If you luck out with reliable hardware the rate of pure bit flips from high energy particles is rather rare. Problem is if you start having unreliable hardware

If you luck out with reliable hardware the rate of pure bit flips from high energy particles is rather rare. Problem is if you start having unreliable hardware it could be any component of your system. ECC memory helps track down a class of errors that could be in the ram chip, dimm, dimm socket, motherboard, CPU socket, or CPU. My desktop cost another $100 or so because I got a E3-1230 xeon instead of the similar clocked i7. I bought it in 2015 and it's been fast, and reliable. Sure I might manage 6 month uptimes anyways, but I also might track down a dimm problem in hours instead of weeks.