Gigabyte AB350N-GAMING WiFi: An Ideal Mini-ITX Ryzen Motherboard For Linux

[Darksurf]

Be careful about gigabyte, they have issues with BIOS upgrades. I own the AB350 gaming3 and can't overclock the memory at all, stuck at 2133 even tho it's supposed to go up to 3k.

Oddly enough even non-memory non-overclocking changes sometimes cause a boot error and a revert to old BIOS version. I wouldn't buy a ryzen/gigabyte combo anymore.

I'll never buy another gigabyte product for as long as I live. I currently own a FM2 Mobo with a BIOS bug. It will lock up in the freaking BIOS by setting the APU to 2GB using 2400mhz ddr3. I reported it and they blew me off and blamed Linux. After telling them it also happened in the BIOS and Windows they began testing, but refused to test the 2400mhz ddr3 memory they claimed to support. They chalked it up to Linux being the problem after never testing the correct ram. They just keep saying they don't support Linux.

I'll stick to ASUS, MSI, and ASROCK. This round I bought the Mini-ITX ASROCK X370 board. Its going in a Lian Li PC05SX, with 1TB Samsung 960 NVMe drive, NZXT Kraken X52, Ryzen 1800X (OC 4Ghz), 3466mhz DDR4 TridentZ RGB memory. I'm waiting on and debating on VEGA. Little irritated about my VEGA dilemma. I want the Vega64 Limited, but since there's no linux support yet, I wonder if I should wait until I see proof of it working without the stupid PRO driver that Gentoo will never get. If I wait, will I miss out on the Limited edition? This is the second rig I've tried to go all out flashy. Red and Black theme with CPU/MEM doing RGB in center of case behind smoked glass and red LEDs surrounding the whole thing in a black case with smoked glass on a red and black mobo. I'm a little worried about power consumption though. After my calculations my 600W Gold rated (platinum rated according to test results) Corsair SF600, will be barely enough floating at a little over 90% usage on max load.

[schmidtbag]

I use motherboards from Asus and Gigabyte only. Asus B350 mobo is cheaper so I would use this:
https://www.mindfactory.de/product_i...l_1172385.html

Asus doesn't currently offer any ITX AM4 boards. Even if they did, I wouldn't have bought one. I'm personally fed up with Asus - their cheap products are garbage and their good products are way too expensive (and have stupid tags like "Republic of Gamers"). Gigabyte and ASRock are my personal favorites, and MSI is good if you ignore their cheesy product names. But, Gigabyte's ITX board has a bad layout (for my case) and the ASRock board was more expensive than the Biostar, where the only major difference was wifi an the 8-pin power connector. I don't use wifi, and I was one of the lucky few who got a board the day it was available in the US market. MSI also doesn't have an ITX board.

[Zgembo]

Michael, you should look into focusing on ITX more often. You could probably fit twice as many PCs in your racks that way, while probably reducing power consumption of each platform by a handful of watts.


My Ryzen build has the Biostar X370GTN. So far the only thing that doesn't seem to work in Linux are the RGB headers, which I have set to cycle automatically anyway. For anyone who doesn't need wifi, that board is a decent option. The Gigabyte board is good if you don't use a tower heatsink; the power connectors are inconveniently placed for those. Otherwise the Asrock B350 board seems to be the best at the moment.

Is it just me, or this Gigabyte ITX sucks, even by just looking at the pics. The component layout is a disgrace (good luck with anything other than stock coolers)... Besides, the Biostar is THE most Linux unfriendly MB company out there (try complain to them for the various UEFI / ACPI issues and they will just say "Our motherboard only supports Windows", like its some sort of a two decades old crapware and not a "state-of-the art" MB).

One need a simple AM4 ITX? Biostar works just fine, its cheap & reliable.

[devius]

What do grownups need?

Not LEDs for decorative purposes only.

[schmidtbag]

Besides, the Biostar is THE most Linux unfriendly MB company out there (try complain to them for the various UEFI / ACPI issues and they will just say "Our motherboard only supports Windows", like its some sort of a two decades old crapware and not a "state-of-the art" MB).

Most companies are unfriendly toward Linux. Gigabyte (as well as ASRock and Biostar) may adamantly neglect Linux, but at least most of their products are pretty Linux-friendly out of the box. Meanwhile, companies like Asus and MSI often create products that have Linux compatibility issues and will refuse to help you.

[rubdos]

Does it also fully boot with a Ryzen (which has no iGPU) and no dGPU VGA ePCI card plugged in?

Yes, it does. Just had to disable the F1-to-confirm option. It even boots when changing any hardware now. This thing has three cables attached: satellite coax, power, network. It has a single PCIe card: a DVB-S2 tuner. It has a R5 1400, without dGPU/GPU/whatever.

[rubdos]

Hell fucking yeah. Does that board also redirect BIOS to serial output (like some older server boards I know)?

Didn't try anything like that, but it does have a serial port, so it might as well be.

[BjornR1989]

I've bought this motherboard, paired it up with an AMD Ryzen 1600 CPU and swapped my main HDD to this new system.
Contrary to what's written in the article, my Wi-Fi adapter is not working out of the box and i have yet to find a fix for this.
After loading the it87 module, lmsensors detected three temp sensors, 3 fans and 9 voltages, however, the description for these values is incorrect (+3.3V rail being 1.67V etc) and fanspeed does not register.

The system at least seems to POST in headless mode, i've yet to test wether it will boot into the OS.
A BIOS upgrade was necessary in order to make the board detect an Nvidia NVS 450 graphics card.
I don't see any ECC options in the BIOS configuration so i doubt the board supports ECC memory.