AMD Ryzen 9 7900X Performance With ECC DDR5 Memory

[atmartens]

The data really show how pathetic it is that ECC isn't standard. The performance penalty is negligible!

[Type44Q]

...Asrock B550M pro4 supports ECC without issues.

Good to know; I've been wondering about that but hadn't taken the time to look it up yet. Still, while it may be apples-to-oranges, the perform impact of switching from DDR4-3200 CL14 non-ECC to DDR4-3200 CL22 ECC is going to be a bit more than 1-3%...

[browseria]

Michael Does this board (or any other ECC-supporting board) use LVFS?

[wertigon]

Are there any consumer motherboards that support ECC on AMD 7000 series? I run a homeserver with a 5950X and Asrock B550M pro4 supports ECC without issues. But apparently the newer 7000 series mobo's do not support it by default?

Asus got support across pretty much the whole range, do double check but seems like most Prime and ROG boards support it, and possibly more.

Other than that, seems like really sparse support unfortunately. It is time to make ECC mandatory, there is little reason left not to do it and you can always turn it off if you do not want it.

[Scramblejams]

Does anyone have any experience with running ECC RAM? Do you get errors/corrections reported in your logs regularly or at all? Is it really necessary in real life?

I run a NAS/VM host at home with 128 gigs of RAM and it pops ECC errors 1-2 times per year. May not sound like much but without ECC that could hose some data right quick, possibly silently.

[LinAGKar]

This reminds me of the days when someone was arguing with me that ECC was going to be standard on DDR5 even for desktops and laptops. Sure seems that didn't pan out.

It's got on-die ECC as standard, but not ECC all the way to the CPU.

[Yalok]

This reminds me of the days when someone was arguing with me that ECC was going to be standard on DDR5 even for desktops and laptops. Sure seems that didn't pan out.

According to DDR5 Wikipedia article, there is in fact some form of ECC by design on all DDR5 sticks, that was not present on standard DDR4.

[unwind-protect]

I have often wondered, if I should begin to use ECC RAM for my NAS/server running 24/7. However, I have not really realized any issues being due to RAM errors.

Does anyone have any experience with running ECC RAM? Do you get errors/corrections reported in your logs regularly or at all? Is it really necessary in real life?

I had a fanless chipset chip heat up a lot. It heated the RAM above it in a vertical case. It lead to ECC messages advising me of corrected errors. I put a fan on the chip.

Without ECC it would have been real (non-corrected) errors and (worse) it would have continued for a long time.

[sharpjs]

My workstation is a Threadripper 2950X box with 128GB of ECC RAM. I had consumer RAM in it before upgrading to the ECC. I had a BSOD or panic every couple weeks with the consumer RAM. I have had zero panics since installing the ECC RAM several years ago. Granted, there are a lot of variables at play (timings, frequencies, voltages, chip binning, chip failures, etc.), so I can't be sure it's the ECC responsible for the stability. But I absolutely will prefer buying ECC RAM in future.

[Old Nobody]

I have often wondered, if I should begin to use ECC RAM for my NAS/server running 24/7. However, I have not really realized any issues being due to RAM errors.

Does anyone have any experience with running ECC RAM? Do you get errors/corrections reported in your logs regularly or at all? Is it really necessary in real life?

Switched to using ECC memory some years ago, after defective RAM killed my personal data (~10 TByte, had to restore from backup).

Home server: One reported error in 2018 and two in 2019 (running 24/7 since 2018, 64 GByte DDR4)
NAS: One reported error in 2022 (running 24/7 since 2020, 16 GByte DDR4)
Desktop: No reported error (running ~16/7 since 2021, 64 GByte DDR4)

All reported errors got corrected. You have to decide on you own if it's worth the extra money.