# ASUS PN51 Stability Testing

## Overview

Two ASUS PN51-E1 mini PCs (Ryzen 7 5700U) purchased years ago but shelved due to stability issues. Revisiting them to potentially add to the homelab.

## Hardware

| | pn01 (10.69.12.60) | pn02 (10.69.12.61) |
|---|---|---|
| **CPU** | AMD Ryzen 7 5700U (8C/16T) | AMD Ryzen 7 5700U (8C/16T) |
| **RAM** | 2x 32GB DDR4 SO-DIMM (64GB) | 1x 32GB DDR4 SO-DIMM (32GB) |
| **Storage** | 1TB NVMe | 1TB Samsung 870 EVO (SATA SSD) |
| **BIOS** | 0508 (2023-11-08) | Updated 2026-02-21 (latest from ASUS) |

## Original Issues

- **pn01**: Would boot but freeze randomly after some time. No console errors, completely unresponsive. memtest86 passed.
- **pn02**: Had trouble booting — would start loading kernel from installer USB then instantly reboot. When it did boot, would also freeze randomly.

## Debugging Steps

### 2026-02-21: Initial Setup

1. **Disabled fTPM** (labeled "Security Device" in ASUS BIOS) on both units
   - AMD Ryzen 5000 series had a known fTPM bug causing random hard freezes with no console output
   - Both units booted the NixOS installer successfully after this change
2. Installed NixOS on both, added to repo as `pn01` and `pn02` on VLAN 12
3. Configured monitoring (node-exporter, promtail, nixos-exporter)

### 2026-02-21: pn02 First Freeze

- pn02 froze approximately 1 hour after boot
- All three Prometheus targets went down simultaneously — hard freeze, not graceful shutdown
- Journal on next boot: `system.journal corrupted or uncleanly shut down`
- Kernel warnings from boot log before freeze:
  - **TSC clocksource unstable**: `Marking clocksource 'tsc' as unstable because the skew is too large` — TSC skewing ~3.8ms over 500ms relative to HPET watchdog
  - **AMD PSP error**: `psp gfx command LOAD_TA(0x1) failed and response status is (0x7)` — Platform Security Processor failing to load trusted application
- pn01 showed neither of these warnings and remained stable

### 2026-02-21: pn02 BIOS Update

- Updated pn02 BIOS to latest version from ASUS website
- **TSC still unstable** after BIOS update — same ~3.8ms skew
- **PSP LOAD_TA still failing** after BIOS update
- Monitoring back up, letting it run to see if freeze recurs

## Benign Kernel Errors (Both Units)

These appear on both units and can be ignored:
- `pcie_mp2_amd: amd_sfh_hid_client_init failed err -95` — AMD Sensor Fusion Hub, no sensors connected
- `Bluetooth: hci0: Reading supported features failed` — Bluetooth init quirk
- `Serial bus multi instantiate pseudo device driver INT3515:00: error -ENXIO` — unused serial bus device
- `ata2.00: supports DRM functions and may not be fully accessible` — Samsung SSD DRM quirk (pn02 only)

## Next Steps

- Monitor pn01 stability (fTPM disabled, no other changes needed)
- Monitor pn02 stability after BIOS update
- If pn02 continues to freeze, try adding `tsc=unstable` kernel parameter
- If pn02 still freezes, may be a hardware defect on that specific unit
- Once stable: add second RAM stick back to pn02, reinstall with NVMe