Reminds me of Linus rant. Real World Technologies - Forums - Thread: Ryzen 9 5000 series processor
Oh Kris, what are you doing? 
1 Like
Yeah, Linus and I agree. Also, not sure if it was before or after that rant, but Linus spent a long time chasing a kernel bug, that was actually a memory error. Iāve had that experience too.
Like many Variables in Data storage, this becomes an exercise in Philosophy of use. What a Great question to pose.
Basically all Intelās new CPUs now support ECC, although it still down to mobo manufactures to support that. (starting from 13th gen IIRC)
AMD broadly supports ECC in consumer grade CPUs earlier.
But not many mobos actually support ECC even to this day.
Although I vote for āECC is optionalā but I still prefer to use ECC memory, I use ECC LRDIMM memory in my TrueNAS system (server hardwares), non-ECC for my PC because its more rare in consumer market - my mobo donāt support ECC, which is sad, but only a bit.
It had cause me issues, but all because I overclocked it too high.
1 Like
Your avatar is well-chosen given your position on this matter.
2 Likes
Highly recommended article for the ECC vs NON ECC for zfs
https://jrs-s.net/2015/02/03/will-zfs-and-non-ecc-ram-kill-your-data/
I donāt care about your logic! I wish to appeal to authority!
OK. āAuthorityā in this case doesnāt get much better than Matthew Ahrens, one of the cofounders of ZFS at Sun Microsystems and current ZFS developer at Delphix. In the comments to one of my filesystem articles on Ars Technica, Matthew said āThereās nothing special about ZFS that requires/encourages the use of ECC RAM more so than any other filesystem.ā
Also another interesting youtube explaining about DDR5 ecc differences
i went with optional because itās the only one i could source so thatās what i went with. but ideally, i would have gone for ecc if i could have. then i can sleep easier 
He also goes on to say:
I would simply say: if you love your data, use ECC RAM. Additionally, use a filesystem that checksums your data, such as ZFS.
So, mixed messages, but Iām inclined to put that as a vote for ECC RAM 
2 Likes
In my opinionā¦
This debate is very much one of āin theoryā and āin practiceā. In practice, for non mission critical workloads, ECC is just not necessary.
I also feel like itās worth mentioning in this threadā¦ there is a FUNDAMENTAL difference between ECC UDIMMs and RDIMMs.
RDIMMs have alot more value than UDIMMs.
Isnāt that the root of the problem?
Grey beards have the experience where ECC saved my baconā¦
Newbies have no such bad experiences and want performance at lower cost.
My experience is that ECC is much more valuable with larger and faster DIMMsā¦ that are closer to the bleeding edge. Its probably true that smaller PC DIMMs cannot remain products if they have high probabilities of having corruption. Most perform flawlessly, but not 100%.
6 Likes
As was said on manager-tools.com : Good judgment comes from experience. And experience comes from bad judgement.
6 Likes
I agree with that. The problem is that most people donāt do their thinking here. On countless occasions I heard something like āI am not a large business where millions of dollars depend on my data, therefore it is not mission-criticalā.
Then I ask āWhat will your spouse do if you loose all the pictures of your kids growing up and 20+ years of vacation pictures?ā The result is always a deafening silence.
4 Likes
Iām a filthy casual, but live in an area that used enterprise gear on ebay is a legit option, and frankly better than the equivalent cost consumer gear.
ECC is simply a āand Iāll throw in the ECC memory for freeā sales tactic at this point, so Iām not going to complain about it.
1 Like
This can be read both ways. āZFS is not so special as to require ECCā, or āECC for everyoneā. In pursuit of the latter, I went into Hackintoshing so I could have ECC in my desktop without going full-on Mac Pro. Now, if I could find an ECC-enabled laptop that is not absurdly large and heavyā¦ (maximum 14" and 1.6 kg, preferably less).
1 Like
That is not an argument for ECC memory. That is an argument for 3-2-1 backup strategies.
2 Likes
Butā¦ Without ECC, donāt you risk to do a mess on backup too in case your data Is silently corrupted? Especially the ones that run before every scrubsā¦
Nothing makes you a fan of ECC like a customerās time-critical deliverable being messed up because of a bit flip in memory that ruined a ZIP file. It was ājustā a couple hundred bucks down the drain, plus a couple of hours to track down the issue, plus the whole ālook stupid in front of the customer by not meeting their KPIs for stupid reasonsā deal.
4 Likes
The real answer to this question is obviously āit dependsā.
My ā20+ years of vacation picturesā, which I genuinely have backed up in several places, donāt changeā¦its a WORM workload.
Sure Iāll ADD to it, but once a picture/video/whatever is stored, I donāt modify the files ever so they are are periodically stored offline on tape.
Iām far more worried about my house catching fire and losing all of my data than I am a memory bit flip causing silent corruption.
That second one is interesting because it also talks about errors in things like in-processor SRAM structures. Thereās memory THROUGHOUT computing systems, not just the big DRAM banks. Memory in network cards. Memory in SSDs.