Ryzen, AM4 and memory

[Tony0945]

After a long wait, I was going to finally build my Ryzen system with a Ryzen 5 1600. However, I STILL can't find a vendor who will sell me a post week 25 chip. I have to take pot luck and possibly (probably?) deal with the AMD RMA system. I'm taken aback by things like "15% restocking fee", "no returns" and the like. So I've ordered an Athlon X4 Bristol Ridge Excavator chip on AM4 to serve as placeholder until the Ryzen update chips appear in March or later. It only costs $50 and comes with cooler. Not much performance but it's passmark rating is double that of the Athlon II X3 440 from February 2010 that it is replacing. It's single core rating is 70% higher. I already have a new low power Radeon card from last year in the target computer. If the onboard Realtek ethernet isn't supported by the 4.14 kernel, I'll either use the R8168 proprietary driver or put in a spare Intel NIC with the e1000e driver. I will buy an MSI B350 Tomahawk Arctic White mobo. I want the PCI slots for existing cards. I don't care about the color but the Arctic White is a newer release than the orginal B350 Tomahawk and both are being sold. Some say they are identical except for color. Others say they are different, but don't say how. The specs are identical, but they use different BIOS'.

The main reason for this post is to get advice on memory. DDR4 is very expensive and I eventually want to have 16G. Meanwhile, I could do with a 4G stick for around $50 or an 8G stick for around $90-$95. I figure if I buy the 4G, I will have to throw it away later or put it on the shelf for an emergency spare. Is the same true of the 8G? If I buy a single stick can I just add another or must they be matched pairs? I am thinking of Ballistic Elite but Ballistic LT Sport seems more common. I don't plan to overclock either the CPU or the memory. G. Skill is most often mentioned but I have had good luck and prompt warranty service from Crucial's lifetime warranty.

Because Excavator code is incompatible with Ryzen, I will change my CFLAGS and kernel CPU selection from "native" to "amdfam10" and forego a world emerge until I actually have a Zen chip.

Thanking you in advance for your thoughts/advice.

[krinn]

all your answers are in the m/b manual.

picking up this one (yeah random one from asus, looks like it's not cheapest one, but that's the first one advertise and will do the job): http://dlcdnet.asus.com/pub/ASUS/mb/socketTR4/ROG_ZENITH_EXTREME/E13034_ROG_ZENITH_EXTREME_UM_WEB.pdf look at 1.1.4

[wrc1944]

Tony0945,
FWIW, on 11/22/17 I got an R5 1600 from Neweggg, and it was a UA1737PGS. I've had zero segfault issues, but a few times after I left my new ASRock B350 Pro4 system on overnight, the next morning it was locked up a few times. I finally disabled C6 state in the BIOS, and it's been on for a week now with no more lockups. That's also with SMT, OPcache enabled, and the line "kernel.randomize_va_space = 0" added into /etc/sysctl. Running 16GB GSkill 2400 RAM (couldn't afford another 16GB 3200 Flare X kit like I have on my main X370 box).

Guess the conclusion is that even retail UA1737PGS chips (or other post week 25 chips) can still exhibit the C6 state random lockup problem even if the segfault issue has been fixed. I'd certainly hope all these issues will have been resolved in the new versions of Ryzen due out soon, and it will be well advertised and guaranteed that they are, and if they aren't, an immediate free RMA, with no questions asked. My R7 1700 RMA chip has been running perfectly.

So far the R5 1600 is also running Gentoo smoothly, and a pretty good upgrade from the previous AM3+ FX8320 system on this box

On the RAM supposedly memory manufactures match the ram modules with a 2x8gb 16gb kit, but who really knows. I'd be willing to think if you got one 8gb stick and later got another stick of exactly the same ram it would be fine. Only question I'd have is if an exact same version 8gb stick would still be available, depending on how long you waited to order it.
_________________
Main box- AsRock x370 Gaming K4
Ryzen 7 3700x, 3.6GHz, 16GB GSkill Flare DDR4 3200mhz
Samsung SATA 1000GB, Radeon HD R7 350 2GB DDR5
OpenRC Gentoo ~amd64 plasma, glibc-2.36-r7, gcc-13.2.1_p20230304
kernel-6.8.4 USE=experimental python3_11

[Tony0945]

@krinn
Thank you for your detailed technical explanation and interpretation of the manual remarks. I will forgo the 4G stick because it seems to limit expansion to 8G (2 sticks) or 16G (with four sticks which is more expensive than two 8G sticks). If I have interpreted your post correctly, I should be OK with buying one 8G stick now and another a few months from now if they are the same part. Else, I might have to fiddle with RAM timings in BIOS. I haven't found the manual to download yet (not impressed with MSI's website, Gigabyte's is much better,) but I did find the compatible RAM list and both the Ballistix Elite and Ballistisx LT Sport are on it, besides being choices on Crucial's website "Guaranteed compatible" list for that mobo hence eligible for their Guaranteed compatible warranty.

@wrc1944
I've learned a lot from your experience on the AMD Ryzen thread. I share your concerns. I wonder about the matching too. One of my two experiences with Crucial's warranty was an upgrade of an older mobo with a matched pair. On arrival and installation, the computer failed memtest. I switched the modules and the failure location moved. Upon being notified Crucial sent out a replacement stick (not a pair) by Priority mail in advance of receipt of my RMA. All was fine and I think that's how AMD should have handled the Ryzen RMA's when the serial number showed a pre-week 25 chip.

I'm actually planning two systems. The downstairs desktop upgrade was originally going to be a Ryzen 7 1800X build but now I'm going this route. The upstairs desktop (currently Phenom II X6 1090T - May 2011) dual boots XP and Gentoo. Lately I've been having Windows problems after rebooting from Linux. I've played around with virtualbox but find it less satisfactory than just using rdesktop to log in to Windows. So my latest idea is to build a whole new box upstairs, moving the Linux hard drive (which is /dev/sdb) and using a KVM switch or rdesktop to switch between boxes. I am using three ports of a four port switch (in the wall cable to the router, printer, and PC) so I have one more port free for a separate box. I may use that box for the super-Ryzen, upgrading the downstairs desktop to a lesser Ryzen, but both with 16G which my basement server already is (DDR3 and Kaveri) I will then dispense wirh swap entirely. I hope these boxes will last another 7 or 8 years. With the separate box and rdesktop, I can stop running web browsers and Thunderbird on XP and only communicate with it via LAN from Gentoo. That should be a security upgrade. Threadripper was recommended to me but I want less TDP, not more.

[chithanh]

[Tony0945]

[chithanh]

amdfam10 does not include XOP nor TBM, so "-march=amdfam10 -mno-3dnow" should work.

Do note that the kernel does not use make.conf CFLAGS, but has its own.

[Tony0945]

[wrc1944]

[Chiitoo]

[pjp]

[wrc1944]

Thanks Chiitoo,
I had the rcu_nocbs=0-11 kernel command line on my x370 box, but forgot to add it on the new R5 1600/B350 backup build.
_________________
Main box- AsRock x370 Gaming K4
Ryzen 7 3700x, 3.6GHz, 16GB GSkill Flare DDR4 3200mhz
Samsung SATA 1000GB, Radeon HD R7 350 2GB DDR5
OpenRC Gentoo ~amd64 plasma, glibc-2.36-r7, gcc-13.2.1_p20230304
kernel-6.8.4 USE=experimental python3_11

[Tony0945]

[Tony0945]