Fedora Developers Brainstorming Options For Better Memory Testing

[pal666]

It's actually incredible that in today's age, we are building Quantum computers, have supercomputers on our desk, but fully-buffered ECC ram isn't standard yet on today's desktops

i wanted to build my current computer with ecc, but went with non-ecc because it was much faster

[alpha_one_x86]

For me CONFIG_MEMTEST have helped me lot of time to autodecte memory problem and do working the computer with memory problem.

[starshipeleven]

It's actually incredible that in today's age, we are building Quantum computers, have supercomputers on our desk, but fully-buffered ECC ram isn't standard yet on today's desktops (which surely would help help weed out many faulty RAM modules)

Even just unbuffered ECC is enough. buffers are needed to increase RAM capacity beyond the current consumer RAM sizes, aren't relevant for ECC functionality.

[starshipeleven]

aaand unapproved post for Auzy above

[starshipeleven]

The kernel has had this for ages. It's the EDAC subsystem.

EDAC subsystem does not notify directly to the user, it all goes in dmesg and possibly system logs, but there is no GUI way to inform the user.

THat's what he was talking about

[birdie]

I've long switched to https://www.memtest86.com/download.htm which works great and I couldn't care less that it's a closed source application.

[CommunityMember]

Servers (with some load) usually use ECC RAM (and so should everything else in my opinion), but sadly that is not the truth.

Due to, of course, a bifurcation of the market by certain CPU and mainboard manufacturers where you only get ECC support on server class systems (yes, there are a couple of exceptions). Reportedly all the Ryzen chips support ECC DRAM, and at least some threadripper mainboards (properly) support ECC (outside the threadripper group proper ECC support is hit/miss, and reportedly mostly miss).

[starshipeleven]

I've long switched to https://www.memtest86.com/download.htm which works great and I couldn't care less that it's a closed source application.

Well, yeah, you are using Windows already so it's fine I guess.

[starshipeleven]

(outside the threadripper group proper ECC support is hit/miss, and reportedly mostly miss).

Asrock is the only brand that has that available in nearly all boards (and it's clearly stated in the specs). They are'nt playing stupid games like saying "yes it supports ECC ram but runs in non-ECC mode" (asus) or just bullshitting about ECC support (gigabyte)

[CommunityMember]

I've long switched to memtest86 which works great and I couldn't care less that it's a closed source application.

For some people, free, and open, is an important goal in their software selection. To each their own choices.

And for those that take testing memory seriously at scale, there are the $5000+ hardware based memory testers which also allow tweaking of the parameters to over/under volt and over/under clock to detect memory that is living on the edge.