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by for0one 3251 days ago
I bought a Ryzen desktop with an asrock motherboard a few weeks ago. It was very unstable. Installed Ubuntu 17.04 with upgraded kernel. Most crash / lock ups happened when running vmware workstation. I returned the desktop and now have a very stable Intel I7. It seems like the issue was a combination of the CPU and the motherboard. I assume Ryzen + asrock will run fine on Windows 10.
11 comments

My personal anecdote has been very positive. I've been running a stable 1800X on an X370-Pro overclocked to 4GHz as my desktop since the end of April. Running Fedora 25 with latest updates (currently on a 4.11.10-200.fc25.x86_64), although it's been stable from the beginning. I use Docker heavily for development as well as various retro game emulators (for n64, psx, dosbox) and VirtualBox. No stability issues.
That's weird. I've got a 500 GB postgres database running on a 1700X doing a couple hundred queries per second around the clock and it hasn't gone down on me yet.
I have been running a 1800X on Arch Linux which has been rock solid, using 32GB of ECC memory and very compile heavy workloads. Might be a bad board?
I run a 1700X with 32 GB ECC using Fedora 26 and it has been very stable. ASUS X370-PRO board.

I build stuff with just the "-j" option (unlimited jobs) to Make all the time. Had a 75 load average the other day. Also Rust servo compiles which aren't GCC but certainly load down the machine.

Does the kernel in 17.04 fully support everything? Sometimes it takes a while to get support for new hardware in the kernel.
It's probably not a question of support, but rather bugs.

Processor errata, chipset errata, bugs in the Linux kernel, bugs in the compilers, and application issues. There is so much opportunity for strange behavior. It takes a long time to work it all out.

Intel has had people contributing patches for a very long time. AMD had better get a team on it, if they don't already.

Did you upgrade the BIOS? Maybe it was the RAM? I'm running an ASRock AB350 Pro4 with a 1700 and Linux without problems.
Yes, but figuring that out took a couple of hours. I had to install an old (new to me) version to get the instant flash bios update feature. The newest bios versions can only be installed using windows or instant flash.
Can you please report your findings in this thread?

https://community.amd.com/thread/215773

You are not alone. The community and... apparently AMD as well are working on it. tl;dr: there is a machine hang problem and a spurious segfault problem. Both have maybe acceptable almost reliable workarounds. AMD takes RMAs. For most(? - at least some) people the replacement CPU is without the known problems. https://community.amd.com/thread/215773
Might just have been a faulty CPU or motherboard. Happens :(
>asrock

Well, I would say that ASRock is not the best motherboard brand around. Try Asus or MSI next time.

Can offer an opposing anecdote. I have an ASRock EP2C602-4L/D16, loaded with tons of RAM, hard drives and PCIe cards running a bunch of VMs (some with GPU passthrough) and it's been 100% stable. Plus their support has been awesome -- I had an issue with a bent pin and they did a complete motherboard check for me for free, then threw a bunch of SATA cables in the box when they sent it back.

Having said that, they're one of the smaller manufacturers, and it wouldn't surprise me if they're still in the process of getting on top of some of the issues that inevitably come up with a new platform.

It also wouldn't surprise me if GP got a lemon. It can happen with any manufacturer.

As it is, though, I'm a very happy customer of theirs.

True. Some statistics I've seen once showed that Asus is the most reliable, but I got a lemon from them once. It's all just probabilities.
I've run into at least one annoying firmware bug on every desktop motherboard I've used in the past decade, including a flagship product from ASUS. Nobody's perfect or even close to it. The two ASRock boards I have in use at the moment don't seem to be any worse than the two ASUS boards I'm using.
They used to be the cheap option but that's the past. The ASRock Taichi is actually one of the best X370 boards.
I agree. New board is MSI. MSI Bios features and interface are impressive.
I know that is your problem. You are using a AsRock MBO. The only time that I boutght somethign from they was a MBO that end failling becasue was BENDED! You should try something better like Asus or GigaByte
I have a 1700X with linux 24/7 running like this: https://i.imgur.com/KXARxUE.png, no issues so far.