Does the GA-H170N-WIFI (rev. 1.0) motherboard actually support ECC or not?

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Shiouen

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Sep 17, 2015
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I am not sure what they mean by 'operate in non-ECC mode'. Do they mean you can just throw in ECC memory but the error correction is not done?
 

William

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May 7, 2015
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I believe that is correct.

If I had memory laying around to test different types I would try, but after a series of new boards I am finding things are changing with V5 CPU's and new platforms. One lesion I learned long ago but still mess up on is look at the Memory Support List and stick with what's there.
GIGABYTE - Motherboard - Socket 1151 - GA-H170N-WIFI (rev. 1.0)

I remember many debates with V1 CPU's that could use enthusiast DDR3 on dual CPU platforms, then V2's came out and only ECC kits would work, some people couldn't understand why.

Also sticking with Memory Support List makes things much easyer for you in the long run.
 
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William

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Also note that this board requires UDIMM's where as before RDIMM's were what we used.

On boards I have here now RDIMM's simply will not work... :(
 

Shiouen

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Sep 17, 2015
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I believe that is correct.

If I had memory laying around to test different types I would try, but after a series of new boards I am finding things are changing with V5 CPU's and new platforms. One lesion I learned long ago but still mess up on is look at the Memory Support List and stick with what's there.
GIGABYTE - Motherboard - Socket 1151 - GA-H170N-WIFI (rev. 1.0)

I remember many debates with V1 CPU's that could use enthusiast DDR3 on dual CPU platforms, then V2's came out and only ECC kits would work, some people couldn't understand why.

Also sticking with Memory Support List makes things much easyer for you in the long run.
Also note that this board requires UDIMM's where as before RDIMM's were what we used.

On boards I have here now RDIMM's simply will not work... :(
Glad I checked out the details then. Was thinking this board would be a great fit for a mITX server box. Guess not :(.
Thanks!
 

Shiouen

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Oh it would make a nice server board with UDIMM's :)
UDIMM vs RDIMM is not really my point here. The fact that there is no way to use (functional) ECC on this board is what bothers me. I'll be using FreeNAS with ZFS so ECC would be an absolute must. And from the description it says only non-ECC mode is supported. :(
 

Shiouen

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I've noticed that consumer LGA 1151 boards which support ECC can only run the memory in non-ECC mode. At least for the boards I've been looking at. Quite a shame really, since server-grade hardware is that much more expensive and bloated with functionality you might not really need but do pay for... So sad.
 

Patriot

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Not sure I would call it supported if it doesn't use it...
Desktop boards have always worked with ECC dimms with ECC disabled.

Also note that this board requires UDIMM's where as before RDIMM's were what we used.

On boards I have here now RDIMM's simply will not work... :(
As far as I know... Rdimms have never worked on desktop boards till the x99 gen.
They work wonderfully on Asrock boards, some other vendors claim support as well.

ECC is ignorable, buffered vs unbuffered, not so much.
 
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RTM

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Jan 26, 2014
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I've noticed that consumer LGA 1151 boards which support ECC can only run the memory in non-ECC mode. At least for the boards I've been looking at. Quite a shame really, since server-grade hardware is that much more expensive and bloated with functionality you might not really need but do pay for... So sad.
Nothing new really, Intel needs to differentiate their consumer and enterprise products, so ECC is usually limited to their enterprise hardware.

AFAIK up until recently you could use e3 xeons in this class (socket 1150/1155) boards, but they removed that possibility(probably because a E3-1230v1-3 is cheaper than the i7 equivalent), so now you have to get a motherboard with a "server class" PCH (something like c236).

Oh and with regards to feature bloat on server grade hardware, I strongly disagree.
While you do get stuff like IPMI on most boards nowadays, you typically don't get things like wifi and audio.
 
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Shiouen

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Nothing new really, Intel needs to differentiate their consumer and enterprise products, so ECC is usually limited to their enterprise hardware.

AFAIK up until recently you could use e3 xeons in this class (socket 1150/1155) boards, but they removed that possibility(probably because a E3-1230v1-3 is cheaper than the i7 equivalent), so now you have to get a motherboard with a "server class" PCH (something like c236).

Oh and with regards to feature bloat on server grade hardware, I strongly disagree.
While you do get stuff like IPMI on most boards nowadays, you typically don't get things like wifi and audio.
Maybe it's just because I'm looking for a specific configuration. Not too expensive, 32GB ECC ram min., mITX (or µATX in case it's a perfect fit), capable CPU for running some basic services (torrent, nas, webserving, game server(s) and just fun stuff). It's really hard to find, especially since I'm opting for FreeNAS because of its ZFS support.

FreeNAS is not recommended for virtualization as it puts your data at more risk and in almost all cases you'll need an HBA to passthrough the hard drives. I've been looking so much at hardware the last 8 months and there was always a 'but...' with each component. Using the Asrock Rack atom boards isn't an option either because they don't support VT-d, byebye virtualization.

Splitting NAS and server on the other hand is way more expensive, kinda stupid really. So many options, possibilities, combinations. It makes me oh so indecisive. I could go endlessly on with examples of why current hardware doesn't really suit me.

It's truly in the details with these builds. It's both fun and very exhausting to do the research. Last thing that might give me some hope is running FreeBSD jails from a FreeNAS, making a 1 build solution very possible.

Thanks for the answers, all!
 

RTM

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Jan 26, 2014
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It sounds to me that you should be looking at buying hardware used, or perhaps find a different software platform than FreeNAS.

It may be difficult to find a mini itx board, but a micro atx board like a x8sil or a x9scl is certainly doable.
If you want to use ZFS you can use use ZFS on Linux. With that you can use Linux as the host OS with ZFS and KVM/Xen/LXC.