apologies if this should’ve gone in “Build a PC”, I’ll probably make a thread there, but for now it’s just about the board. I’ve been using Linux and building computers for over 20 years, though the Linux ones were mostly headless and in any case it’s been a few years, so I’d like to get up to speed.
The project is a Linux (probably Ubuntu or Mint) desktop & gaming PC. Anything that won’t work natively / via Wine &c. will have to use a Windows VM, so GPU passthrough is a must. I know that all X470 boards should more or less work, question is, which will run like they were built for Linux? Details, like:
Will it boot without having to jump through hoops (Secure Boot, …)?
Can the BIOS be updated without Windows and how is the BIOS support in general?
Do the various board features – fan control, LED control (“off” is fine), fan speed, voltage & similar read-outs, … – work in Linux (or does the BIOS do a nice-enough job)?
Are the IOMMU groupings as nice as can be?
Is it decent quality (VRM design, …)?
Does the manufacturer at least acknowledge that Linux users exist (if not support them officially)?
Any motherboard that allows you to flash the bios without a CPU would support updating the bios without windows. All of them work perfectly with Linux in general. As for the VRM quality for x470, go with the MSI boards as most of them are good.
You probably have seen it before, if not then here is great guide: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMJoLyrWa7E If you do need to overclock then when he speaks about overclock replace that with VRM quality
Except for IOMMU (because I’m not messing around with it, not because it’s bad) I can only say good things about the ASRock boards that I have. That is the B350 ITX, uhm fatality I think and of course the X470 Taichi Ultimate. (Non ultimate is the same except for LED post code, onboard power/reset buttons and the 10GBit NIC.)
The two B350 ITX in use are running Ryzen 3 1200 and Ryzen 5 2600 chips just fine. The two Taichi Ultimates are populated with 8 core parts, 2700 and 2700X.
I got full sensor data from manjaro and kubuntu basically right away without doing anything.
Everything in my X470 Taichi works out of the box (even bluetooth).
IOMMU groups are sane (Have messed with it briefly but have AMD reset bug on my cards so haven’t bothered too much, i just gave up windows games that won’t run in either lutris or vmware with VMware 3d acceleration).
the only minor issue i have had just recently is wireless firmware related but thats a niche problem… and temporary with specific kernels.
I second the Asrock nod above - the VRM on the Taichi is nice also. Well, it’s pretty overkill in fact.
Mine is a non-ultimate (not sold here) and it has the LED post code readout. But no power/reset buttons inside.
I have had no dealings with asrock support so can’t say if they acknowledge linux exists, but the hardware at least is supported by the kernel.
