Ryzen w/ DDR4 Ecc unbuffered

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RobstarUSA

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Sep 15, 2016
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With the new 5xxx series coming out, I'd like to recycle my Ryzen 5 3600 into a "mini server" role with ddr4 ecc unbuff. I figure this should be as fast or faster than a dual e5-2643 (HT off) and use much less power as well.Anyone know how well this is supported? I've read conflicting reports the motherboard has to support it, however since the memory controller is on the CPU itself, isn't that all that is needed? OS will be Linux (probably Ubuntu or Debian)
 

Magic8Ball

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Nov 27, 2019
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Good question, I'd like to know the answer too. I was under the impression that all Ryzen CPUs don't officially support ECC ram because it hasn't been through AMDs internal certification process, but AMD themselves have confirmed it will work as long as the motherboard manufactuer has enabled support as well, which is fairly straighforward for them to do.
 

llowrey

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Feb 26, 2018
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I am running a Ryzen 3600 on an ASRock Rack X470D4U. The BIOS has specific support for ECC and I have it enabled. Linux reports that it is enabled but I have not been able to conclusively prove to myself that it's working. I did try overclocking the RAM in hopes of triggering some correctable errors but only managed to trigger hard faults which would reset the machine.
 
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sboesch

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Aug 3, 2012
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There is "ECC Support" for the Ryzen CPU's but, the implementation of actual error correcting seems to be up in the air. AMD has not be too forthcoming with what they mean by "ECC Support" with Ryzen. I researched this because of wonky errors I was getting with my ZFS pools that were memory related. I have two Ryzen 7 3700X CPU's with the ASRock Rack X470D series boards doing KVM work and ZFS storage, both of these machines do not use ECC RAM.
The wonky errors I was having was because I was running them with their XMP profiles, once I clocked them down to 3000mhz all the wonky ZFS errors went away. I would suggest buying some quality 3200MHZ desktop memory for Ryzen 3000x series CPU's.
 

RobstarUSA

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Sep 15, 2016
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My idea was to replace some Sandy Bridge-E 1U servers with a much faster ryzen 3600 with 64GB ddr4 3200 ecc unbuff, but I need to make sure it actually works correctly before I do it. At this point from the above responses it seems I can't really depend on ryzen properly supporting ecc so will probably stick with my older servers.
 

Magic8Ball

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Nov 27, 2019
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The Asrock Rack boards like the X470D4U2-2T have a memory QVL that explicitally lists ECC dimms, so it's probably a safe bet these will work as advertised, but you could always email them to double check.

That doesn't really answer the details of how ECC support works with Ryzen, but it might be enough for you to go ahead with your build.
 

EffrafaxOfWug

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Feb 12, 2015
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All Ryzen CPUs have a memory controller capable of talking with unbuffered ECC memory (with the exception of the APUs where only the Pro lines can use ECC UDIMMs) but as always it's up to the motherboard and BIOS to enable the use of these. The ECC support is unofficial, so some motherboard vendors/models contain this support, others don't. If a vendor confirms that ECC is supported on the board, then you should be good to go.

Being UDIMMs, it's only going to work with single bit errors (anything bigger than that would trigger a hard fault) but I'm not aware of any way of deliberately introducing those. I'm not sure how anyone could conclusively prove it's working on an intel or any other chip either TBH.

FWIW I'm using debian with Zen2 chips and ECC UDIMMs in both an ASRock X470D4U and X470 Taichi; support for the Zen2 memory controller didn't make it's way in to linux until 5.4 IIRC, so it didn't show up in linux prior to January at all (and if you're using debian stable without a backported kernel it still won't show up I don't think).

The wonky errors I was having was because I was running them with their XMP profiles, once I clocked them down to 3000mhz all the wonky ZFS errors went away. I would suggest buying some quality 3200MHZ desktop memory for Ryzen 3000x series CPU's.
I don't know if it's related, but I've read lots of anecdotes about people having problems with XMP profiles and Zen2 chips, particularly with corsair modules. I don't bother with overlocking myself and just run memory stock (makes negligible difference to my workloads) but the word on the street is that if you do, don't rely on XMP and tweak manually instead (think there's utils created for this).
 

lowfat

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Nov 25, 2016
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There were a few guys testing ECC on different AMD4 Ryzen boards over on the Hardware Canucks forum. ECC seems to work on some boards, but the errors are never reported to the OS.

 

RobstarUSA

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Sep 15, 2016
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I was really hoping someone would say "yeah it's not confirmed but it's been proven to work" on "X" board or with "Y" config.

Hoping to save some power/energy cost/noise on my Cisco UCS Sandy-E server with a nice fast/modern ryzen. My backup server is an HP Z230 which runs fine as well. I think I could replace both of them with a 3900x that I may upgrade to 5600x for gaming, however it doesn't seem there is confidence to actually do the job :-/ On top of that finding the ASROCK board, it uses a last gen chipset & is like $250 from what i'm seeing.

I appreciate all the comments guys, and thanks for the info even if the situation isn't as good as I had hoped.
 

EffrafaxOfWug

Radioactive Member
Feb 12, 2015
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Interesting thread - someone actually wired up a DIMM so as to deliberately introduce bit-flips for the purposes of testing ECC; errors were logged in the OS (presumably via edac since they're using proxmox) but not in the IPMI log (hopefully just a bug that'll be fixed if ASRR ever get around to releasing a new version - I've not tested with the 2.05 beta that's been floating around yet).

From this post:
I am happy to report ECC reporting functional on at least 2 mobo's.
Setups tested so far
* AMD Ryzen 9 3950x & ASUS Prime X570-P
* AMD Ryzen 9 3950x & Asrock rack X470D4U
For me the X470D4U was the most important so I don't think I will continue checking the other boards.

The method I used was to use the inner wires of some electrical cable and stick it in the memory bank with 8GB ECC UDIMM in it.
using
proxmox

...

I saw the report of corrected errors. From the 2 boards only the X470D4U has IPMI as far as I could tell but the IPMI log is not showing any ecc errors :( which is a mayor oversight from the manufacturer if you ask me. Let's hope they can fix that in an update.
 

RobstarUSA

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Sep 15, 2016
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Thanks for that. I'm more interested in the X570-P as that is something I can actually just buy locally. I only really care about it in syslog as I'll never check ipmi log. Maybe I can replace these servers afterall.

My current boxes are:

3900x on Crosshair VI hero wifi ac with 4*8G ddr4-3200C16 (linux desktop)
3600 on Asus x570 TUF wifi 2*8G ddr4-3600C16 (windows gaming)
Server: 2 * E5-2650v2 (just purchased actually) with 64G ddr3-ecc reg

So I'll do a shuffle:
3900x stays put (linux desktop)
3600 -> X570-P and pick up 2x16G or 2x32G ecc unbuff (new server)
5600x -> X570 Tuf Wifi (windows gaming)

Almost everything gets an upgrade :)
 
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KarelG

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Jan 29, 2020
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If you'd like to have ECC RAM support for sure like for example in Intel's Xeon domain, then I would recommend to go epyc route. For small NAS it may be epyc 3000 and you may be happy. Or, you may aswell use some ryzen embedded/industrial board from trusted manufacturer if you have any. But anyway, Linux and probably even worser FreeBSD support for proper reporting ECC error on ryzen/UDIMM platform will be kind of hit and miss.
 
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RobstarUSA

Active Member
Sep 15, 2016
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Thanks for that. I'm more interested in the X570-P as that is something I can actually just buy locally. I only really care about it in syslog as I'll never check ipmi log. Maybe I can replace these servers afterall.

My current boxes are:

3900x on Crosshair VI hero wifi ac with 4*8G ddr4-3200C16 (linux desktop)
3600 on Asus x570 TUF wifi 2*8G ddr4-3600C16 (windows gaming)
Server: 2 * E5-2650v2 (just purchased actually) with 64G ddr3-ecc reg

So I'll do a shuffle:
3900x stays put (linux desktop)
3600 -> X570-P and pick up 2x16G or 2x32G ecc unbuff (new server)
5600x -> X570 Tuf Wifi (windows gaming)

Almost everything gets an upgrade :)
Just wanted to update this.

I've picked up a 5800x & have it in my windows gaming box. Really impressed with this CPU. For the performance (gaming) I dont' think it's overpriced as everyone says it is.

I have the Ryzen 5 3600 in the X570-P. I tossed in 2*32GB ddr4-2666mhz ram (ECC UNBUFFERED, HP brand and while I can't find any ecc setting in the bios, linux recognizes it at boot. "dmidecode -t memory" also says ecc is functioning.

I picked up an WS X570 Ace for $200 from Amazon that arrived about a week ago and I will update away from the Crosshair VI Hero which has given me pci-e slot issues. It's going to be nice to have 3 x8 pci-e slots anyhow so I can run my NIC at full speed.
 

dandanio

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Oct 10, 2017
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I have been running a 3950x on a ASRock X570D4I-2T w/64GB of ECC DDR4 RAM for over 6 months now. ESXI 7.0, very stable. :) Great little board w/ DUAL 10Gbe copper. Highly recommended. Just make sure you get certain sticks. More discussion here: ASRock X570D4I-2T
In fact I like it so much that I am building another platform, but with a 5600x CPU.