[HW Failure] Arch ISO freezing at boot

cloverskull · 2025-09-02 00:09:28

Hey friends, I've installed Arch on all manner of computers and have run into a real head-scratcher this time.

The basic premise is that I can't fully boot the Arch ISO. I'm using the one I downloaded yesterday, 31 August, burned to a USB using 'dd'.

The freeze happens during boot 100% of the time but at various places nondeterministically. I've tried nomodeset, disabling bluetooth, not really sure where else to look. When the system freezes, naturally I can't look at any logs or anything.

Of note is the hardware, all of which is rather new:
- Gigabyte Aorus Elite x870 (with latest firmware, f7)
- AMD Ryzen 9950x3d processor
- NVIDIA RTX 5090 Ti

I do notice a message at boot from nouveau where it says it can't figure out what the GPU is. Could it be possible that this is the core of the issue? Since it's not booting into any sort of graphical user mode, and nomodeset doesn't work, I don't believe this to be the case but throwing it out there.

My sneaking suspicion is that this is related to the motherboard somehow...

Thanks. Please let me know what I can provide - maybe a couple video clips I can put on YouTube or something?

Edit - the hardware ultimately failed, however I am iffy on whether or not it is actually supported right now anyway.

Last edited by cloverskull (2025-09-07 19:05:38)

seth · 2025-09-02 07:22:03

burned to a USB

Well, there's your problem. USB keys aren't heat tolerant, you should not burn them

Check the UEFI settings, make sure to use the most conservative RAM timings, increase the voltage to the CPU, disable PBO and try to boot w/ "maxcpus=1"
If it was nouveau, this would consistently fail at the kms switch and not when booting "nomodeset".

Do you get any error messages w/ "nomodeset" and https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Genera … l_messages ?

cloverskull · 2025-09-05 05:02:27

This is a tough one. I'm not finding any pattern. It's really frustrating. I am starting to think my mobo isn't supported. I came across this post in reddit where someone was complaining about the mobo freezing as well: https://www.reddit.com/r/linuxhardware/ … s/mo8ka9d/

I've got two nvme drives. One already has Windows installed (yuck) but I'm not really sure where to begin insofar as what to do for a next step. I'm going to keep trying to see if I can pick up on any sort of pattern, though. My intuition tells me that the kernel doesn't support this hardware...but I really have no idea.

Head_on_a_Stick · 2025-09-05 07:12:28

cloverskull wrote:

My intuition tells me that the kernel doesn't support this hardware

Phoronix got good results from that processor: https://www.phoronix.com/review/amd-ryz … 0x3d-linux

Perhaps you should answer seth's querstions. They are pretty good at getting things working when the OP cooperates.

seth · 2025-09-05 07:22:46

I've got two nvme drives. One already has Windows installed

3rd link below. Mandatory.
Disable it (it's NOT the BIOS setting!) and reboot windows and linux twice for voodo reasons.

Edit:

seth also wrote:

Check the UEFI settings, make sure to use the most conservative RAM timings, increase the voltage to the CPU, disable PBO and try to boot w/ "maxcpus=1"
Do you get any error messages w/ "nomodeset" and https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Genera … l_messages ?

Any updates itr?

Last edited by seth (2025-09-05 07:24:13)

cloverskull · 2025-09-05 19:15:47

Thanks for the help, Seth and HoaS. I did follow all of Seth's instructions and it still kept locking up nondeterministically. I've given up on this motherboard because now it's decided it will no longer communicate with my GPU (it BETTER not be the GPU lol) and I have been reading horror stories about Gigabyte's products and their support. I'm getting an Asus mobo tomorrow and will hopefully confirm it was an issue with the Gigabyte hardware all along.

topcat01 · 2025-09-06 19:24:08

Have you tried an older iso, say 6 months ago, or Ubuntu 24.04 LTS? Also, run memtest.

cloverskull · 2025-09-07 02:44:07

I did not, however this mobo no longer boots at all. It's just a piece of crap (consistent with what I've been reading about Gigabyte of late )

cloverskull · 2025-09-07 05:37:37

To those curious, the mobo was crap. I replaced it with an Asus 870e-plus wifi 7 and everything (literally everything) works out of the box. It all turned out great. Avoid Gigabyte!

So...this is technically not solved...but maybe I should put [OBE] in the title?

seth · 2025-09-07 06:56:23

"[HW failure]" or "[broken HW]" - you might have to shorten/rewrite the present subject.

Arch Linux

#1 2025-09-02 00:09:28

[HW Failure] Arch ISO freezing at boot

#2 2025-09-02 07:22:03

Re: [HW Failure] Arch ISO freezing at boot

#3 2025-09-05 05:02:27

Re: [HW Failure] Arch ISO freezing at boot

#4 2025-09-05 07:12:28

Re: [HW Failure] Arch ISO freezing at boot

#5 2025-09-05 07:22:46

Re: [HW Failure] Arch ISO freezing at boot

#6 2025-09-05 19:15:47

Re: [HW Failure] Arch ISO freezing at boot

#7 2025-09-06 19:24:08

Re: [HW Failure] Arch ISO freezing at boot

#8 2025-09-07 02:44:07

Re: [HW Failure] Arch ISO freezing at boot

#9 2025-09-07 05:37:37

Re: [HW Failure] Arch ISO freezing at boot

#10 2025-09-07 06:56:23

Re: [HW Failure] Arch ISO freezing at boot

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