Will ECC Server Memory work in my X58 motherboard? (ASUS P6T)

[glitchmaster0001]

Hi so recently i acquired a cheap ASUS P6T X58 motherboard which im going to be pairing with an X5660 and OCing to 3.6GHz to match an i7 3960X and then selling the build for under $500. so i need 24GB of ram in the PC to make it look as attractive to potential buyers as possible. But the problem is that 24GB of desktop ram used or new costs alot. so i just had this crazy theory. since the IMC (integrated memory controller) is built into the CPUs and since im shoving a Xeon Server CPU into this board, does that mean now i can use ECC memory and not have issues since the IMC is built on the Xeon and the Xeon supports both ECC and regular memory? i know back then the memory controller was built into the northbridge but with LGA 1366 they introduced the IMC onto the CPU itself. i know that i7s dont support ecc but xeons do. so would my crazy theory work or has this theory have already been busted. i dont really care if the ECC function of the ram doesnt work since all i care about is getting dirt cheap ram in this board. 

 

I hope this thread will be kept for future readers who happen to come up with the same crazy theory as me and happen to stumble upon this thread, since if this theory works then this would be good reference material to people with the same question as we once did. and if this theory doesn't work well i guess it was for the sake of science... 

[Electronics Wizardy]

Probably not, but you can try if you have some. The x58 chipset doesn't support it.

 

Id probably go 16 gb with dual 8gb for about 50 dollars.

[Cracklingice]

If your motherboard natively supports xeons, you can check with the manufacturers web page.  Otherwise the only way to really find out for sure is to get the cheapest ecc you can and test it out.

[glitchmaster0001]

Just now, Electronics Wizardy said:

Probably not, but you can try if you have some. The x58 chipset doesn't support it.

 

Id probably go 16 gb with dual 8gb for about 50 dollars.

wait why would the chipset matter though? isnt the memory controller built onto the xeon which does support ecc? 

[Electronics Wizardy]

Just now, glitchmaster0001 said:

wait why would the chipset matter though? isnt the memory controller built onto the xeon which does support ecc? 

Intel locking it down to get the extra money for the server chipsets.

 

 

Are the x5650's unlocked?

[glitchmaster0001]

Just now, Electronics Wizardy said:

Intel locking it down to get the extra money for the server chipsets.

 

 

Are the x5650's unlocked?

no with old school xeons you oc via the base clock or something like that. ive seen people get stupid high overclocks like 4.7GHz on 1.35v with this xeon model. 

[Gazereths]

I'm interested to know this as well, I got my P6T up and running with a e5640 xeon (4 cores 8 threads) and it clocks like a beast, had it to 4.2 with 1.25v and 4.4 with 1.325v. You multiply the base clock by the CPU ratio, mine at 4.4 is 210 BCLK and 21 CPU ratio. 210x21=4410

4.2 validation: http://valid.x86.fr/ry1dpv

4.4 validation: http://valid.x86.fr/vn5rns

 

 

I might buy the cheapest stick of ECC I can find and see if it works. You can get 2gb sticks for ~£3

[glitchmaster0001]

2 hours ago, Gazereths said:

I'm interested to know this as well, I got my P6T up and running with a e5640 xeon (4 cores 8 threads) and it clocks like a beast, had it to 4.2 with 1.25v and 4.4 with 1.325v. You multiply the base clock by the CPU ratio, mine at 4.4 is 210 BCLK and 21 CPU ratio. 210x21=4410

4.2 validation: http://valid.x86.fr/ry1dpv

4.4 validation: http://valid.x86.fr/vn5rns

 

 

I might buy the cheapest stick of ECC I can find and see if it works. You can get 2gb sticks for ~£3

awesome! let me know what happens! i saw a video of TechYesCity and the guy got ECC Memory to work on a X58 board with an e5640 as well. though it was a gigabyte board so idk if it will work on my ASUS P6T. you have the vanilla P6T right? and are you going to buy ECC Registered or ECC Unregistered DIMMs? the reason why is i want to keep the build as cheap as possible and the amount of ram i want in here will get expensive fast with desktop memory so i though why not buy a 24GB kit of server ECC Registered DIMMs for $40 used and call it a day. since 24GB of desktop memory will cost much more. plus when i sell this PC 24GB ram looks much more attractive than 8GB.  

 

Also can you teach me how to OC on X58? ive only OC'd on AM2+, AM3, and LGA 775. basically all FSB style OCs. is it the same here? 

[SLAYR]

40 minutes ago, glitchmaster0001 said:

awesome! let me know what happens! i saw a video of TechYesCity and the guy got ECC Memory to work on a X58 board with an e5640 as well. though it was a gigabyte board so idk if it will work on my ASUS P6T. you have the vanilla P6T right? and are you going to buy ECC Registered or ECC Unregistered DIMMs? the reason why is i want to keep the build as cheap as possible and the amount of ram i want in here will get expensive fast with desktop memory so i though why not buy a 24GB kit of server ECC Registered DIMMs for $40 used and call it a day. since 24GB of desktop memory will cost much more. plus when i sell this PC 24GB ram looks much more attractive than 8GB.  

 

Also can you teach me how to OC on X58? ive only OC'd on AM2+, AM3, and LGA 775. basically all FSB style OCs. is it the same here? 

Make sure the board has support for ecc, and if it does get UNBUFFERED ram. Buffered or registered ecc is only meant for server boards, unbuffered will have an "e" in the ram speed such as ddr3 12800e, and an "r" will denote registered, if it has a "u"it is non ecc. 

 

LGA 1366 doesn't have a fsb, so the overclocking will be done through the multiplier and bclk.

[glitchmaster0001]

8 minutes ago, SLAYR said:

Make sure the board has support for ecc, and if it does get UNBUFFERED ram. Buffered or registered ecc is only meant for server boards, unbuffered will have an "e" in the ram speed such as ddr3 12800e, and an "r" will denote registered, if it has a "u"it is non ecc. 

 

LGA 1366 doesn't have a fsb, so the overclocking will be done through the multiplier and bclk.

so whats the difference between unbuffered and buffered memory? 

[Gazereths]

5 hours ago, glitchmaster0001 said:

awesome! let me know what happens! i saw a video of TechYesCity and the guy got ECC Memory to work on a X58 board with an e5640 as well. though it was a gigabyte board so idk if it will work on my ASUS P6T. you have the vanilla P6T right? and are you going to buy ECC Registered or ECC Unregistered DIMMs? the reason why is i want to keep the build as cheap as possible and the amount of ram i want in here will get expensive fast with desktop memory so i though why not buy a 24GB kit of server ECC Registered DIMMs for $40 used and call it a day. since 24GB of desktop memory will cost much more. plus when i sell this PC 24GB ram looks much more attractive than 8GB.  

 

Also can you teach me how to OC on X58? ive only OC'd on AM2+, AM3, and LGA 775. basically all FSB style OCs. is it the same here? 

I have the P6T SE, not sure if that's the vanilla board or not. It's easy enough to overclock on x58 though I am far from an expert.

 

Enable Manual mode in the AI Tweeker first of course. I only changed the BCLK and CPU RATIO settings then adjusted the voltage to get it to boot, did a 15 minute run of p95 and if it didn't crash went back and tweeked it some more, either increasing the BCLK or dropping the voltage. The CPU ratio tops out at 21, but sometimes it works better to drop the ratio and increases the BCLK to get to the desired speed. Of course disable any power saving features, speedstep etc, set PCIE to 100, I think I enabled load line calibration as well. To be honest there's a buttload of settings in there that I have no idea about so I imagine there are loads of little tweeks you could make to get the core voltage down. 

 

Tell me me how you get on with the hex core, I might get one myself if I see one cheap. 

[SLAYR]

5 hours ago, glitchmaster0001 said:

so whats the difference between unbuffered and buffered memory? 

There is an extra chip on the buffered memory to lessen load on the memory controller. 

 

But I am 99.9% sure that it will not work on your motherboard as you have a consumer board. If your board supports ecc then you will have to get unbuffered the registered ram won't even allow for the  system to post.

[DunePilot]

There are folks running ECC mem on X58 yes. With latest bios and the Xeon you might be able to. I've seen it run in a few Asus and GA boards.. not sure I've seen anyone else. There are 2-4 guys for sure running it over in the X58 thread on OCN.

[Gazereths]

On 7/29/2016 at 5:44 AM, glitchmaster0001 said:

awesome! let me know what happens! i saw a video of TechYesCity and the guy got ECC Memory to work on a X58 board with an e5640 as well. though it was a gigabyte board so idk if it will work on my ASUS P6T. you have the vanilla P6T right? and are you going to buy ECC Registered or ECC Unregistered DIMMs? the reason why is i want to keep the build as cheap as possible and the amount of ram i want in here will get expensive fast with desktop memory so i though why not buy a 24GB kit of server ECC Registered DIMMs for $40 used and call it a day. since 24GB of desktop memory will cost much more. plus when i sell this PC 24GB ram looks much more attractive than 8GB.  

 

Also can you teach me how to OC on X58? ive only OC'd on AM2+, AM3, and LGA 775. basically all FSB style OCs. is it the same here? 

OK good news provisionally, I bought a cheap 4GB  stick of  Kingston ECC from ebay for £4 and it works with the P6T SE and a e5640 Xeon. It only worked when on it's own though, no mixing and matching with non-ECC modules unsurprisingly. I've just got 2 more from ebay and am hoping that it will work OK when more than one slot is populated (can't see why it wouldn't) so I'll have 12 gigs of 1333 ECC, next is to see if it will overclock.

 

The part number for the ram I got is KTD-PE3138/4G. As far as I can find out from a cursory google search it's registered/unbuffered, though I'm no where near certain.

If anyone can confirm what type of ECC this is I'd be grateful.

 

 

[glitchmaster0001]

1 hour ago, Gazereths said:

OK good news provisionally, I bought a cheap 4GB  stick of  Kingston ECC from ebay for £4 and it works with the P6T SE and a e5640 Xeon. It only worked when on it's own though, no mixing and matching with non-ECC modules unsurprisingly. I've just got 2 more from ebay and am hoping that it will work OK when more than one slot is populated (can't see why it wouldn't) so I'll have 12 gigs of 1333 ECC, next is to see if it will overclock.

 

The part number for the ram I got is KTD-PE3138/4G. As far as I can find out from a cursory google search it's registered/unbuffered, though I'm no where near certain.

If anyone can confirm what type of ECC this is I'd be grateful.

 

 

 

i have even better news, i saw a dude have a P6T like mines and he got 36GB of ECC Registered memory to work on it. and the CPU was an i7 920 too, so i think your best bang for buck option here is to buy 24GB of ECC Registered memory off ebay and it will work. just flash to latest BIOS. hes selling the PC on craigslist as well. when i saw that board with the RAM with the extra advanced buffer chip i knew he was using server memory on that board. 

 

here is his listing. you can see hes running a P6T with 36GB of ECC Registered Server Memory on an i7 920, lol

 

https://sfbay.craigslist.org/eby/sys/5705620873.html

[SLAYR]

29 minutes ago, glitchmaster0001 said:

i have even better news, i saw a dude have a P6T like mines and he got 36GB of ECC Registered memory to work on it. and the CPU was an i7 920 too, so i think your best bang for buck option here is to buy 24GB of ECC Registered memory off ebay and it will work. just flash to latest BIOS. hes selling the PC on craigslist as well. when i saw that board with the RAM with the extra advanced buffer chip i knew he was using server memory on that board. 

 

here is his listing. you can see hes running a P6T with 36GB of ECC Registered Server Memory on an i7 920, lol

 

https://sfbay.craigslist.org/eby/sys/5705620873.html

I wouldn't trust people on craigslist, and that ad lists nothing about ecc, nor registered ecc, and the pics are good enough quality to see what is printed on the modules, as well as the seller is selling extra ddr3 besides what is in the system.

 

An i7 920 will NOT support ecc memory, and the asus board will NOT support registered ecc(unbuffered should be fine with a xeon cpu).

[Gazereths]

 

This apparently shows an i7 920 with ECC........

[SLAYR]

5 minutes ago, Gazereths said:

This apparently shows an i7 920 with ECC........

You can get i7s to work with ecc, but you have to disable the ecc features making it just regular ddr3.

[glitchmaster0001]

10 minutes ago, Gazereths said:

 

This apparently shows an i7 920 with ECC........

yeah thats tech yes city. this youtuber specializes in used PC builds with xeon CPUs 

[glitchmaster0001]

20 minutes ago, SLAYR said:

I wouldn't trust people on craigslist, and that ad lists nothing about ecc, nor registered ecc, and the pics are good enough quality to see what is printed on the modules, as well as the seller is selling extra ddr3 besides what is in the system.

 

An i7 920 will NOT support ecc memory, and the asus board will NOT support registered ecc(unbuffered should be fine with a xeon cpu).

look at the supertalent module. the part numer i traced back to being an ECC Registered DIMM, and also look at his VMware screenshot. 36GB ram on a i7 920. 

[SLAYR]

4 minutes ago, glitchmaster0001 said:

look at the supertalent module. the part numer i traced back to being an ECC Registered DIMM, and also look at his VMware screenshot. 36GB ram on a i7 920. 

Yeah he never shows that ram in the system(or any ram for that matter) or what modules he used he is also selling two other sets of ram at the bottom of the listing.

 

The 36Gb is most likely because while Intel says they only support up to 24gb they can actually run a little bit higher then that. Linus proved the 5960x will work with 128gb of ram, but only supports 64gb.

[glitchmaster0001]

3 minutes ago, SLAYR said:

Yeah he never shows that ram in the system(or any ram for that matter) or what modules he used he is also selling two other sets of ram at the bottom of the listing.

 

The 36Gb is most likely because while Intel says they only support up to 24gb they can actually run a little bit higher then that. Linus proved the 5960x will work with 128gb of ram, but only supports 64gb.

look at the first pic, youll see 6 dimms occupied. and we know that if you mix ecc and non ecc it wont work, 

[glitchmaster0001]

4 hours ago, SLAYR said:

You can get i7s to work with ecc, but you have to disable the ecc features making it just regular ddr3.

i dont give one damn about the ECC functionally lol. all i care about is more ram for less $$$ and if that means losing ECC functionally then i dont really care about that at all. if cheap ram works, fantastic, ill just give my 2x4gb sticks of desktop memory to my dad for his PC. 

[glitchmaster0001]

7 hours ago, Gazereths said:

OK good news provisionally, I bought a cheap 4GB  stick of  Kingston ECC from ebay for £4 and it works with the P6T SE and a e5640 Xeon. It only worked when on it's own though, no mixing and matching with non-ECC modules unsurprisingly. I've just got 2 more from ebay and am hoping that it will work OK when more than one slot is populated (can't see why it wouldn't) so I'll have 12 gigs of 1333 ECC, next is to see if it will overclock.

 

The part number for the ram I got is KTD-PE3138/4G. As far as I can find out from a cursory google search it's registered/unbuffered, though I'm no where near certain.

If anyone can confirm what type of ECC this is I'd be grateful.

 

i think this is ECC Registered/buffered memory. Because ECC Registered is also know as buffered memory. am i right? @SLAYR

if im correct then that means i can buy cheap ass ECC Registered DIMMs on ebay for much less $$$ and have much higher capacity since @Gazereths

has just pioneered and confirmed that ECC Registered memory will work on a P6T provided that it has a Xeon CPU inside. 

[DunePilot]

Check newegg, they have good deals all the time there on corsair dominator and corsair vengeance. I picked up 48GB 1600 or 1866 ram awhile back, honestly don't remember which. Super cheap, sometimes different colors or GB sizes will have considerable discounts over the others.