This build might be...interesting (Okay, not really ...sorry lol!)

[claydoh]

..and hopefully cheeep as, once I am done.



Yes, that is a mobile processor on an M-ATX board, lol! Not replaceable. And an “engineering sample”. It hasn't arrived yet, so I haven't actually seen it.

Then I just scored a decent enough open box case for cheap, too. (~$36 USD)
I was going to get the version with wood accents as it matches the living room decor lol, but saving is saving.

Now, I just need a cooler and a PSU. I have ram.

[Qqmike]

Huh, interesting, cool! Keep us posted

[notabug]

I looked up the processor. Looks promising.

[claydoh]

It ended up not being interesting, or not interesting in a good way.


I tested the mobo briefly before going to bed. The fans powered on and lit up, but no post. I suspected the RAM -- a set I purchased new (in late 2023/early 2023), but have been sitting in a parts bin for at least a year and a half.
These oddball boards can be sensitive to the type of RAM used, either, so I wasn't overly concerned as I still was waiting for new memory, knowing that the ones I had might be dead.

Two days, I do get the new ram, but the board is ded dead. No fans, nothing. All the power pins on the new PSU read the correct voltages.

So, Plan B:
Budget AMD setup:
Ryzen 5 5600GT 6 Core AM4 4.60GHz CPU
Asus Prime B550M-K ARGB AM4 mATX Motherboard

The mobo has a USB-C header, and my case has a USB-C port in addition to 2 USB-3 ports on its panel, which saves me getting an addon card (for now). ARGB, because why not?? No built in WiFi, but I don't need or want that.

I went with the GT instead of the non-GT processor as I need an APU, until I can get a proper GPU,
and I think I have some growing room for beefier processors down the line as they become cheaper on the used market. But I did lose half of the L3 cache.
I was very dumb and only got 16Gb of memory. Ooh my wallet
On the plus side, if my old memory is good, I have 16Gb of that plus 32-40Gbs of laptop sodimms I can sell on Ebay in addition to the new 16Gb I got. and offset the price of 32 lol. Or maybe a GPU.
Ram first, methinks.

Now, I think I may have shorted or scraped the Erying board on a standoff, maybe possibly. Not really sure but I have been a klutz, historically. No marks I can see.
I will attempt to RMA the board. I am still interested in how these things work, but I think I will try for a refund as opposed to replacement, but I will bet I will just have to just eat the $130 USD

Now, the normal hardware test booted just dandy.
I connected my two nvme drives (using my existing KDE neon install ) and of course everything Just Works.
This is my first AMD desktop since I had Duron and Athlon XP setups way back in the day.

[claydoh]

Though the on-board graphics are quite fine, en even slightly game-capable, I am going the somewhat odd route for a GPU. I found an Intel Arc B580 12Gb that is affordable-ish, and should have enough RAM to last little while. (8Gb is starting to be the lower end of being useful these days.)

I have not bothered to research this in terms of Linux, gaming, or *buntu LTS support at all. That is part of the fun.

[jglen490]

I watched a Jeff Geerling Youtube a while back, and he was unexpectedly pleased with the Arc Battlemage GPU. It held it's own against some better known GPUs - not all, but performed quite well.

[claydoh]

Yes it is pretty good, for 1080p gaming, it feels better then my last GPU- an RX 6650.
I did need to use more updated drivers, and just switched to it's testing release. It's still a moving target. They did add official support to 24.04 but it was a bit underwhelming imo, but not unexpected. 25.10+ should be good, but Intel's PPA is my recommendation. As is adding the Kisak Mesa PPA, useful for AMD and intel dGPUs, particularly on LTS, or when using an ultra current GPU.

I also upgraded my HWE kernel to 5.17 a bit early (it is in Proposed) , which I think helps some but not terribly sure, since I didn't test things before doing so.

For games, ProtonDB has very few entries for Intel Gpus, so is essentially useless for game tweaks currently.

One game complains that it doesn't see a GPU, but it runs quite well