I have recently built a new Linux Mint 19.1 (Tessa) Desktop PC, the spec is as follows;

Gigabyte B450M Gaming m/b
Ryzen 5 2400G CPU using the Vega 11 graphics (no graphics card installed)
Corsair Vengeance LPX 8GB (1x 8GB) 2400MHz DDR4
Crucial MX500 250GB 2.5" SATA III SSD for the Linux system
Crucial MX500 M.2 2280 500GB SSD for data storage
500w PSU

I had a helluva job installing 19.1 but eventually it installed but was using software rendering, that was cured by updating the 4.15 kernel to the mainstream 4.18.0 kernel. I've also installed the latest Mesa 19 drivers.

My main problem is that ANY browser crashes, I'm using Firefox now as it's easier to recover from. Firefox usually crashes a single tab, but will crash out totally. Thunderbird also occasionally crashes out, not such a big problem. I'd hoped the Mesa drivers would cure the problem, but it didn't. Occasionally the whole system freezes. No other app seems to be affected.

At the moment I'm putting it down to the kernels catching up with the Ryzen technology. I have tried non mainstream kernels, but any above and including 4.18.1 give errors when booting, and thought it better to use a mainstream kernel for troubleshooting this problem.

The motherboard bios is F1, F2 is available but at the moment I'm loathed to use it as there seems little that would help me, might be a last ditched thing.

So, if anyone has any thoughts on this I'd be pleased to hear them. Please don't get too technical, I'm old and my brain can't handle it any more lol

I think/hope I've narrowed this problem down (with the help of ClixTrix on the Linux Mint Forum). I think it's ram that's incompatible with the motherboard. I've sourced ram that is on the Gigabyte, AMD and Kingston approved lists. Just got to wait for the new ram and test it.

FWIW, if you want optimal RAM performance, you use matched pairs of RAM sticks, not single sticks, in motherboards such as yours with dual channel support. Benchmarking RAM costs nearly half the potential with one stick instead of pair. My newest Gigabyte has two

1 members found this post helpful.

the problem was memory stick which was incompatible with the m/b and/or the cpu