Help with new hardware: Ryzen 3600 & x570

[awediohead]

So I've just switched from my old haswell based z97 motherboard to a Ryzen x570 + 3600 + 32GB 3200 MHz RAM with a GTX 1050 for transcoder duties . . . . and things haven't gone well so far. I definitely hadn't factored in the downsides of not having an iGPU when you can't login over a network - I think this is now solved and was because I'd set up my router (asuswrt-merlin) to bind the assigned IP to the MAC address of the old motherboard NIC.

 

I've read the info here about not overclocking RAM on Ryzen, and I'm currently running memtest86 via a Ventoy flash drive. We'll see what happens! The hardware was previously multi booting as a hackintosh with windows and Fedora without issue, but the RAM is a new variable.

 

Any other Ryzen x570 + 3600 tips and tweaks I should be aware of? - such as specific BIOS settings? CSM enabled or disabled for e.g.? Switch off all the secure boot stuff and select "Other OS" ? Can I assume that selecting all the virtualisation options (SVG, IOMMU etc) are unlikely to cause problems for unraid, while more "gaming" settings like re-sizable bar should be disabled because they're not used? Or are they?

 

I hadn't previously updated the BIOS/UEFI when I was having problems last night, so I'm hoping that solves a few issues - I can now at least set it to consider usb flash drives as drives, which wasn't an option with the earlier BIOS.

 

I have two GPU's available: the Nvidia 1050 mentioned earlier for transcoding plex etc., and I also have an itx version of an rx570 4GB which I'd planned to passthrough to a MacOS VM (now I have a few more threads to play with) - however in this testing and troubleshooting phase would I be better off just using the rx570 and removing the 1050? That question assumes Linux generally plays nicer with AMD over Nvidia . . . . Or could that cause problems because the unraid config is expecting to find a 1050 that wouldn't be there?

 

Any other pointers gratefully accepted.

Cheers

 

[Hoopster]

14 minutes ago, awediohead said:

Any other Ryzen x570 + 3600 tips and tweaks I should be aware of? - such as specific BIOS settings?

Here is some general information on improving Ryzen stability with Unraid/Linux.

[awediohead]

Thanks Hoopster, you posted the same link about RAM on Ryzen that I'd already linked to - first line of second paragraph of my post

 

For sure it mentions some other things but I'd meant to make it clear I was looking for any info further to what was mentioned in that post, especially since that info was current 3 years and many BIOS / AGESA revisions ago.

 

Happily memtest completed with 0 errors at 3200, so from that can one assume that there will be no errors at the basic 2133 MHz? Or is that a false assumption?

 

I've been having all kinds of hassle with the My Servers plugin reporting my server to be online when I know for a fact it's switched off. So it's perhaps not that surprising that when I try to use the "Local Access" link it fails to connect even when I know it is switched on. That's meant I'm juggling graphics cards trying to get access to the GUI directly to make changes before trying it via my LAN again - rinse and repeat.

 

I ended up going down a fairly lengthy rabbit hole on account of Firefox and Brave both auto-correcting my unraid IP from http:// to https:// everytime I try to login - that might have been resolved by deleting the cache and site data (everything) from the privacy / history preferences in Firefox, but it's 1 am and I'm done for today.

cheers

[Hoopster]

1 hour ago, awediohead said:

you posted the same link about RAM on Ryzen that I'd already linked to

I missed that was linked.  Since you only mentioned the RAM overclocking, I was unsure if you were aware of the C-States tweaks.

[awediohead]

Maybe someone can clarify what the linked post means by "overclocking" RAM exactly ? - is it saying that any XMP/DOCP profile should be totally avoided or is it saying that RAM speeds should be limited according to the tabulated numbers for each generation / memory rank?  I'm confused because my RAM's basic clock is 2133 MHz but was bought as 3200 MHz RAM (2 x 16) and the 7 hour Memtest86 test I ran also defaulted to testing it at 3200 MHz with no errors.

 

For example on my desktop PC running a 3700x on B450 I have 3773MHz RAM (2 x8) so if I were to use that with unRAID I'd understand it would make sense to underclock it to 3200 MHz in line with the settings listed in the tables. I'll be sticking with 2133 MHz for a while because I can finally get a reliable connection over LAN - the new Connect version of Myservers seems to have solved some problems I was having!

[ConnerVT]

I ran a 1st gen 1500x in my server for over a year.  The only two things I needed to get it to run reliably was to set the speed per the charts in the FAQ (which are right from AMD documentation) to 2133 and set to Typical Idle Current.  The later was definitely needed, with my failure mode being that the system would lock up (stall) before changing to that BIOS setting.  My 1500X was first run silicon.  I got it one day before the official launch day.  (I was pumped to get it, as I was one of many co-workers who made that chip.)

 

The Internet is forever.  So if someone posts something, it gets quoted again and again, even when it is no longer valid.  When the original launch of Ryzen in 2017 happened, AMD was very focused on the Windows OS, and the Linux community had a lot of catch up to do.  There were issues with Ryzen and Linux then, but both AMD and Linux have caught up considerably.  the EPYC processor now sells as well as Intel processors in the data center space.  This would not happen if the AMD processor was still flawed.

 

Ryzen's Infinity Fabric (which handles all memory transfers) is very tightly tied to memory hardware, and is a bit less forgiving than Intel's memory handling.  So you can't push it to the marketing department's claimed memory speeds.  When they say "DDR4-3200" the 3200 is the XMP speed, what they tested the RAM to run.  But that's the rating of the RAM, not the memory controller running it.  You can put 150MPH tires on a Prius, but you'll never get it to go that fast.

 

My experience has been that Windows is a bit bore forgiving than Linux when it comes to memory errors.  (Not sure that's a plus for Windows or not.)  Running my server at JEDEC speeds vs XMP may decrease performance, but that is more than offset by stability.

[awediohead]

Thanks Conner. Yes I should have said that I'd already set the BIOS to "Typical Idle Current" when I updated the UEFI BIOS - I agree it does seem to be THE critical factor since I'd never got around to changing the RAM speed from default when I was having multiple problems. As I said before, when I ran Memtest86, it defaulted to running it at 3200 MHz and my thinking was that if it passed with no errors at a higher clock then it should be fine at 2133 MHz for unraid.

TBH the leap from a 4C/4T Haswell era CPU to Ryzen 3rd gen with double the RAM I had before is so enormous I'm not bothered about 2133 vs 3200 so long as everything works at least as well as it did before.

Thanks for the clarification on JEDEC vs XMP vs anything in between.