ASUS ROG Strix G513RM — Linux Freeze & GPU Fix

Hardware

• Model: ASUS ROG Strix G513RM
• CPU: AMD Ryzen (Rembrandt)
• GPUs: AMD Radeon 680M (iGPU) + NVIDIA RTX 3060 Mobile (dGPU)
• BIOS: G513RM.327 (latest available as of March 2026)

Problem

Persistent system freezes across multiple Linux distros. Root cause was the NVIDIA dGPU producing PCIe BadTLP errors (Bad Transaction Layer Packets) — corrupted communication between CPU and GPU over the PCIe bus, caused by PCIe ASPM power management dropping the link into an unstable state.

Secondary symptom: on warm reboot (not cold boot), the dGPU would disappear entirely from the PCIe bus (lspci returned nothing), requiring a full power cycle to recover.

Diagnosis

Confirming BadTLP errors

sudo dmesg | grep -i badtlp

Output showed repeated:

nvidia 0000:01:00.0: PCIe Bus Error: severity=Correctable, type=Data Link Layer, (Receiver ID)
nvidia 0000:01:00.0:  [ 6] BadTLP

Confirming GPU presence

lspci | grep -i nvidia
# Expected: 01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation GA106M [GeForce RTX 3060 Mobile]

Fix

Step 1: Enable NVIDIA Dynamic Power Management

Create /etc/modprobe.d/nvidia.conf:

sudo nano /etc/modprobe.d/nvidia.conf

Add:

options nvidia NVreg_DynamicPowerManagement=0x02

This allows the driver to properly manage GPU power state, preventing the PCIe link from going unstable.

Step 2: Use ACPI reboot method

sudo nano /etc/default/grub

Change:

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash reboot=acpi"

Then:

sudo update-grub

This forces the kernel to use ACPI reboot instead of the default method, which properly resets PCIe device states on warm reboot.

Step 3: Full power cycle (once)

After applying the above, do a full poweroff (not reboot), wait 10 seconds, then power on. This resets the EC (Embedded Controller) state.

sudo poweroff

Verification

After cold boot:

# No output = no errors
sudo dmesg | grep -i badtlp

# Should show GPU stats
nvidia-smi

# Should show GPU on bus
lspci | grep -i nvidia

Notes

Why warm reboot loses the GPU

The ASUS ROG G513RM firmware (EC) does not properly restore dGPU power state on warm reboot — only on cold boot. The reboot=acpi parameter mitigates this in most cases. If the GPU still disappears after a warm reboot, a full power cycle (poweroff → wait → power on) always recovers it.

KVM conflicts with VirtualBox

KVM (kvm_amd) is loaded at boot. VirtualBox's vboxdrv kernel module grabs a reference to KVM at load time, making it impossible to unload KVM while VirtualBox is installed. If running 64-bit VMs in VirtualBox fails with an i686 error, blacklist KVM:

echo "blacklist kvm_amd" | sudo tee /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-kvm.conf
echo "blacklist kvm" | sudo tee -a /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-kvm.conf
sudo update-initramfs -u
sudo reboot

Wayland + NVIDIA

With the driver working correctly, GNOME Wayland session functions normally with the NVIDIA dGPU. Select "Ubuntu on Wayland" at the GDM login screen. Three-finger gestures and pinch-to-zoom work on Wayland; they do not work on X11.

Armoury Crate Control Service update

During troubleshooting, an update for Armoury Crate Control Service was applied via MyASUS on Windows. This service manages EC firmware and hardware control on ROG laptops. It may have patched EC behavior related to dGPU power state on warm reboot, and could be partially responsible for warm reboot stability alongside reboot=acpi. If warm reboot GPU loss recurs on a fresh install, check for Armoury Crate updates in Windows before assuming the Linux fix is insufficient.

What does NOT work

• Global pcie_aspm=off or pcie_port_pm=off kernel parameters cause the GPU to disappear from the PCIe bus entirely and require a full power cycle to recover. Do not use these.

Document was generated by Claude.ai/Sonnet 4.6.