GoKawiilThis post is part 7 of the "Let me try to use an AArch64 system as a desktop" series:
After about eleven months of using an AArch64 desktop, I decided to end that experiment.
Hardware used
About a year ago, I bought myself an Ampere Altra system. After moving some hardware around and making a few extra orders, the final setup was:
CPU Ampere Altra Q80-30 processor (80 cores at 3.0GHz) RAM 128 GB (8x 16GB HMA82GR7CJR8N - XN ) GPU AMD Radeon RX6700XT NVME Lexar LM970 2TB
ADATA SX8200 Pro 1TB Motherboard ASRock Rack ALTRAD8UD - 1L2T PSU MSI MPG A850G (850W) Case Endorfy 700 Air USB3 no-name USB 3.2/10Gbps controller (PCIe x4)
To be fair, I should mention that this is a server motherboard, not a desktop one, and Altra systems were never meant to be desktops (despite companies selling them as such). Naturally, the list of tested/approved devices (Qualified Vendor List (QVL for TLA fans)) is quite short and for Ampere Altra systems, it does not contain AMD Radeon GPU cards. They can be made to work, but this often requires additional effort.
The extra USB 3.2 controller allowed me to have more USB devices than the motherboard alone supported, and gave me some 10Gbps ports for connecting external NVMe drives.
The whole system was running just fine* under Fedora 42–44.
The first issue
... continue reading