Does ECC memory require motherboard AND cpu support?

[asand1]

I apologise if I sounded salty. I'll see what I can find. Afaik, you can't run ECC in a desktop board unless it also supports a Xeon. Most times the support is not made public however.

[asand1]

Something I didn't think about until now, is that C2Q CPUs and motherboards keep the memory controller on the motherboard and not the CPU die. I imagine this means your stick with whatever the mobo specifies. Still looking for accounts of it working though.

[ARikozuM]

1 minute ago, asand1 said:

Something I didn't think about until now, is that C2Q CPUs and motherboards keep the memory controller on the motherboard and not the CPU die. I imagine this means your stick with whatever the mobo specifies. Still looking for accounts of it working though.

It will work. The CPU only handles the ECC chip itself. If the CPU does not support, ECC turns off and RAM runs as normal.

[H0R53]

I have a Xeon X5460 on that board I specified earlier. The BIOS is modified with Xeon microcodes. Now the question I have is should I get buffered or unbuffered? From what others have said I should get unbffered ("U label") memory like this

[ARikozuM]

1 minute ago, H0R53 said:

I have a Xeon X5460 on that board I specified earlier. The BIOS is modified with Xeon microcodes. Now the question I have is should I get buffered or unbuffered? From what others have said I should get unbffered ("U label") memory like this

If the RAM slots take unbuffered, go with unbuffered. 

[H0R53]

They do take unbuffered,

[H0R53]

The best thing is that ECC DDR2 is 20-40% cheaper than non-ECC.

[asand1]

Your best chance would be unbuffered I think.

[H0R53]

2 minutes ago, asand1 said:

Your best chance would be unbuffered I think.

I'll see what I can do.