Source
r/archlinux•
emooon

Planning to upgrade CPU & Mainboard, what are things to expect and look out for?

SUPPORT | SOLVED

As the title indicates, i'm planning to upgrade my CPU and Mainboard and like to know if there is anything i should prepare beforehand to make the transition smooth, so that i don't have to reinstall Arch.

I'm switching the CPU from an i5-4690K to an i7-12700KF and the Mainboard from a Z97P Chipset to a B660M Chipset (Both Gigabyte). As you can see i stay on the same Vendor line for both CPU and Mainboard but it's quite a generation jump so i just want to make sure i'm not running into misery here.

If you need any more information please let me know.
Thanks in advance, have a good one. :)

Posted Jan 7, 2023, 3:17 PM UTC

1010
DeeBoFour20•

It probably will just work. Linux doesn't have to reconfigure itself on hardware changes like Windows does. There a couple of gotchas I can think of though:

  1. You may have to use the fallback initramfs on first boot. The regular one uses an "autodetect" hook so it only installs modules for hardware you actually have installed. Obviously, this can change when you upgrade. Fallback includes everything. After first boot, you can rebuild initramfs and it should go back to normal.
  2. Make sure you're using UUIDs in /etc/fstab and in your bootloader configuration. If not, your hard drives path can change and you won't be able to boot (though it's pretty easily fixable from a live CD if this happens).
18
emooonOP•

Thank you, very much appreciated. :)

1
archover•

Another confirmation that it should just work. Especially if you're using UUID's everywhere.

My long experience with USB based full Arch installs, shows they run on my 2015 T450s i5-5300U as well as my 2018 X280 i5-8550U. I haven't tried one on my Framework 2021 i5-1135G7 but I'm sure it would work too. All these laptops have Intel graphics.

Still, ensure you have your important files, like /home, backed up.

Good luck

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emooonOP•

Thank you too for putting my mind at ease. I do use UUID's wherever possible and backups are all done.

Usually i'd dive head first into things like this and if something breaks i i'd just reinstall my OS and start fresh.
But i'm super happy with everything and since it's the first time i change hardware under Linux i'd figured better ask.

Again, thank you both for the confirmation and useful tips. :)

2
archover•

You're welcome.

So many things are just easier and more intuitive on Linux!

2
MalariaKills•

Planning a jump myself here pretty. Looks like some good news coming out of this thread. Pretty sweet

2
emooonOP•

I'll report back once all is assembled and let you know if there were any hickups. So far from what Google has brought up and the thread here there shouldn't be any problems.

The only few concerns i've read were about the heterogeneous nature of the 12th and 13th Intel CPU generation and the kernel support for it, but these posts were from a year ago. And even tho it would be unfortunate if CPU heavy applications land on the E-Cores due to missing support in the scheduler, it's not that hard to manually force them on the right cores until full support arrives. I'll see how it goes.

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MalariaKills•

Sweet. I think I might be in a little better spot as I’m moving from a Ryzen 5 2600x to a Ryzen 5 7600x. And to another Asus mobo.

The kernel tends to be a little more forgiving to AMD and also it’s not as big a jump as you’re making.

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emooonOP•

I'm back and everything is in place, up & running. BUT holy fukk that was a bumpy ride! But i doubt that it will be for you since you're on AMD. But i'll post it anyway for others who will use a Intel 11th/12th or 13th Gen and an Nvidia GPU. (Jump to the 'To keep a long story short' paragraph below)

So at first my system refused to mount my boot partition saying:

unknown filesystem type 'vfat'

and placed me in an emergency shell. So i had to boot up the archiso to chroot into my system and try to find the culprit.
I noticed that my partitions were now on 'sdb' instead of 'sda' but that was easily fixable by switching the SATA connectors. This didn't fix the 'vfat' problem tho, but something did. Unfortunately i don't know anymore what i did to fix it.

Sadly the system still refused to boot for unknown reasons at that time. So back into chroot and error-hunting. I said to myself before i dive into 'dmesg' and 'journalctl' i'll do a quick update and see if that fixes it. And there it was glaring at me, mkinitcpio failed to load the various nvidia kernel modules.

To keep a long story short, the Arch Wiki once again saved the day. The nvidia wiki entry has a NOTE that states:

nvidia may not boot on Linux 5.18 (or later) on systems with Intel CPUs (likely only of 11th Gen and onward) due to FS#74886/FS#74891. Until this is fixed, a workaround is disabling the Indirect Branch Tracking CPU security feature by setting the ibt=off kernel parameter from the bootloader.

After i set the 'ibt=off' kernel parameter the system was able to boot again. Yay \o/ Whoever posted that note, you are my Hero of the Year!

So make sure to ALWAYS check the Wiki! :)

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MalariaKills•

Hell yeah man. Good for you - glad you got it working. And thanks for the write up

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