ASUS AMD Motherboard ECC BIOS Options

[jdratlif]

I just got a new ASUS Motherboard so it would support ECC RAM.

ASUS M5A78L-M LX PLUS AM3+ AMD 760G Micro ATX AMD Motherboard
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131795

In the BIOS Options for ECC, it has Disabled, Basic, Good, Super, Max, and User as options. The manual simply repeats that these are the options you can choose, without explaining what any of them mean.

Does anyone know which one I should select? I googled to find some explanation, but I have been unable to find anything useful.

Thanks

 

[DJ9]

I assume those options would relate to overclocking the ram. I'd assume Basic and Good would be a reasonable choice. (I'm totally guessing).

I'd just call up Asus support to clarify. 1-510-739-3777

 

[joeschmuck]

@DJ9, That would be a bad assumption and try a google search first. These are not overclocking options.

As I understand it the options are basically how quickly the ECC RAM is Scrubbed. I set mine for GOOD but I suspect you could set it for BASIC and it would be just fine too. From what I can understand, setting it to Max will scrub the RAM very quickly and that means a performance hit to the RAM and I would expect more power used as well. I doubt anyone would see a performance loss given the use of the system however I cannot speak from experience.

Of course you must have ECC RAM before changing this setting.

 

[DJ9]

@joeschmuck

Thanks for the clarification. Although you did notice the "guessing" part right? ;)

Personally, I've stayed away from Asus products lately due to their issues with QC.

 

[joeschmuck]

Yes, I noticed the guessing part. I like ASUS in general, only had one problem but that was after about 4 years of use and upgrades. As long as the MB supports the CPU I want to upgrade to and the amount of RAM I want, I'll keep it forever. My FreeNAS MB is an ASUS, not a problem so far. I do have a few very old ASUS boards here and they still work. But I'm not privy to the current QC issues so I hope if they do have a problem, they fix it.

 

[jdratlif]

I did send an email to Asus asking them. The person who replied didn't seem to know what it was and gave me a very vague answer of "it depends on the needs of the error correcting code". I have no idea what that means. I asked him to clarify, and all he told me was that Asus recommends I use the basic setting.

I suppose that is what I will do for now. Thanks.

 

[joeschmuck]

Not sure if you understand what scrubbing is but in a nutshell typically RAM will hold data within the cells and the data is strobed to ensure the data doesn't disappear. This is not reading the data and writing it back. So over a long period of time the word of data could become corrupt. With the ECC RAM the scrubbing will read a word of data and fix bit errors (up to a point) and write it back thus really refreshing the data. And the selection of BASIC, Good, etc... is just how fast it goes through all your RAM to do this.

Please take this explanation for what it's worth, it's probably a poor explanation of what these ASUS settings are but I truly believe it's a reasonable explanation even if I don't have all the mechanics down properly.

 

[DJ9]

I guess problems persist across all electronics sometimes. My Asus motherboard died just a tad over 1 year. I've purchased a case of NIC cards in the past that were a bad batch, think it was 17 out of 20 of them had issues. Same thing with hard drives, etc.

I remember one time a new server was delivered on a pallet and we refused it. The dude driving the truck was like??? I was like, the fork lift blades went through the entire box, and you don't see the issue? Oh my god. lol

 

[joeschmuck]

LOL, forklift tines through the box. Wish I could say I never have seen that before but I certainly have.

 

[titi_FreeBoxNas]

Hi,

This is quite an old thread, but we are wondering with Stevie about how things went with this card for you, jdratlif ?
Are you still using it ? Still ok for a little v9.3 home NAS ?

I don't know much about Asus as I've never got any so far. Is Qualcomm Atheros 8161/8171 ethernet controler ok ?

Thanks.

 

[jdratlif]

It's working fine for me. I'm still on 9.2.1.5, but I'm upgrading right now. I don't know about the Qualcomm chip. My Asus board has a Realtek. It seems to do okay, but this is mainly backup and video transfer for my media pc.

 

[titi_FreeBoxNas]

Thank you.