PC building

[ruffrecords]

Although I have used a PC since they first came out, I have never been inclined to build one. My PC must easily 10 years old with a two core 64 bit AMD processor and it was beginning to become noticeably slower with the latest applications. So I upgraded its memory and replaced the hard drive with a SATA SSD which made it a lot faster. However, recently it began to suffer intermittent connections on several of the USB ports. This mostly manifest itself as comms failures to the printer or failing to recognize USB sticks when they were plugged in.

So I decided to bit the bullet and buy an up to date one with and 8 core 84 bit AMD processor and on board NVme hard drive I got this for about £500, worked out how to load the OS onto the NV-me from a USB stick. Got it up an running and it was really fast. But I soon discovered it was unstable. Often when booted from cold it would come up with a corrupted login screen. Most times it would boot up on the second go but then one day it refused completely. I tried in safe mode and it made a whole bunch of hard drive tweaks then promptly died. I reloaded the OS from the USB stick nd all was OK for a while but then the same thing happened again. So I fitted my old SD SATA drive and worked out to boot from that. And it worked a treat. Not quite as blindingly fast as the NVMMe but still very fast. Then a couple of days later, the same problem occurred with the login screen. It got gradually worse but it woulld always recover from safe mode. Becoming suspicious of the RAM I dialled down its speed in the BIOS but this made no difference. The other thing that worried me was it only has a 250W power supply whereas my old one had a 450W.

Long story short, I decided I might as well just get a new motherboard for my old PC. As I said at the start I have never built a PC before but I do plenty of electronic DIY so it could not be too bad. Fitting the CPU, its heat-sink and fan to the motherboard was quite straightforward as was fitting the RAM and the dreaded NNVMe ( why do they use such stupidly small screws for these?). I thought the wiring inside a mixer was bad but the wiring inside a PCB is a nightmare. And extracting a motherboard needs the skills of Houdini. Fortunately there are plenty of YouTube videos about building a PC so there was plenty of good info available. Turns out the new motherboard is a tad bigger than the old one although thankfully the hole at the back for the IO connections has been standardised. You need stand offs for the two rear fixings but none are supplied with the motherboard. Fortunately I was able to remove two from the old one. So now I have the motherboard fitted in and the power.I could not for the life of me work out how those little metal fingers on the IO rear panel are supposed to work let alone how you are supposed to mate it successfully with the motherboard when you do your contortionist impression trying to fit it in, so I left the panel off So now I have the motherboard in place, the power and fan connected and the front panel USB. I had to download the motherboard manual to find out the pin connection for the power swith and the power and HDD LEDs.I will do that tonight and then, fingers crossed, power it up.

wish me luck.

P.S.In the meantime I was struck by how cheap and small is the Raspberry Pi 400. A complete computer in a keyboard. Who would have thought it possible? Anyway, I bought one; the Pi 400 is in front of me and I am typing this on it. It is about as fast as my old PC but a lot quieter.It detected my printer and prints to it flawlessly. I auto detected my Focusrite Scarlette 2i2, and my AKG Bluetooth headphones and provides a handy dialog box to switch between those two and the speakers built into my monitor. And it runs my monitor at full resolution. This little thing has performed flawlessly.

Cheers

ian

 

[cyrano]

The RPi is simply amazing. The number of variations seems endless. I still have one of the first ones with only 256 MB ram in use as a network watchdog, running pfsense. Hasn't given me any reason to replace it in all those years.

 

[pvision]

Ian

This might not be the time to say that the new Apple Mac Minis with the M1 chip can run Linux... but I'll say it anyway!

 

[Bo Deadly]

Sounds like some bad luck there.

If you bought the machine new is it not under warranty?

If not, I would dismantle the whole thing, reseat everything very carefully. Particularly the CPU and make sure you seat it properly with the right thermal compound if that's necessary. Swap out anything that you can like different RAM sticks if you have them. Don't connect any peripherals. Do a secure erase on the system drive (using hdparm from a Fedora Live) and re-install Windows 10 clean. Not sure what else to try.

If I were looking for a cheap PC, I would just get a pro-refurbed Dell Precision workstation and add an M.2 drive. I think most of them have two M.2 drive slots and the system drive will probably be some 2.5" SSD. Those workstations are basically one step below the server hardware. They don't have a lot of extensibility with the tiny form factor but you really don't need it these days. It might be a little banged up but they're built to last. And super cheap. Maybe $250 max for a machine that is really not that far from a new model that sells for $1200.

 

[ruffrecords]

THanks for the advice Bo. I toyed with the idea of a refurbished machine but was not sure what Dell to get. I will beaer that in mind next time.

In better news I got the second motherboard success fully fitted into my old box, fitted the NVMe and my ssd sata drive. Both boot fine so far but not tried a first thing in the morning boot yet. The version of Ubuntu on the NVMe has long delays opening certain programs (FrontDesigner for example) but the Ubuntu on the SSD SATA is fine. I was impressed by the rock solid stability of Debian on the Pi 400 so I download thta Buster iso and I will install that onto the NVMe.

Yes the original machine is under warranty so I may well return it. I nicked the RAM from it for the other motherboard but I can easily replace it.

Cheers

Ian

 

[Bo Deadly]

The version of Ubuntu on the NVMe has long delays opening certain programs (FrontDesigner for example) but the Ubuntu on the SSD SATA is fine.

That doesn't sound right. Is it mounted in an M.2 slot or did you use a PCIe adpter or a SATA adapter?

After you boot run # dmesg -w and let it sit there while you use the machine and look for drive errors.

 

[ruffrecords]

That doesn't sound right. Is it mounted in an M.2 slot or did you use a PCIe adpter or a SATA adapter?

After you boot run # dmesg -w and let it sit there while you use the machine and look for drive errors.

It is an M2 slot on the motherboard. I will do the dmesg check to. Thanks for the tip. . I have now successfully loaded Debian 11 onto that drive and it seems to run OK. Need to add the non-free AMD GPU drivers but the Debian web site has instructions for that so should be straightforward. I will also download and install FrontDesigner and check there is still a delay. It runs fine from the Ubuntu distribution I have on a STA SSD drive (it is what I an in the old PC).

Cheers

Ian

 

[gswan]

Building a new machine is easy these days. I build many high-end machines without problems. When you get a new motherboard always get the RAM that is specified for that board. RAM changes often, new motherboards use DDR5 now and speeds are always increasing, however don't be tempted to OC the RAM as that can lead to spurious crashes. Power supply specs have also changed through the course of generations, with additional rails dedicated to CPU and graphics cards, and power requirements increasing with processor and graphics requirements. Size accordingly or you may have random crashes if the power supply glitches.

 

[andYz00m]

Ian, make sure you update the bios on your new motherboard. Often they are very old when sitting in the warehouse. That could have been the issue with the old one is the new CPU had features or compatibility issues with the old FW on your old mobo.

Regarding the pinout on the chassis "fingers" that is also standardized. But you should be able to find a pinout for your mobo. Most of them come with an adapter that is labeled so you connent your case IO to the adapter and then plug in the adapter all at once to the fingers on the mobo.

Hope this helps.

 

[brucega]

Ian,
Those fingers on on the panel that cover all the i/o on the motherboard can be tricky, but provide a ground path to the chassis on all those connetors. I put together about five computers one day and had some of those sticking into various usb ports. Fortunately, nothing shorted out when they were powered up, but it was a pain loosening the motherboard screws, sliding back the boards and getting the fingers on the outside of the connectors.

We have over 250 linux desktops, all encrypted and over half using a vpn connection. We use Mint MATE, a Debian/Ubuntu derivative, and find it super stable... enoigh so that I have my Harrison Mixbus32C installation on a Mint install with almost no tweaks.

 

[Joey777]

Hi Ian,

You could try running bootable diagnostic tools like Hirens boot cd or something similar and run some tests on the machine. Memtest, harware monitor cpu-z run a few tests and see what comes out.

Stay lucky.

Joey

 

[ruffrecords]

Thanks for all the tips and suggestions. I am beginning to think this is a GPU issue. The reason is I loaded Debian 11 onto the NVMe and it works fine. But because Debian does not include any proprietary software, there are no drivers for the GPU in the AMD Ryzen CPU on either motherboard. Bottom line is Debian defaults to a low res VESA display and all the places I have looked for how to get this working with Linux note the software is unstable . I had noticed some video tearing to the splash screen with Ubuntu boots and a common crash symptom was a corrupted screen. I even tried a win 10 install and that failed right at the start because it could not find drivers for the GPU.

So now i am going to to two things. First I will fit my old Nvidia pci graphics card to one PC and if that is stable it will pretty much prove it is a graphics issue. The seond thing I will do is download the official AMD GPU win driver and try that with a win 10 install.

Cheers

Ian

 

[ccaudle]

Need to add the non-free AMD GPU drivers

The kernel and mesa drivers are just as fast as the non-free drivers these days. You do have to run a distribution which keeps the software up to date if you want to use a newer processor with integrated GPU. Debian might be a little too stable if you are using something reasonably new. I see that Debian is using the 5.10.x long term support kernel, but I don't know if they are back porting new hardware support to that kernel line or not.

Which model processor did you get? You can probably find which kernel is the first to include support, although you may not want the very first, could have some rough edges.

 

[ruffrecords]

The kernel and mesa drivers are just as fast as the non-free drivers these days. You do have to run a distribution which keeps the software up to date if you want to use a newer processor with integrated GPU. Debian might be a little too stable if you are using something reasonably new. I see that Debian is using the 5.10.x long term support kernel, but I don't know if they are back porting new hardware support to that kernel line or not.

Which model processor did you get? You can probably find which kernel is the first to include support, although you may not want the very first, could have some rough edges.

From memory I think I got the AMD Ryzen 5600G.

Last night I fitted my old Nvidia Pci graphics card and everything is as solid as a rock. No screen tear, boot fails or disk corruption. and full screen resolution with Debian 11. I can dual boot Ubuntu 21 on a SATA SSD in there which did run the AMD built in gpu out of the box but flakily.

Cheers

Ian

 

[Joey777]

Hi Ian,

You could also run Ubuntu on a VM instead of dual boot to access it immediately. Same with windows ( if you need it ) on a VM. Sometimes dual boots can be a PITA when changes are made to each system in the future. With 2 monitors you could run each OS at the same time and drag the VM onto the second screen.
Hope this helps you out

Stay lucky,

Joey

 

[JohnRoberts]

My first PC(?) back in the 70s was actually a Heathkit while this predated IBM or apple getting into the mass market. The heathkit H-11 was based on the DEC (Digital Equipment Corp) LSI-11/2 processor. I recall fully loading it with RAM memory 32k (16b) but it could only address 28k of that ram in use. Including some accessories like a 2x256k 8" floppy disk drive.

I bought the computer kit mainly to save money, but that kit and accessories still cost me around $6.5k in 70s dollars. I taught myself to code with basic and used that computer to operate my mail order kit business for years.
====
These days I'm content buying small apple computers for basic internet communication.

I recently upgraded to a new mac mini and it is notable how much faster it is booting up in the morning and doing things like operating system upgrades, compared to the previous versions. Instead of taking hours it now takes minutes to get the latest operating system, installed and operational.

I am not an apple fan boy (i still have 3 old PCs still in my network, that I barely use these days). Engineering software was more available in PC format. Computers are just tools I have needed to accomplish tasks.

JR

 

[TromNek]

Building a new machine is easy these days. I build many high-end machines without problems. When you get a new motherboard always get the RAM that is specified for that board. RAM changes often, new motherboards use DDR5 now and speeds are always increasing, however don't be tempted to OC the RAM as that can lead to spurious crashes. Power supply specs have also changed through the course of generations, with additional rails dedicated to CPU and graphics cards, and power requirements increasing with processor and graphics requirements. Size accordingly or you may have random crashes if the power supply glitches.

I always get a good and somewhat over powered power supply with dedicated rails when I build.
My sons are gamers and their builds suck power like crazy. We keep an extra power supply in the house because when you have random glitches that are hard to figure out, we swap in a known good power supply to eliminate guessing.

Many Dell power supplies are somewhat proprietary which can be problematic. But, you can use another power supply externally (without mounting it in the case) to test.

 

[ccaudle]

AMD Ryzen 5600G.

My goto site for processor benchmarks is phoronix.com, Michael at Phoronix tested that processor last September and reported:
"...using Ubuntu 21.04 with Linux 5.11 for this round of testing. The Linux support experience is basically the same as the 5700G, which is in good shape with modern Linux distributions. The only real Linux support caveat worth mentioning for the 5600G/5700G for the moment is the APU temperature monitoring not in place until Linux 5.15."

So you may just need a distribution version that is a little newer that picked up the support for that line of APU.

 

[industrialarts]

I think I got the AMD Ryzen 5600G

I know that there are bios upgrades for many of the mobos for the Ryzen 5000s. I was looking to upgrade my desktop situation and stumbled across this info.

I think I mentioned in another post that I in the process of moving to a Debian based distro and have found MXLinux to be an excellent choice. So far, everything seems to just work with virtually no problems. You might want to check it out

 

[ruffrecords]

I know that there are bios upgrades for many of the mobos for the Ryzen 5000s. I was looking to upgrade my desktop situation and stumbled across this info.

I think I mentioned in another post that I in the process of moving to a Debian based distro and have found MXLinux to be an excellent choice. So far, everything seems to just work with virtually no problems. You might want to check it out

I just took a quick look at MXLinux. Which desktop did you pick? When I first used Linux (over 20 years ago) KDE was clearly the best looking desktop but far to resource heavy for the processors of the day. I think I will give it a try.

I notice they also have a port for the raspberry Pi (my other desktop PC is a Pi 400).

Cheers

ian