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Never be the first kid on your block... 2
Sep. 28th, 2018 09:11 amPunch returned the PC. It turned out that they didn't have any problems so didn't change anything but..
.. DPD managed to drop the box on its way back to me - although there were no significant holes in it, one corner was very soft and the PC's case was damaged. One corner was noticeably bent which, given the padding inside the box, suggests it was quite a fall.
.. the combination of the fall and the case damage popped the front panel off. Because of how the cabling was done, that pulled off the jumpers from the power and reset switches to the motherboard, so it wouldn't turn on at all until those were replaced.
On the other hand, all this does mean that I now know the front comes off, so I can fit more than one hard disc - accessing all the other drive bays from the inside was impossible, because of the height of the (very nice) CPU cooler. This makes it an even better case for me, so yay.
It turns out that Punch test with Ubuntu 16.04.4 - the 'long term support' version of Ubuntu from April 2016, updated..
.. but not 'up to date', even for that version.* Specifically, the 4.13 version of the Linux kernel with 16.04.4 knows nothing at all about the CPU beyond that it's a 64 bit AMD processor with unaccelerated graphics. So it boots up and puts stuff on the screen, but slowly and without using the features that should make it a good choice.
If I install 16.04.5 - the current / last update of 16.04 - or do a normal update to get the security etc updates, it goes to the 4.15 kernel which does know about the CPU** and the problems start.
So I'm giving up on the Ryzen 2400G on this motherboard. Something's not right, but the way that crashes don't usually produce much in the way of helpful info to report - and if I did, the first response would be get the latest BIOS and I still don't have that - I can't see any point in continuing to try.
The replacement CPU and separate graphics card should (better) work and will be faster.
* Since then, as well as the usual six month releases, there's been 18.04, another LTS version which is obs what I've been using.
** Just not very much. Later kernels know more and have better performance. Except that they also crash on this combination.
.. DPD managed to drop the box on its way back to me - although there were no significant holes in it, one corner was very soft and the PC's case was damaged. One corner was noticeably bent which, given the padding inside the box, suggests it was quite a fall.
.. the combination of the fall and the case damage popped the front panel off. Because of how the cabling was done, that pulled off the jumpers from the power and reset switches to the motherboard, so it wouldn't turn on at all until those were replaced.
On the other hand, all this does mean that I now know the front comes off, so I can fit more than one hard disc - accessing all the other drive bays from the inside was impossible, because of the height of the (very nice) CPU cooler. This makes it an even better case for me, so yay.
It turns out that Punch test with Ubuntu 16.04.4 - the 'long term support' version of Ubuntu from April 2016, updated..
.. but not 'up to date', even for that version.* Specifically, the 4.13 version of the Linux kernel with 16.04.4 knows nothing at all about the CPU beyond that it's a 64 bit AMD processor with unaccelerated graphics. So it boots up and puts stuff on the screen, but slowly and without using the features that should make it a good choice.
If I install 16.04.5 - the current / last update of 16.04 - or do a normal update to get the security etc updates, it goes to the 4.15 kernel which does know about the CPU** and the problems start.
So I'm giving up on the Ryzen 2400G on this motherboard. Something's not right, but the way that crashes don't usually produce much in the way of helpful info to report - and if I did, the first response would be get the latest BIOS and I still don't have that - I can't see any point in continuing to try.
The replacement CPU and separate graphics card should (better) work and will be faster.
* Since then, as well as the usual six month releases, there's been 18.04, another LTS version which is obs what I've been using.
** Just not very much. Later kernels know more and have better performance. Except that they also crash on this combination.