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[armishch09]

Hi. I've been running a Core 2 Duo (e8600 and then an e6850 after that died) on a Gigabyte EP343 DS3L for almost forever. It's time to consider an upgrade. Looking at my options, I've run into problems with 3000 series Ryzens. Will the motherboard support the CPU out of the box or will I need to somehow flash the bios? Will Linux support the onboard sound? You know, the usual problem with cutting edge hardware in Linux.

Options I'm looking at include a Ryzen solution, or a more budget-friendly option with an i3 9100F or possibly an option from aliexpress - Xeon e5 2689 with no name brand "X79" motherboard and 16gb ram.

My questions for all of you are:

Is there a trustworthy Ryzen path I can take (motherboard/cpu combo that will give me full functionality with a recent distribution - my current preference is Mint)?

Would the i3 option be more likely to have better hardware support? Can you suggest a good motherboard for this?

I'm pretty sure the Xeon option (quite inexpensive) will work as most of the components on the motherboard are older technology. I'm hoping this is the case - anyone have experience in this department.

Failing the above, perhaps you have another suggestion that meets my needs?

I have zero interest in OC or the highest gaming frame rate, just a solid machine with some computing power. I want to program, surf the web, watch some videos and some light gaming. Thanks in advance for reading this and hopefully being able to provide some feedback.