USB sound card for a couple dollars and use that. If's what I did when the 3.,5mm socket on my laptop broke off, and I've been using it for a couple of years now.
 
Hey thanks, I think I'll go with the MSI B450 Tomahawk. I don't think I'll ever do dual graphics cards, at least not with the CPU. I might never get a GPU either. Then again having a machine that can actually play games I might get into some newer games. Also I won't need a loaner chip from AMD to update the bios since it can update the bios without a CPU. I didn't really want to go through that whole process. . .

RZR said:
Are you looking for official Linux support from the motherboard manufacturer or for something that "runs well on Linux"?
Click to expand...
Just works well with Linux. I have a System76 notebook and love it, being able to email them when I have a problem but their desktops are just way expensive for what they are. If I wanted real support I'd buy from them again. In fact when I do upgrade my notebook it will be one of their's again.
 
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MSI are the king on B450 (and B350) and the Tomahawk is the sweet spot in therms of price/performance on the B450 chipset, The MSI B450 Carbon Pro is literally the best B450 mother board that money can buy.
MSI B450 Mortar is also pretty good if you need a smaller form factor.

All of them have only 4 power phases for VCore (like all other B350 and B450 motherboards), but the VRMs are good and all of them (Tomahawk, Mortar, and Carbon Pro) can handle R7 2700X overclocked to 4.1 GHz on all cores, if you have case with good airflow and after market CPU cooler.

If you chose to get the Tomahawk make sure you get the newest revision.

B550 should arrive at Q1 2020.

You can also consider GIGABYTE X570 GAMING X. It is on the bigger and newer chipset, but it can handle all CPUs from the Ryzen 3000 (and 2000) series including R9 3900X and R9 3950X, and you have PCIe 4.0

Gigabyte are the king on the X570 chipset and X570 GAMING X model have greatest value on the entire Ryzen 3000 (and 2000) platform.


Also keep in mind that all Ryzen motherboards from all generations are very pretentious when it comes to RAM modules, so make sure your RAM modules are listed in the QVL of the motherboard.


EDIT:
Forget about all the SLI/CF ideas, it is complete waste of money and resources.

EDIT 2:

In regards of second GPU, check IOMMU, it gives you the option your second GPU to be dedicated to a Windows VM,
 
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ATM I'm running linux on a Ryzen 1600 system with a B350 based mainboard. So far things work very well, but I haven't used used stuff like sleep-mode. I'm a bit old fashioned, so my desktop pc is either on or off. ;-) The only thing that upset me a bit regards internal sound cards. A year ago I wanted to build in an UAD2 Duo dsp board (for use with a DAW under Windows), which turned out to be incompatible. Also the Asus Essence STX II soundcard seems to be quirky on AMD systems, but luckily mine works nicely under Win as well as Linux. So if you plan on using any PCI-E boards other than graphics cards, check for compabitility first! ;)
 
ThinkPad said:
Also keep in mind that all Ryzen motherboards from all generations are very pretentious when it comes to RAM modules, so make sure your RAM modules are listed in the QVL of the motherboard.
Click to expand...
Oh man, did not read this before I ordered. So I ordered some Crucial gaming memory, 3200 MHz, and I went to the Crucial site and they do recommend those modules for the B450 Tomahawk but I went to the MSI page and they weren't listed. In fact I didn't see any 3200 MHz memory listed but reading up on some builds with this board it seems everyone uses 3200 MHz.

Oh well, if it doesn't work I'll complain to Crucial and maybe they can get me a refund. I should have ordered from them, it was only a few bucks more than Amazon. . .
 
to get best performance from Ryzen you need fast ram. the crucial should be fine. you will want to enable the XMP profile on the ram to get the best out of it.. ithe infinity fabric speed is tied to ram speed..
trying to piece a R5 2600X system together at the moment.. looks like i have an Asrock B450M pro 4 board for $80 AUD, and a 2600X for $150.. all secondhand. but i will buy the ram new.
wanting to update my 3770K intel build...
 
I really like MSI motherboards, never had any issue, but I've been out of the AMD game for the last two systems I have built. Likely an old statement, but at the time AMD just had a bit of performance issues compared to Intel, especially paired with an Nvidia graphics card... Like I said old statement, was sort of waiting and seeing how AMD latest offerings fared on Linux based on reviews.
 
spud42 said:
to get best performance from Ryzen you need fast ram. the crucial should be fine. you will want to enable the XMP profile on the ram to get the best out of it.. ithe infinity fabric speed is tied to ram speed..
trying to piece a R5 2600X system together at the moment.. looks like i have an Asrock B450M pro 4 board for $80 AUD, and a 2600X for $150.. all secondhand. but i will buy the ram new.
wanting to update my 3770K intel build...
Click to expand...
Yeah, I have had some bad times with ram, on my last board, an anthlon board, it was really picky about memory. All the memory they listed as working wasn't sold anymore and I got an off brand with the same specs as one they listed as working. I ended up just ordering from Crucial. I was told on with new chips they aren't as finicky. I have my fingers crossed.
TrashyMG said:
I really like MSI motherboards, never had any issue, but I've been out of the AMD game for the last two systems I have built. Likely an old statement, but at the time AMD just had a bit of performance issues compared to Intel, especially paired with an Nvidia graphics card... Like I said old statement, was sort of waiting and seeing how AMD latest offerings fared on Linux based on reviews.
Click to expand...
I always used ASUS but my last pc, the one with the memory problems, would keep changing my ram timings on me. The few boards before that were ASUS and I really liked them. I had one Asrock, it was a budget board, and it died twice one me, had to send it in to the manufacturer both times. The third time it died I just gave up and bought a different board. This will be the first MSI board I have gotten.

On notebooks I always use Intel but when I build systems it is always AMD. Most of the graphics cards I have used have been nVidia though.
 
With Ryzen always use RAM modules from the QVL of the motherboard and always with XMP profile. - This is the GOLDEN Rule :D


In case of any "exotic" no-name RAM modules try to use static timings instead of leaving them on AUTO, also make sure that you always have the latest UEFI/BIOS version.

A very helpful tool is the DRAM Calculator for Ryzen, especially when it comes to overclocking and stability.

https://www.techpowerup.com/download/ryzen-dram-calculator/


In order to use the calculator properly you need also a tool to see the chip manufacturer (Samsung, Hynix or Micron)
I usually use the freeware version of this one:

http://www.softnology.biz/files.html



Ryzen can be tricky sometimes and can give you a ton of headache with all of his RAM related issues,
but if you follow the golden rule, everything should be fine. They are great CPUs with excellent value and performance.


MSI have good support and they regularly update the QVLs of their motherboards, even the old gen 1 and 2 AM4 boards.

The ROG series of products by Asus, are currently a shadow of their former glory.

Literally they are overpriced piece of junk.
Especially their Z390 line of high end ROG motherboards. They coast a ton of money and they all have crappy VRMs.

On X570 the situation is similar... High end price for mediocre performance.
 
spud42 said:
to get best performance from Ryzen you need fast ram. the crucial should be fine. you will want to enable the XMP profile on the ram to get the best out of it.. ithe infinity fabric speed is tied to ram speed..
trying to piece a R5 2600X system together at the moment.. looks like i have an Asrock B450M pro 4 board for $80 AUD, and a 2600X for $150.. all secondhand. but i will buy the ram new.
wanting to update my 3770K intel build...
Click to expand...

Didn't AMD decouple the infinity fabric from the ram speed with Ryzen 3000?
 
Hmm, can't quite get it to work. I have tried with SOMA, it has startup issues but that might because it will not work with integrated graphics but also Amnesia is really sluggish. Is there a video or article I should watch/read on how to set up the graphics on my computer? I couldn't find anywhere in the menu to dedicate some memory to it or anything. It looks like the timings are correct, the system seems stable. I'm downloading HL2 just to see if that game has issues running, I'm guessing that is more stable than the other two.

EDIT: Yeah, HL2 runs like garbage. Technically this ran somewhat on my notebook but my 3400G is supposed to be quite a bit faster so I think I have it configured incorrectly.
 
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It's fan art of Last Ninja 2, which is why I quoted spud42's comment (which said "LN2", and that was the first thing that came to my mind).
So I wasn't just posting off-topic nonsense, though I guess to many it wasn't very obvious...

BTW, the image is also a link to the Last Ninja Archives page (which I thought might have helped explain my post).
 
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