Performance of Linux on Ryzen 5 3400G with MSI b450 Tomahawk motherboard

I wanted to build linux PC with following parts.
CPU - Ryzen 5 3400G
Motherboard - MSI B450 Tomahawk
RAM - Corsair 2*4 GB 3000 MHz
SSD - Kingston A400 480 GB
PSU - Corsair VS550
I would like to know how stable it is. Is there any kind of issues like random freez or hang or driver related issues.

The B450 will likely need the BIOS updated to work with that CPU.

What distro/version? Older stable or LTS versions might not play nice. I was never able to get *buntu 18.04 to work with my 2400G. Lubuntu 18.10 and up has been great with the Oibaf PPA. Freezinf up has been extremely rare since moving to 19.04. Others have had good luck with Solus and Fedora.

If you think you will ever need it then I would suggest going with 16GB of RAM. It isn’t going to get much cheaper than it is right now. You can probably find some for under $60 with the holiday sales coming up (just snagged some 3200 for ~$65 recently). If not then I would still hunt down deals. I’d imagine you could get 8GB of 3000 for ~$30 on sale. There also isn’t a ton of difference between the 2400G and 3400G, so whatever you find a great deal on should work fine.

Thanks for your reply.
I have three distros in my mind.

  1. Pop Os 18.04 ( System76 shipping ryzen 5 3400G with Pop OS so I think this is better choice than ubuntu. )
  2. Fedora
  3. Manjaro
    Solus is also great. I used it for just 4 days but don’t know why I switched back to ubuntu. I’m really on tight budget so to buy MSI Tomahawk I need to cut down RAM from 16 to 8 GB. Initially my choice was Asus Prime B450 Plus. But After discussion on this forum it is clear that those boards are not as good as MSI B450.
    If do you want suggest any motherboard it will be really helpful. By the way which motherboard you are using with Ryzen APU.

What all will you be doing on Linux? Having less RAM may not be a worry depending on your workload, unlike Windows I don’t think most Linux distros consume RAM much (Windows 10 64-bit eats 2-3GB by itself most of the time).

Also on the parts list, I’d avoid the A400. I haven’t heard much good about it and I think once it hits a certain % capacity or something it can start running slower than a normal HDD. What’s your budget for just the SSD?

Also the Corsair VS series isn’t the best (their CX units are much better), but for just an APU you should be fine. If you plan to add hungry hardware in the future I’d reccomend going CX or higher though. It’s cheaper in the long run to get a solid PSU first, rather than the cheapest one now and then a better unit later on (basically you buy two PSUs instead of one).

As far as personal experience goes I can vouch for the CX series. I have a CXM (older design but still pretty solid) and 2017 refresh CX (very good platform, especially for the price). CXM used to run my main rig for a good while, even ran my 980 Ti on it for a bit and it’s only a 450W PSU. The CX is a 550W one, it powers my folding rig (Xeon and a 1660 Ti) 24/7, have had 0 issues with it so far.

I’m going to use this machine just for coding and some document work. And little bit of gaming. Yeah Linux consumes really less RAM. My 2012 HP laptop has only 4 GB ram 1333 MHz. I installed Ubuntu 16.04 on it and ir really works fast ( Even though it has 5400 RPM drive ) . Some times it works open chrome or any other apps faster than my Mid 2012 MacBook Pro. That’s why I love Linux a lot. Last Windows operating I use was Windows XP. After that I switched to Linux and still using it.
Hey and one more question do you think CX450 will be sufficient for my even if I installed graphics card later. Since this is my first build. I don’t have any idea about PSU.

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loooooool yeah. I use a mid-2012 MacBook Pro for work, the stock config (5400rpm drive and 4GB RAM) absolutely c r a w l s trying to do basically anything. Mine has a 525GB MX300 and 16GB RAM in it though, thing claps now. Mine is the 2.5Ghz i5 13" model.

Depends on the GPU. I ran an i5 2400 and 980 Ti off my CX450M, but I wasn’t pushing OCs or anything on the GPU. You can go up to… pretty high tbh. The RX 5700 - after a quick google - seems to pull up to around 162W, and the XT up to 200W. Leaving 250W for your CPU, mobo, RAM, fans, and drives. The 1660 Ti (1070 level perf or so) barely sips 130W under the toughest stress tests, I don’t think the 2060 and such are super hungry either. On older stuff it’d be on a case by case basis, some stuff was wildly power hungry.

And here’s my reccomendation for a build list:

PCPartPicker Part List: https://in.pcpartpicker.com/list/V6nWDx

CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 3400G 3.7 GHz Quad-Core Processor (â‚ą14199.00 @ Amazon India)
Motherboard: MSI B450 Gaming Plus MAX ATX AM4 Motherboard (â‚ą10580.00 @ Amazon India)
Memory: G.Skill Trident Z RGB 16 GB (2 x 8 GB) DDR4-3000 Memory (â‚ą8929.00 @ Amazon India)
Storage: Crucial MX500 500 GB 2.5" Solid State Drive (â‚ą5194.00 @ Amazon India)
Case: Corsair 100R ATX Mid Tower Case (â‚ą2968.00 @ Amazon India)
Power Supply: Corsair CX (2017) 450 W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply (â‚ą3775.00 @ Amazon India)
Total: â‚ą45645.00
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2019-11-04 23:34 IST+0530

  • RGB RAM because it’s actually the cheapest 16GB kit lmao.
  • MX500, cheapest SSD that’s gonna be hella dependable. The MX500 competes with the 860 Evo, the MX300 I’ve had (without a single problem, ever) in my MacBook Pro for 2 or 3 years now competed with the 850 Evo that was current at the time. They’re really good drives.
  • cheapest case, still looks like it’ll be at least decent
  • CX 450, cheapest good PSU

If you don’t need 16GB RAM, dropping to an 8GB kit will bring it solidly within your budget, right now it’s barely over.

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Thank you sooo much for your suggestion. I really consider things you have mentions during picking my parts. I haven’t seen MSI B450 Gaming Plus. But I will give it a look.
I’m thinking about new upcoming AMD GPU so I need to chose PSU according to that but as per your suggestion I will go with CX. I’m goging to purchase components from offline stores since I had really bad experience with online.

Thanks alot.
And I also have same 13" MacBook Pro stock 5400 RPM and 4 GB of RAM. I installed 8 GB single RAM stick with original 2 GB RAM as it is and still using 5400 RPM :joy: ( 5400 RPM in 2019 :rofl::rofl: ). But it really works fine for me. But it takes 1 minute to boot, after that it works fine. Soon I’m going to upgrade the SSD.

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Apparently 5400rpm drives are actually about the same speed as many 7200rpm drives though, there’s more to the HDDs than just how fast the platters spin. That’s newer drives though, older ones and especially laptop ones seem to be super slow.

Only AMD GPUs that are modern yet still stupid power hungry are the Vega series, they can spike up to 600W draw for just a fraction of a second. Everything else should be fine, the RX580s I think can pull up to 225W but they should still be fine, your CPU isn’t super hungry. If you’re planning to get a Vega card then you want a 550-600W PSU or higher, and some PSUs can’t handle the spikes so they’ll actually trigger the protections and shut down the PSU.

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I’m thinking about upcoming graphics card RX 5500. But I’m not going to install gpu for next 6-8 months.
And one more thing. Kingston A400 why do you think they are bad? I havent’ seen it but I have gone through reviews and reviews are good ( But reviews are based on short tearm use ).

I’ve heard they’re terribly unreliable and even Crucial’s BX500 (AFAIK it’s their lowest SSD) beats it on every single metric.

Ok. I choose that because of price. But I will reconsider it. Also I’m thinking of MSI Mortar Max because it’s cheap compare to B450 gaming motherboard.
Because you know Budget thing come first :sweat_smile:.

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I couldn’t find that on PCPP, but it should be a solid option. PCPP lists like I made aren’t usually very good to stick to anyways. I tend to make one as a ballpark, but if I find a better deal on something the same or better I’ll substitute it in. Like a shopping list when you go to the supermarket, you may end up getting something different from what’s on the list because the price was better or you liked it more.

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Right. We decided something else and ended up doing something else. Like Initially I decided gigabyte b450 aurous with wifi motherboard. Then MSI Tomahawk. Then gone to Asus because of their Linux Status Report. Then after you suggestion, considering VRM solution I’m reconsidering about MSI. But I’m thinking about Micro ATX build so I might go with Mortar Max.

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I’m about to do a totally stupid mATX build lol, can let you know how that goes. Plan to stuff an X58 Micro, X5670 (old Xeon from 2011, they’re like $14 a pop so if you burn them out OCing it’s not much of an issue) and SLI GTX 780s inside a Meshify C Mini.

I have had other mATX boards but I’ve never actually done an mATX build, lol. Just Full/Mid ATX towers or ITX towers, my mATX mobos have just gone into ATX towers. They should be nice in a properly sized case though. You keep way more PCIe slots and such than an ITX mobo, but can fit it in a much smaller case than an ATX rig. Just be careful, some mATX cases aren’t much smaller than an ATX one anyways.

Ohh Meshify C Mini. It’s really great case but really expensive also. I’m thinking about Cooler Master Masterbox Q300L mATX case.
For ATX I’m considersing Phanteks Eclipse P300 or Antec P8. Kind expensive compare to budget build. But they are really good looking and also have good airflow.
Hardwarecanucks many times recommend Phanteks P300 case for budget build.

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Yeah the Meshify C is more expensive but supposed to be super duper nice.

The Q300L is good by all accounts, and the P300 is a masterpiece. I built in a P350X, same thing AFAIK but with vents on the front and RGB (was for a flip, RGB makes “gaming PCs” sell faster :rofl:). Amazing build experience. Build quality was excellent, even though the steel was quite thing due to the price point. Cable management was excellent, layout was really good, easily fit the 280mm AIO I was using too. Airflow was solid, rig was quiet, and they’re nice looking too. I actually think I had a better time building in that than I did my Phanteks Evolv ATX (which is a $200 case, though to be fair I do also stuff way more hardware in there since it’s my main rig).

I love Phanteks P300 but also I love Phanteks Evolv Shift. I don’t know why but I have some kind of obsession with it. Also I love louqe ghost s1 and Dune Case which is currently in prototype mode. But they are not available in India and even though they are going to available they will be really expensive.

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Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmm… It’s so pretty :heart_eyes: Sadly they are expensive bois though.

And apparently the P300 doesn’t have the greatest airflow, but then I’ve heard that about a lot of cases. My Evolv ATX is supposed to be terrible, but I pack a 5960X and Radeon VII in that. The S340 Elite I had was supposed to be bad, but I put an OCed 8600K (which later went into the flip rig in the P350X) on an NH-D15s and not one, but two EVGA 1080s inside one and never had temp issues. :thinking:

(plus you can always just pull the front panel off or something lol, though temps won’t be a worry for now with just an APU)

Yeah I don’t need to be worried about temps with an APU. That’s why I initially thougt about Asus Prime B450 Plus. It has heatsink which is not good at all. But because of normal case airflow I thought they are going to be cool and I will be Okay according to my work.
Good airflow or could say decent airflow is really important.
Honestly I’m building this PC for my Dad. And he only do document works that’s why he gives me a small budget. But I wanted to do some coding little gaming and some kind of stuff that’s why I’m worried about thermal.

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It should be fine, they’re not very hot at all, especially stock. Unless you’re running 24/7 Prime95 small FFT or something you’ll probably never break 75C unless you’re in a really really hot room and have really bad airflow.

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