The E3 xeons use the same silicon as the desktop ships, but they do enable ECC. Amusingly the cheaper E3s are often cheaper than desktop equivalents, but have

The E3 xeons use the same silicon as the desktop ships, but they do enable ECC. Amusingly the cheaper E3s are often cheaper than desktop equivalents, but have hyper threading enabled. A few times I've managed an E3 based system (4-5 generations out so far) CPU cheaper than the similar I7. Often something like $270 vs $340.