"Drop-in" replacement

[Dirk Broer]

I recently bought a Ryzen 5 2400G to replace my Athlon A12-9800E. This was meant to be a so-called "Drop-in" replacement.
Not quite so. I have now re-installed Linux Mint 20.1 four times, and each time the install is ready and says to remove the installation medium and press 'enter' I am greeted with a black screen. If I choose to run Linux Mint from the USB stick everything works flawlessly.

Haha, I hear you thinking, you should hold the 'shift' key, to start Grub. Not so, this is an EUFI system and you need to press 'Esc' for that.
But the most depressing thing is that this only works one out of ten tries -you can hear from the sound the system fan makes if it will actually start or only give a black screen that does not react to any key. And while the first install brought me in a normal Grub afterwards, later installs brought only command line Grub, and after giving 'exit' I get a mile-long PCIE, TLP and DLLP error list. If the system starts afterwards, it is for a few minutes and the screen goes black.
After a few days you begin to suspect the PSU, the Mobo, the CPU and/or the hard disk (Yup, old SATA HDD) and all combinations of them.

[SolidAir79]

Has your bios been updated on your motherboard for the new cpu?

[Dirk Broer]

Has your bios been updated on your motherboard for the new cpu?

I had updated the Asrock A320M Pro4 BIOS to 5.50 previously and was running the A12-9800E on it.

[Dirk Broer]

Funny thing when searching for these errors is that they come up for both AMD and Intel and both Linux and Windows, often in combination with the X99 (Intel) or X399 (AMD) chipset.
But I have just a lowly A320 that functioned good for years...I just wanted better GPU performance, and more threads
It turned out to be a Power State Management conflict, and once I heard the hard drive kick in I was able to edit GRUB from
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash" to
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="nomodeset pci=nommconf"
....and was able to boot and have video. BOINC even ran!

Next hurdle: AMDGPU PRO drivers in Linux Mint 20.1. As some of the Minty Gurus have it ''AMD APUs are not supported by the AMDGPU-Pro driver", pointing to a page that only gets you Windows drivers -and what can I choose there:

This is actually what I used to have AMDGPU-PRO drivers for my Ryzen 5 3400G that runs Windows 10. Oké, it reports as an AMD 15D8:C8 (13349MB) OpenCL: 2.0, but: OpenCL 2.0!

Though the AMD-supplied install script (meant for Ubuntu 20.04) didn't work for Linux Mint 20.1, I was able to install the AMDGPU-PRO drivers through my old friend Synaptic, the GUI package manager. Now waiting for the results of that...

[Dirk Broer]

What a bummer! Turns out that

• the Ryzen 5 2400G isn't well supported in the latest Linux distro/kernel versions (Linux Mint 20.1, Ubuntu 20.04.2 both with kernel 5.8),
• that the Pcie errors (bad TLP, bad DLLP) prevented stable running under Linux,
• that even Windows 10 wouldn't let me use the AMD drivers without freezing up.

The 2400G in fact worked only if the IGP wasn't used. Not quite what I had in mind.....

So I re-installed the Athlon A12-9800E and had a working system again. Netto gain: a much better cooler (Noctua NH-U12S SE-AM4 trumps AMD 35Watt tdp stock cooler).

Thinking of buying a MSI B450 Mortar MAX mobo to see if it is just an incompatibility issue. Whoever said this is a cheap hobby?

[davidbam]

Whoever said this is a cheap hobby?

no-one

[Alez]

@Dirk Broer Got to agree there, no one in their right mind. Only saving grace is it's not the insane cash demands of motorsport, though @davidBAM lecky bill must be close and probably beats my ASICS days when I melted a 25 Amp cable running into the crunching shed. I actually had a girl from the power company phone me asking how big was the house as my bill was so big !! Still surprised I never had the cops round checking I wasn't growing a certain crop which is frowned upon in the UK .....

[Dirk Broer]

I actually had a girl from the power company phone me asking how big was the house as my bill was so big !! Still surprised I never had the cops round checking I wasn't growing a certain crop which is frowned upon in the UK .....

Not an unlikely scenario: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/28/bitcoin ... raid-.html

[davidbam]

VietOZ once got raided by the FDA. Came home to armed cops trampling all over his garden

[PecosRiverM]

I'm still waiting on that day here..
Part of my weekly email from electric co.:

"Your usage was 216% more than similar homes in your area (3% less than last week). "

[Dirk Broer]

I'm still waiting on that day here..
Part of my weekly email from electric co.:
"Your usage was 216% more than similar homes in your area (3% less than last week). "

Hold my beer! The wife is always complaining that our power use is 400% that of the neighbouring households....

[PecosRiverM]

Well that is only running 8 systems and no GPU's for the last week.

[Dirk Broer]

Well that is only running 8 systems and no GPU's for the last week.

My fleet
Eight X86-64 systems, with 3GPUs (rest are APUs/use IGP)
The GPUs: One EVGA GTX 650 (65 Watt tdp), one Gigabyte GTX 1650 (75 Watt tdp), one Sapphire HD 7790 (85 Watt tdp)

Ten ARM systems (nine on Linux (5 Raspberries, 2 Jetson Nano's, an Odroid-XU4 and an Odroid-N2+)) , one on Android (Odroid-N2+)

[PecosRiverM]

I should have said we're wasteful here.
Another part of my electric email:

"You used 943.3 kWh this week, which cost $112.81."

[Alez]

Eh, the farm house up the hill from us got raided a couple of years ago. Had been rented out by a ' pillar ' of the community, upstanding citizen, church elder etc etc. Many police vans later, helicopter circling etc .... one Chinese national who didn't speak any English and enough skunk to supply the entire of the north east of Scotland later....
As usual I was abroad and missed all the fun.

For those unfamiliar, in the UK we tie high electricity bills compared to the neighbours with overflights of ' civilian ' looking aircraft equipped with FLIR cameras. Meet those criteria and you get a large police raid. So basically, ensure your loft isn't hot

[SolidAir79]

Think I'm going to move my machines from the one room when I get home

[Dirk Broer]

Think I'm going to move my machines from the one room when I get home

I have all my machines in one room -the attic. Bloody hot at the moment, two extra 300mm table fans running constantly.

[davidbam]

Have you not got one of these new Dutch A/C units which need no electricity? I can't fathom how they work but they are acoustic and are based on principles of a Sterling engine

[Dirk Broer]

Have you not got one of these new Dutch A/C units which need no electricity? I can't fathom how they work but they are acoustic and are based on principles of a Sterling engine

When it sounds too good to be true, it probably is....https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsi ... he-planet/

I operate on temperature: when the attic air is hotter than outside I try to blow the air out, when it gets colder outside (e.g at night) I try to move the cool air in.
I just need to find an affordable fan that can act both ways and fits the window. For the time being I use two 300mm table fans, but I might have found a adjustable 500mm model that fits my needs.

[davidbam]

https://www.hpac.com/air-conditioning/a ... nditioning

[Dirk Broer]

Another round in the "Drop-in" replacement rally: I just ordered a MSI B450 Tomahawk MAX II, as there was a special dirt-cheap offer for them (a mere 75 Euro's).
I also ordered a Noctua NH-U12S Redux and I have a Samsung 970 Evo Plus to go with it. The seller of my Ryzen 5 2400G suggested 3600MHz RAM, but I'll try 3000MHz first (the 2400G is officially rated for 2933MHz RAM)

[Dirk Broer]

Yet another round in the "Drop-in" replacement story:

I'll be changing the Ryzen 5 3400G in my ASRock B450 Pro4 for a Ryzen 7 5700G, while the Athlon-A12 9800GE in my ASRock Fatal1ty X370 Gaming-ITX/ac will be replaced with the Ryzen 5 3400G (the 3400G taking its RAM with it). The Athlon-A12 9800GE will be used in a 'new' system (with it's original ASRock A320M Pro4 and RAM!).

If all works out well, the next change will be replacing a Ryzen 3 3100 with a Ryzen 9 3900 -don't worry: It is a MSI B550-A Pro system here (in case you think my complete mancave falls apart when you shout "ASRock!" hard enough).

[Dirk Broer]

Well, I didn't post in "Drop-in" replacement for nothing....

Only the Athlon-A12 9800GE in the A320M Pro 4 comes up at the moment....
The X370 refuses to boot at all and the B450 enters a boot loop, most likely due to too fast RAM (3600 MHz).

The cunning plan (thanks, Baldric) is to put the 3400G in the A320 board now,
and to exchange the B450 Pro4 with a MSI B450 Tomahawk MAX II that can handle the faster RAM.

[Dirk Broer]

Much in accordance with the usual 'Baldric' plans this resulted in another boot-looping system
-without even showing a BIOS screen, much as the other....

One of the problems has surfaced: a loose power cord in the laptop brick that powers the Antec iTX casing -the part that runs from the PC into the power brick... I was just about to either replace the board or let it be serviced....

Now it is 'just' a matter of updating the B450 Pro4 to the proper BIOS (4.80 or higher for the Ryzen 7 5700G), as the Fatal1ty X370 Gaming iTX/ac appears to be blessed with a 6.60 BIOS -the last that supported its old CPU/APU (the Athlon A12-9800E), but that will also do the Ryzen 5 3400G.

The Athlon A12-9800E will be transferred into the same A320M Pro4 board that is already mentioned some postings earlier in my Ryzen 5 2400G replacement rantings, so BIOS-wise there are no problems -I had it already running.

Both the Athlon A12-9800E and the Ryzen 7 5700G are running fine now, but the Ryzen 5 3400G still won't play ball with the Fatal1ty X370 Gaming iTX/ac. Baldric wants to try slower RAM sticks -he might perhaps even submit the 2400G. It basically boils down to the fact that the Ryzen support by the 300-series chipset is sub-par. The Bulldozer based A12-9800E (Bristol Ridge) is not affected, but right now I'm thinking of buying two more B450 Mobo's, based upon the speed the 5700G tears through SRBase. I'd like to see my Ryzen 7 1700 go that fast too with WCG....

[Dirk Broer]

Some progress: as the Athlon A12-9800E was happy on the A320 board and the 3400G wasn't happy at all on the Fatal1ty X370 Gaming iTX/ac, I decided to have a go at another variable in the equation: The PSUs.

So, I removed the A320M Pro4 board from its casing and put in the Fatal1ty X370 Gaming iTX/ac with 3400G, and, lo and behold: was rewarded with a stable running 8-thread system with functioning IGP. The 4-thread Athlon A12-9800E is now without PSU/Case, as the culprit seems to be the PSU/PSU cable of its former (before all this exchanging parts) Antec ISK110 casing.

Just for fun I can now put the A320M Pro4 in a leftover μATX casing with a very shady TFX PSU and see whether it comes up, otherwise I'll buy myself a new Raspberry Pi 5...

[Dirk Broer]

Tidying-up phase

Picture 1	Making a 'Sleeper' PC	Picture 2
	Now my Ryzen 5 3400G is up and running nicely on the Asrock Fatal1ty X370 Gaming iTX/ac, I've decided for another round: the tidying-up. The casing I use is an old Fujitsu-Siemens Scaleo P GS-360 (like the one left and right) that originally had a dual-core, dual thread Athlon X64 5000 and 3GB of DDR2 RAM. For the time being, this will be replaced with a quad core, eight thread Ryzen 5 3400G with 32GB of DDR4. I've replaced the original PSU with a more modern one, removed the drive cage for better airflow (the original HDD's and SATA SSD being replaced with a M.2 NVMe SSD on the back of the mobo) and installed two Noctua NF-A8 PWM fans, one as intake and one as exhaust. Why such small fans? It is an old case and won't accept bigger ones! Still, having two fans for the airflow is better than none at all as in the original specs (just a small, thin, noisy 60mm fan cooling the HDD's). The stock AMD Wraith Spire of the Ryzen 5 3400G will be replaced with a Noctua NH-D9L with added 92mm fan and in the future perhaps even a Noctua NH-D12L (also with added fan), as I've also planned to have the Ryzen 5 3400G to be replaced with an eight-core, 16 thread Ryzen 7 5700G. The Noctua NH-D9L will then go to the Asrock A320M Pro4, which I will try again with the original "drop-in replacement" Ryzen 5 2400G, but now with much more and faster RAM and a M.2 NVMe SSD as well. Minor setback: the Fatal1ty X370 Gaming iTX/ac leaves so little space for components (RAM blocking one way, exhaust fan the other) that the 2nd 92mm fan had no space to go in. It now serves as exhaust for the Asrock A320M Pro4 system.

[scole of TSBT]

How's the airflow on that case?

[Dirk Broer]

How's the airflow on that case?

Pretty good now: one 80mm intake fan (low front), a 92mm cpu fan (towards the exhaust), a 80mm exhaust fan (high-middle back), plus a 120mm PSU fan taking in warm air from the case and blowing it outside (on top-back). It is as I wrote: an old case. I removed the Windows Vista sticker and the GeForce 9000 sticker and added a newer card reader (with Windows 11 support, unlike the old one) and a DVD-RW drive.