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> I buy unbuffered ECC DIMMs for my AMD systems and they're basically maybe 5-10% more than a non-ECC DIMM Where? Are you talking DDR4-3200? These are 40-50% h
by deckard1 5y ago
> I buy unbuffered ECC DIMMs for my AMD systems and they're basically maybe 5-10% more than a non-ECC DIMM
Where? Are you talking DDR4-3200? These are 40-50% higher than non-ECC UDIMMs. It usually gets worse as capacity increases. Additionally, there are only one or two models of 1x32GB UDIMM in production. These sticks are quite rare. You don't just go to Newegg or Amazon unless you want to pay out the arse for them. And in addition to that, ECC has worse timings which are important for Ryzen.
> Registered DIMMs have a higher premium
You have this backwards. RDIMM are common and cheaper because that's what servers generally use. UDIMM ECC cost more because, well, they barely exist as a thing.
- bcrl 5y agoDDR4-3200 is an expensive boutique product. Drop the speed requirement a little and you'll find the pricing is in line with my comment.
- boardwaalk 5y agoDDR4-3200 is already fairly slow for a new system -- DDR4-3600 f.e. aligns with the 1800 MHz Fabric Clock in Ryzen 3 and makes a not insubstantial difference in performance, and (non-ECC-wise) is not expensive. I have a feeling the cost is not just a money-wise 5-10%.
- bcrl 5y agoAmazon currently lists the 32GB Nemix DDR4-2666 UDIMM for $169.99 while a non-ECC UDIMM is $129.99. So you're right, at $40 it is closer to a 30% premium right now. But that one time cost of $40 per DIMM is worth it if it even saves me 10-15 minutes of time debugging. And I'm willing to pay that small cost adder on every new machine I get, because I have the battle scars that have pro It's not like I'm dealing with hundreds of systems, this is across maybe 2 or 3 dozen machines over the past 30 years.ven it's a worthwhile tradeoff. The battle scars are as follows: - The 2MB expansion card on my Amiga 500 turned out to have a couple of bad bits, and because I was a green techie back then, I just attributed it to general software instability. Years later a RAM test showed there was a problem. Sadly there were no memory test utilities shipped with Amigas back then. - My first 486 system had a bad bank in the SRAM on the motherboard. Took years to figure out as it only really hit when heavy DMA occurred from a VLB SCSI card while the CPU was heavily loaded. Swapped the SRAM out and it was stable for a few more years of service. - One of my K6 systems had a DIMM go bad. At least it failed badly enough that the system couldn't boot. - I've had an Intel Xeon in a colocated server start throwing ECC errors in the L3 cache. Replaced and RMAed the CPU before it caused an outage. - One system started throwing ECC errors because the power supply was marginal. Now, please, show me how the extra cost of ECC is worthless to you when things like this happen in the Real World. Is your time spent debugging hardware failures really not worth the cost of ECC?
- deckard1 5y agoThanks for the downvotes, folks. Really. > DDR4-3200 is an expensive boutique product. You have to be fucking kidding me. On a desktop Ryzen?? Most desktop PC builders are gamers. That's just a fact. They drive the market. That's why every motherboard looks like a gamery stealth bomber. Outside of Asrock Rack and one or two Asus Pro boards, there is simply nothing out there that matches what the server world is seeing with SuperMicro. I have 1x32GB DDR4-3200 UDIMM ECC on my Ryzen. But I have no delusions about the cost. It was expensive as fuck compared to non-ECC RAM.
- formerly_proven 5y ago(And there's no way to get ECC memory with decent timings because DDR4 is binned to death, so even if you found some hypothetical Samsung B-die ECC SKUs they'd be like 2333 or 2666 MHz and you'll never get them to work at 3200 or 3600 with timings better than 80-80-80-10000 or so. Meanwhile 3200CL14 or 3600CL16 is pretty usual without ECC. edit: On a second look, Mushkin will actually sell you 3200 CL14 ECC memory... 14-18-18-38 that is. At almost 10 quid on the gigabyte. Meanwhile you can get real CL14 non-ECC memory at around half that.
- dcow 5y agoNexmix is what most vendors use: https://nemixram.com/64gb-4x16gb-ddr4-3200-pc4-25600-ecc-udimm-memory https://nemixram.com/64gb-4x16gb-ddr4-3200-pc4-25600-ecc-udi.... Pricing seems on par…
- namibj 5y agoUDIMMs don't have worse timings. The only bad thing is that they don't offer binned dies with XMP profiles on their SPD. My Kingston Server Premier 32G sticks with Micron Rev. E 16Gbit dies (KSM32ES8/16ME) run these timings very reliably at 1.4V: BankGroupSwap: Disabled BankGroupSwapAlt: Enabled Memory Clock: 1800 MHz GDM: Enabled CR: 1T Tcl: 18 Tras: 39 Trcdrd: 22 Trcdwr: 22 Trc: 83 Trp: 22 Trrds: 5 Trrdl: 9 Trtp: 14 Tfaw: 38 Tcwl: 18 Twtrs: 5 Twtrl: 14 Twr: 26 Trdrddd: 4 Trdrdsd: 5 Trdrdsc: 1 Trdrdscl: 5 Twrwrdd: 6 Twrwrsd: 7 Twrwrsc: 1 Twrwrscl: 5 Twrrd: 3 Trdwr: 9 Tcke: 0 Trfc: 630 Trfc2: 468 Trfc4: 288 Yes, they are somehow really hard to get in the US for decent pricing, but in the EU they are quite affordable (according to geizhals.eu ).
- deckard1 5y agoOC'ing ECC is generally a terrible idea, if that's what you're doing. Also, no one on Ryzen is considering CAS CL22 timings "good" on DDR4-3200 sticks. I think you need to go do research on non-ECC RAM. It really feels like everyone on this thread is so far outside the normal PC market for RAM that they are talking out of their ass here.
- namibj 5y agoThe notably part is that I operate it at above 1.2V, which increases power consumption in a way that enterprise generally doesn't deem worthwhile. I run DDR4-3600 CL18. I do question though how OC'ing non-ECC is a better idea than OC'ing ECC. Also, just for the record, I based my timings off of an XMP profile for a non-ECC version of the same die/capacity configuration (32G 2Rx8 w/ Micron Rev.E 16Gbit). I also haven't seen 32G sticks that do better than CL22 at 3200 with just 1.2V.
- thulle 5y ago> OC'ing ECC is generally a terrible idea, if that's what you're doing. How so? For example I can see when the higher summer temperatures becomes an issue and reduce my timings, then tighten them again as it gets colder. No more random crashes where I wonder if it's my RAM or something else. Currently doing 3333MT/s CL14 on 4x16GB of 2666MT/s ECC. I use CL16 in the summer. Since the memory sticks barely are affected by the heat, and that ECC errors occur on the same slot of the motherboard regardless of which stick is in there, I assume its the memory controller on the CPU in combination with four sticks of memory that's the limiting factor here.