Linux on Zotac MEK A550 Gaming PC
Introduction
I was surprised to get inheritance money
from a recent family death. So I decided to purchase this
gaming PC for $560 because it had been placed on sale. At
the time, DDR5 had come out, and this machine uses DDR4, but
that's not a problem. I mainly play Baldur's Gate 3.
But mainly I bought this because for the longest time, being a
college student who had to travel, I relied on my laptop, a Dell
with an Intel i7 and Iris Xe, that I purchased in 2020.
Now I will be more at home and less on the go, so I am shifting
priorities. I am also busy, working full time and enrolled
in a master's degree part time, so I don't really have the time
to build my own PC. So I purchased this. I am happy
with my decision. Click on any image for full size.
Specifications
| HARDWARE COMPONENTS |
STATE UNDER LINUX |
NOTES |
| AMD Ryzen 5 5500 3.6 GHz - 4.2 GHz |
Works |
6 cores 12 threads |
| MSI Pro B550M-VC WIFI Motherboard |
Works |
OpenRGB can't control LEDs |
| Kingston FURY DDR4 3200 RAM, 128 GB
(originally 16 GB) |
Works |
Linux OpenRGB can't control LEDs but
Windows MSI app can. |
| MSI M371 500 GB NVME M.2 SSD |
Works |
cached 20,897.50 MB/sec buffered 1,758.11
MB/sec |
| Added: Seagate Barracuda 1TB Green M.2 SSD |
Works |
cached 21,118.66 MB/sec buffered 1,209.06
MB/sec |
| ZOTAC Gaming GeForce RTX 3050 (GA107) |
Works (nouveau) |
Have not tested proprietary drivers.
Presents as a sound card also. |
| Realtek TRL8111/8168/8211/8411 PCIe Gigabit
Ethernet |
Not tested |
I use the WiFi |
| AMD 500 series USB |
Works |
Only one USB-C port on case, others are
USB-A type 3.1 |
| MediaTek MT7922 802.11ax PCIe Wireless +
Bluetooth |
Works |
Sometimes signal seems weak in Linux |
| AMD Family 17h/19h/1ah HD Audio (x2) |
Works |
Presents as two cards |
| Phison PS5015-E15 PCIe NVMe controller |
Works |
NVMe drives are fast, RAID is available. |
| ASMedia Tech ASM1064 SATA controller |
Unknown |
Haven't tested it yet |
| 650 Watt Power Supply |
Works |
Below is the motherboard identification (500
GB NVME removed for photo).
This is going to be both a review of Windows and BG3 on this machine (not much to review here) and then mainly a "how to" for installing OpenSUSE LEAP 15.6 Linux on this machine.
Windows and Baldur's Gate 3
While it only came with Windows 11 Home, the experience here is actually fantastic! The machine came entirely without any scrapeware except the garbage Microsoft forces on you. Baldur's Gate 3 detected being able to run at max quality, and it ran flawlessly and cinematically beautiful. Norton 360 Deluxe works very well on this machine. I can't complain. Also, 500 GB was enough for me for Windows, as I mainly use Windows for BG3 and academic stuff. I mainly use Linux day to day.
But the game changer here is that steam, with proton 9.0.0, will let you play BG3 in Vulkan in OpenSUSE Linux 15.6! And the performance is not very far from Windows.
One thing for sure, though: if you want to play BG3, you need to have more than 16 GB RAM if you plan to multitask, like listening to YouTube in Chrome while playing it. For some reason, Windows 11 can't manage RAM to save its life, so you end up in a situation where the game comes crashing to a halt. I have since updated the RAM to 32 GB and I am getting another 32GB RAM stick to top it off at 64GB, but my point remains. While in Linux, BG3 would continue to run in Vulkan even with only 16 GB RAM and consequently dig into swap hard, but still remain completely playable. So my advice is have 32 GB RAM or higher. Or use Linux, since apparently Linux can handle it with 16 GB but Windows cannot. The screenshot below was taken in OpenSUSE Linux with BG3 with only 16 GB RAM using Vulkan.
Still, this computer doesn't even seem to
break a sweat playing BG3. The fans are all set to factory
auto, and the fans never have to ramp up.
OpenSUSE LEAP 15.6 Installation
Initially, when I installed, I added a 1 TB
"green" M.2 SSD as the place to put Linux. The OpenSUSE
installer completed everything flawlessly, but then I didn't see
the GRUB2 menu upon reboot. I repeatedly installed in
different ways (hard drive 1, where Windows 11 is, looks like a
battleground by now) but GRUB2 wouldn't show. Then I went
into the advanced menu of the BIOS and noticed that I would have
to manually tell it to book the OpenSUSE UEFI entry first so
that GRUB2 would appear. I guess on other computers, since
I've never had to do this, OpenSUSE communicates to UEFI to make
this change. But on this computer, due to it being a
"gaming" PC, maybe the BIOS doesn't let the software play with
the hardware settings, perhaps to prevent software from
reverting overclocking type settings. Trust me, I won't be
overclocking. This picture is with the 500 GB M.2 removed:
when I get a new computer, I pull the hard drive to make a dd
image of it for backup. In this case, to an enclosure.
Once I got OpenSUSE LEAP 15.6 going, it ran smooth and flawlessly with the nouveau video driver for X. I was surprised and thankful, because last time I messed with nVidia for Linux, the results were not so good, and I was concerned, now due to UEFI, about kernel modules and signatures, etc.
One minor note though, my A550 came with 16 GB RAM. I will be adding 16GB more. BG3 only really uses 16 GB at one time anyways.
Specifications
I have already listed the specifications above, but here are specifications from Linux: lspci lsmod lsusb
Logitech C920 Pro HD Webcam
This works great in Linux. No problems.
Sound Cards
The onboard AMD Family 17h/19h/1ah HD Audio
Controller presents as two cards, and the ZOTAC GeForce 5090
(GA107) RTX also presents as one (for routing audio through
HDMI, I imagine). Audio quality is good so far, but the
only minor gripe is that the card or Linux module says I am
plugged into the Line Out. I'm not, but it thinks I
am. But plugging into the Line Out results in no sound,
whereas the headphone (audio out) jack works fine. It
works though, so that's fine.
Teams
Yes, Micro$oft Teams. I have to use it for college. Deal with it. :-)
So download and install Chrome. The Teams experience through Chrome in Linux is flawless! Not recommending Teams, but I'm bragging about how well Linux does.
7/11/25 Update
So today I finished my upgrade to 80 GB RAM. Yes, 80 GB. You see, I first went from the 2x8GB sticks to one 32 GB (since it has 4 slots and the max supported is 128GB). Like I said before, that helped BG3 behave better.
Then the other 32GB stick arrived in the mail and I installed that. But no one had shown any interest in buying the 2x8GB pair, so I just put back them in the computer, because why not?
So now I have 80 GB RAM. BG3 runs
slightly better now that it has the second 32GB to run dual
channel with.
Future Plans
When OpenSUSE LEAP 16 comes out, I plan to swap the 2TB SSD from my Dell 7506 2in1 Laptop into this machine for the 1 TB SeaGate Green, and repurpose that laptop for my wife's college work. And I plan to move the partitions around so that Windows 11 has full use of the 500 GB MSI fast M.2, like it did when I first bought it. I don't like Windows 11 Home in the sense that I'd rather have Pro so I can use BitLocker. But for now this works.
7/29/25 Update
So nVidia drivers on OpenSUSE Leap 15.6 were broken for a week due to an update. I could still boot the system but I was limited to 1024x768 frame buffer on only one screen. I am told this can sometimes be typical. I still prefer OpenSUSE LEAP because I don't have time to twiddle with a rolling release. Rolling releases such as Tumbleweed still have their own issues, but I'm choosing the less labor intensive option with LEAP 15.6 currently. Today, there was an update that fixed the nVidia drivers, so all is back to normal. I dual boot with Windows 11, so it's not like I lost full use of the system.
As for RAM, I have upgraded slowly but surely to 128 GB. Because I can. I noticed that if you mix LED with non-LED RAM (same company and identical stats) you should put all the LED ones on this motherboard in bank A (not split across like you're trying to go dual channel with them). The MSI app that controls the color can't find the other one for some reason, so if you had them in different banks (A1 and B1) it won't control the color of B1. So put the LED ones in A1 and A2 and the non-color in B1 and B2. Dual channel works fine if the stats and brand are perfectly identical.
If you set a color on your LEDs in Windows
with the MSI app, they usually stay set when you boot into
Linux.