Switching RAM to ECC RAM.

[UNIXNETWORK]

Hello, forum members. I have question for you.

For the moment I have installed 2x32Gb RAM 3200Mhz sodimm. No issue at all. But I have chance to get same amount 2x32Gb ECC RAM 3200Mhz sodimm for very good price. But Dell Precision 5550 support ECC RAM 2666Mhz. Is it worth to switch RAM and will it work on 2666Mhz. I'm not confident with ECC RAM compatibility.

[Needfuldoer]

4 minutes ago, UNIXNETWORK said:

Hello, forum members. I have question for you.

For the moment I have installed 2x32Gb RAM 3200Mhz sodimm. No issue at all. But I have chance to get same amount 2x32Gb ECC RAM 3200Mhz sodimm for very good price. But Dell Precision 5550 support ECC RAM 2666Mhz. Is it worth to switch RAM and will it work on 2666Mhz. I'm not confident with ECC RAM compatibility.

Which processor do you have? 

[UNIXNETWORK]

Xeon W-10855M.

[Needfuldoer]

8 minutes ago, UNIXNETWORK said:

Xeon W-10855M.

Good! That's the one processor available for that laptop with ECC support.

 

But why do you think you need ECC RAM?

[UNIXNETWORK]

This is why I'm asking. Maybe is no worth to switch ECC RAM. Most I'm using laptop for programming, editing video with Davinci Resolve and running VM. No I'm not gamer and I don't play games.

[KidKid]

ECC will help from solar flares and stuff

[Windows7ge]

ECC is good as an extra layer of safety for data being worked on that's sitting in RAM. However, this has very little practical use or valid need in a workstation laptop. The applications where it would be helpful are very far and few between in addition to software solutions that already exist to prevent writing corrupt data to destinations.

 

The idea behind ECC is it's supposed to help with data corruption in memory by writing an extra bit of data for every byte. This acts as a check-sum of sorts to verify the integrity of the data. If for any cause a bit flips from a 0 to a 1 or a 1 to a 0 it helps correct these errors before it can cause trouble.

 

But again, in a laptop this would be more of a "hey look what I got" than a "hey I need this".

[UNIXNETWORK]

I know how works ECC RAM and most is very useful with servers, nas. Thanks I think very same way as you:"hey look what I got" than a "hey I need this". I'll skip it and not switch RAM. If it improve a lot workload on programming and VM then I'll think about it.

[Windows7ge]

I mean, let's say you only had 16GB to start. If you needed more and there was a good deal on some ECC albeit a little slower then I'd say yeah, go for it. But spending money and you give yourself a sideways/downgrade for the perk of ECC. I wouldn't.

[UNIXNETWORK]

I think to skip it. But 2x32Gb ECC i have chance to get it for both GBP80. And deal is sweet but to buy now as most now standard is DDR5, well maybe still is worth to invest.

[StDragon]

18 hours ago, Windows7ge said:

ECC is good as an extra layer of safety for data being worked on that's sitting in RAM. However, this has very little practical use or valid need in a workstation laptop.

That's debatable, and I'm with Linus Torvalds on this.

https://www.theregister.com/2022/10/10/linus_torvalds_ecc_memory_fail

Random bit-flips do occur from cosmic rays among other reasons too. Google did a study on memory errors years ago, but it's stil worth the read for those interested.

https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/research.google.com/en//pubs/archive/35162.pdf

 

18 hours ago, Windows7ge said:

The applications where it would be helpful are very far and few between in addition to software solutions that already exist to prevent writing corrupt data to destinations.

Such software solutions would have to be done by each application developer to write the output in two seperate memory regions and/or imploy some checksum method. Mirroring is a waste of memory, but I suppose you could make the argument it's better than not having ECC to begin with. And then there's the issue where the kernel will use ASLR as a security method, but then things go sideways if you have a bit-flip. The kernel will not recover from that (hence kernel panic).

For the consumer space, things have gotten better with DDR5 in that a form of ECC natively existing within the DIMM chips. However that's not true ECC insomuch as there's no actual parity checking going on between the DIMMs and CPU. Also, there's no way to know if and when an error was ever corrected within a DDR5 DIMM. For true end-to-end ECC from the DIMM to CPU, you'll need a specific DDR5 ECC kit.

[Windows7ge]

9 minutes ago, StDragon said:

That's debatable, and I'm with Linus Torvalds on this.

https://www.theregister.com/2022/10/10/linus_torvalds_ecc_memory_fail

Random bit-flips do occur from cosmic rays among other reasons too. Google did a study on memory errors years ago, but it's stil worth the read for those interested.

https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/research.google.com/en//pubs/archive/35162.pdf

 

Such software solutions would have to be done by each application developer to write the output in two seperate memory regions and/or imploy some checksum method. Mirroring is a waste of memory, but I suppose you could make the argument it's better than not having ECC to begin with. And then there's the issue where the kernel will use ASLR as a security method, but then things go sideways if you have a bit-flip. The kernel will not recover from that (hence kernel panic).

For the consumer space, things have gotten better with DDR5 in that a form of ECC natively existing within the DIMM chips. However that's not true ECC insomuch as there's no actual parity checking going on between the DIMMs and CPU. Also, there's no way to know if and when an error was ever corrected within a DDR5 DIMM. For true end-to-end ECC from the DIMM to CPU, you'll need a specific DDR5 ECC kit.

So you're insinuating that every computer at home and in every office cubicle should be running ECC.

[StDragon]

1 hour ago, Windows7ge said:

So you're insinuating that every computer at home and in every office cubicle should be running ECC.

Yes, or at least offered as an option. Intel purposefully segmented this market (ECC vs non-ECC) because they didn't want enterprise using Intel Core CPUs in SQL clusters and hypervisors on the cheap. So if you want fault-tollerance, you have to pay the Intel tax for that.

AMD will let you use ECC with Ryzen, but it's not officially supported. If the MoBo vendor allows it, you can use it. You just can't go back to AMD for ECC support troubleshooting. So, AMD also does a quasi-bifurcation of that market too to a lesser degree.

[Windows7ge]

2 hours ago, StDragon said:

Yes, or at least offered as an option. Intel purposefully segmented this market (ECC vs non-ECC) because they didn't want enterprise using Intel Core CPUs in SQL clusters and hypervisors on the cheap. So if you want fault-tollerance, you have to pay the Intel tax for that.

AMD will let you use ECC with Ryzen, but it's not officially supported. If the MoBo vendor allows it, you can use it. You just can't go back to AMD for ECC support troubleshooting. So, AMD also does a quasi-bifurcation of that market too to a lesser degree.

I don't disagree that having options is nice but I don't see ECC as a necessity for everyday use or as a need in office PCs/Laptops.

 

That's all well and good if you like ECC.

I like ECC.

 

But it's not worth blowing money on in OP's situation. Hence my argument.