Fortunately the new AMD Ryzen processors support ECC in the memory controller, unfortunately none of the boards seem to be testing/certifying it yet and the UEFI on a lot of the boards is a mess right now.
Hopefully more consumer boards support/certify it since it is already there on the memory controller.
The Asrock 370 boards officially support ECC, though I've read that various BIOS/UEFI versions don't: https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/655e7v/all_asrock_am4_... People are reporting that the Asrock 350 boards do too. Gigabyte lists some ECC modules on the compatibility list but some report that it isn't working right.
Ryzen ECC support is a mess, no AM4 motherboard currently on the market has implemented ECC support fully and properly (not even Asrock). It's better than nothing but you would be a fool to rely on it.
"Kinda sorta works but the manufacturer won't stand behind it" is bunch of bullshit. If your data is worth using ECC in the first place - it's worth using a platform that has fully-implemented support, that has passed validation, that you know is going to work properly when you need it.
Until that happens - this is an application where Ryzen is simply not appropriate.
All of the modern i3s and Pentiums support ECC, but you do need the server chipset instead of the cheap consumer stuff. Good news though - those "expensive server boards" are roughly the same price as say, an AM4 motherboard with an X370 chipset.
Heck, you can buy a basic off-lease ThinkServer TS140 for only about $300. You'll only have about 4 GB of RAM but it's a shell to start building out (which is cheaper than having an OEM assemble it for you anyway).
Ryzen ECC support is a mess, no AM4 motherboard currently on the market has implemented ECC support fully and properly (not even Asrock). It's better than nothing but you would be a fool to rely on it.
Ryzen motherboard support is what is agreeably a "mess", not the processor itself, but at least it's functional on ASRock and select Gigabyte boards. As for "a fool to rely on it", not sure what you mean by that. The error correction itself is done by the hardware. Other than calling the initialization routines and providing logging/halt, the BIOS/UEFI isn't responsible for anything afaik.
I'm well aware that this isn't the full grade of ECC support offered by higher-end Xeons and chipset combos, but it's better than nothing and it's affordable.
Also, no offense, but I'm not going to rely on hardwarecanucks as an authority on this subject.
All of the modern i3s and Pentiums support ECC, but you do need the server chipset instead of the cheap consumer stuff. Good news though - those "expensive server boards" are roughly the same price as say, an AM4 motherboard with an X370 chipset.
The goal isn't ECC alone, at least not for me, the goal is an 8-core system with good single-threaded performance and ECC at a reasonable price. As far as I know, only Ryzen offers that.
So for me, I'm looking at the possibility of getting a single system that can give me decent gaming performance, good development performance, ECC support, and more, all at a price that leaves me with money for other components.
> Also, no offense, but I'm not going to rely on hardwarecanucks as an authority on this subject.
Fine then. AMD says it's unvalidated and unsupported, is that good enough for you?
> I'm well aware that this isn't the full grade of ECC support offered by higher-end Xeons and chipset combos, but it's better than nothing and it's affordable.
So would you be OK with running Xeon engineering samples then? After all - they certainly pass the same "best effort" test. Personally since these are server ES hardware - I'd tend to trust it more than consumer hardware like Ryzen, especially given their comparative age/maturity.
I just picked up a 10-core Haswell Xeon engineering sample for $140 last week. 40% more multi-threaded performance than a Ryzen 1700. The X99 mobo I picked up from Microcenter for $60 doesn't have ECC support but a bunch of them do.
Or if you want something that's official and you know works, there are surplus Sandy Bridge Xeons very cheap nowadays. A decent bit more multithreaded performance than a Ryzen 1700 - but you'll be giving up single-threaded performance. http://natex.us/intel-s2600cp2j-motherboard-dual-e5-2670-sr0...
Or really - a full retail E5-2630 v3 is under $500 now on eBay. That's not really that bad if you just have to have everything in one box.
> So for me, I'm looking at the possibility of getting a single system that can give me decent gaming performance, good development performance, ECC support, and more, all at a price that leaves me with money for other components.
What it comes down to: if you want everything in one box then be prepared to shell out. Everyone has this market segmented out, including AMD (after all they won't stand behind Ryzen's ECC either). If you feel you need ECC, that's really not a valid solution.
If a Xeon doesn't cut it for you - sounds like you might be in the market for two boxes here. A server/workstation with ECC and good multi-thread performance, and a gaming machine that you can overclock and get the best single-thread performance out of.
(Also - in general, overclocking also seems kind of counterproductive to the aims to running ECC RAM - although I guess I haven't looked into that.)
Fine then. AMD says it's unvalidated and unsupported, is that good enough for you?
No, that's not what AMD said, they said it isn't validated by motherboard partners. The functionality is there, it's up to their partners to use it.
So would you be OK with running Xeon engineering samples then? After all - they certainly pass the same "best effort" test. Personally since these are server ES hardware - I'd tend to trust it more than consumer hardware like Ryzen, especially given their comparative age/maturity.
That's not even a remotely accurate comparison.
What it comes down to: if you want everything in one box then be prepared to shell out. Everyone has this market segmented out, including AMD (after all they won't stand behind Ryzen's ECC either). If you feel you need ECC, that's really not a valid solution.
Sorry, but so far all of your proposed "solutions" are summed up as: "If you give up significant performance, functionality, buy second-hand, or completely ignore official support statements, X competitor is the better deal!"
If a Xeon doesn't cut it for you - sounds like you might be in the market for two boxes here. A server/workstation with ECC and good multi-thread performance, and a gaming machine that you can overclock and get the best single-thread performance out of.
No, the goal is to have one system, and at this point, Ryzen looks like the best option. If a competitor decides to release something equivalent, I'll consider them too.
Sorry, I was a little obtuse. What I was inferring was that historically, only higher-priced server chips from Intel had ECC support. In 2013, Intel launched the v3 lower-end Xeon E3s server chips that were closer to the price of the consumer Intel chips and offer ECC with comparable clock speeds. Of course, all of those only have 4 cores instead of 8.
Yes, all of the E3s support ecc, but Xeon's didn't always support ECC until the launch of the Xeon E3 as far as I can tell.
Xeon has implied ECC support for as long as Xeons have had integrated memory controllers, which is just a generation or two further back than the first Xeon E3 product line. Before that, ECC support was a function of the northbridge.
There are cheap chipsets that support the entry level workstation ones from Intel you can get a motherboard for 65$ with ECC support you don't need to go to x99.
I have a few home storage servers running on the low end Pentiums with ECC support on these.
I just last week bought an ASRock C236 WSI [1] for £170. 8GB of ECC RAM was £80. Granted that five years ago I needed to pay more than twice that amount - so I skipped the ECC :p
If you use your computing in a way that makes you think about the potential interest of ECC, the price you are likely to target for a rig that fit your needs is extremely probably high enough to get some nice ECC...
I built a home NAS from an old board and Phenom II 545 CPU I had lying around, fortuitously they happen to support ECC. DDR2 unregistered ECC ram was a bit of a pain to find though.
Not only cost, it can also be harder to find a motherboard with ECC support and with all the components/inputs/outputs that you would want in a desktop computer.
