Ryzen ECC: Has the ECC been proven to work?

coingaroo

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Hi everyone,

I've read the hardware requirements guide and searched the forum for various Ryzen ECC posts. I'm aware there are potential stability issues with older Ryzen generations and old BIOS versions, however the latest 3000 series seem trouble-free.

Asrock motherboards officially advertise support for ECC memory, including on the non-Pro Matisse (3000 series) chips. It boots with ECC memory in, and there seems to be empirical evidence that ECC might work, through inducing errors via overclocking.

However, back then there wasn't really enough time to test whether this ECC setup actually fares well against cosmic ray bit-flips or failing hardware. Now that it has been a few years since Ryzens came into existance, would anyone running a Ryzen + ECC memory have experiences on whether their chips have actually detected, and corrected, RAM bitflips?

For some more context before you say 'buy a Xeon and server mobo' - I am in Australia, Supermicro mobos aren't really a thing here, the used server market is absymal, I desire a miniITX form factor, hence all the avenues for scoring 'proper' server grade hardware are not really open to me.
 

subhuman

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Going Mini-ITX is really gonna limit your options. Not to discourage you from pursuit of your answers (I'm curious as to the definitive Ryzen ECC status as well) but have you looked at embedded options?
 

coingaroo

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I would love to have options like the one you linked, but unfortunately as I am in Australia, the board is completely unavailable in Australia except at 100% markups from eBay.

My closest would be the Asorck J5005-ITX, etc, but those are consumer grade and do not support ECC.

So my options (given the ITX-like form factor requirement) are essentially:

* Ryzen ECC (does it work??)
* No ECC
 

subhuman

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Have you tried? If you go to the page I linked and scroll down, it shows other vendors who have the item available. Have you tried contacting any of them directly and asking?
If you can get ASRock, how about ASRock Rack?

My closest would be the Asorck J5005-ITX, etc, but those are consumer grade and do not support ECC.
Integrated LAN is RealTek. Meaning you're pretty much stuck with devoting your one and only PCIe slot on that mini-motherboard to a NIC. It also supports 8GB RAM maximum, FreeNAS would not be happy.
The problem with smaller form factors is you have absolutely zero wiggle room. It pretty much has to have everything you need, or you're screwed.
ASRock Rack also has X570 Mini-ITX motherboards.
 

coingaroo

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Have you tried? If you go to the page I linked and scroll down, it shows other vendors who have the item available. Have you tried contacting any of them directly and asking?

I just don't think it's a good idea to be trying to import unavailable motherboards here. First of all, I am screwed in case there is an issue and I need to claim warranty, as I would need to pay economically prohibitive return shipping RMA costs, as well as be out of the mobo for a likely 2 weeks minimum, if not months. IF they accept a RMA. (I've had big brands just say "Sorry we don't offer international warranty" even if I offered to pay for return shipping). And ordering from 3rd party vendors is dodgier.

Secondly, the shipping, GST, and import tax paperwork along would be about 60-80 USD. That is an excessively high surcharge to pay for a device without warranty... for $100 USD more (540 USD) I could be buying a brand new Dell poweredge with a Xeon from a local retailer for that price!! The reason why I don't is wanting miniITX form factor.

And no, we don't have Asrock Rack here either :( It's not great but trying to import US parts isn't a good idea for us Aussies. Thanks for reminding me about the RealTek LAN though, that is not good. FWIW I plan on significantly reducing caching, etc, to make RAM work. Keep in mind I'm storing 2x4TB with infrequent accesses, single user, etc, it's not a big setup. 8GB should be fine I hope :)
 

subhuman

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I'll admit almost total ignorance of what the exact procedure would be for you to get approval for import, but I agree that amount of expense for a single component becomes prohibitive very quickly.
I'm out of ideas, and I'm not real familiar with Mini-ITX products, so at this point I'm going to wish you luck and bow out of this thread.
 

CYR_RUS

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My current config:
  • CPU: Ryzen Pro 2100GE (35W) (used, from Aliexpress)
  • MB: Asus PRIME A320M-K
  • RAM: 2 x CRUCIAL 16GB PC21300 CT16G4XFD8266 EUDIMM
  • Intel Optane 16Gb M.2 NVME as a Boot device (to get it working it's need to activate some UEFI parameters, something like additional PCI-E lanes on CPU. or so on)
  • FreeNAS 11.3
I'vу checked ECC is active, while booting Ubuntu 18.04 from USB and look to the output of those commands:
  • dmesg | grep -i edac
  • dmidecode
Dont think, if it possible to really reproduce/emulate hard memory bit-flip errors. As I know, оn Linux, EDAC driver just logged correctable 1-bit errors, and halt PC on uncorrectable errors.

Also, I've tested Ryzen 5 2600E (45W) on Asus PRIME A320M-A - all with the same ECC support.
Ryzen Pro 2100GE is, i think, rebranded Athlon 200GE Pro (35W), which is rarely available (Pro - means ECC support and some business features, like TPM).
Athlon and Ryzen APU without "Pro" didn't support ECC. Ryzen CPU's - will support ECC - but you will need then build headless config, or add discrete video card. A320 chipset are enough for basic builds (if you didn't need more than 4 SATA or memory overclocking or etc...).
 

subhuman

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A320 chipset are enough for basic builds (if you didn't need more than 4 SATA or memory overclocking or etc...).
If by not needing "etc" you mean not needing support for CPUs that are less than two years old, sure the 300 series chipsets are fine. But if you want Zen 2, you need 400 series at minimum.
 

CYR_RUS

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If by not needing "etc" you mean not needing support for CPUs that are less than two years old, sure the 300 series chipsets are fine. But if you want Zen 2, you need 400 series at minimum.
Of course, one need to twice checked MB vendor's HCL (Hardware compatibility list), to make sure that preferred CPU model is supported.
But for basic server needs (2-4 HDD/8-16GB RAM) - Zen 2 is too powerful and power hungry (min. 4 cores/65W).
As per ASUS HCL for PRIME A320M-K, some Zen 2 CPUs are supported, thanks to fresh BIOS updates.
https://www.asus.com/Motherboards/PRIME-A320M-K/HelpDesk_CPU/
 

no_connection

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Zen 2 is too powerful and power hungry (min. 4 cores/65W)
TDP is 100% irrelevant, even for 100% all core load it's inaccurate and shown to differ between brands.
As far as I can tell Zen 2 is more efficient per clock and can draw less power at idle. Also unused cores don't really draw much power so core count is almost irrelevant.
However sitting and waiting for CPU to do it's work do have downsides, the more time sensitive the work the more relevant a high clock powerful CPU are going to be.
 

CYR_RUS

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However sitting and waiting for CPU to do it's work do have downsides, the more time sensitive the work the more relevant a high clock powerful CPU are going to be.
For desktop PC it is true, on the other side, for typical FreeNAS build, which primary role is serving files, backups, I think, it depends.
Well, if you don't use a bunch of FreeNAS plugins, Plex 4K transcoding, for exampe, bhyve VMs, Nextcloud, Duplicati...
I use almost all of this features, and the Athlon Pro 200GE will be enough. But it's not available at retail, only OEM, so I bought used Ryzen Pro 2100GE from Ali.
1592926433630.png
 

no_connection

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Ill leave that as example and a starting point.

I'm not knocking "low power" CPU since they could be underclocked and drawing a tiny bit less power because that out of the box. But as far as I can tell they are no more power efficient than any other CPU, just more brick wall limited so to speak.

On my NAS I have disabled power saving so no down clock and just rely on core park to save power. I gave up maybe 3-5W but the performance difference was huge just browsing directories. I guess it kinda went off topic a bit, I just wanted to address the power hungry and lots of core thing.
The reason one would choose a low core low TDP would be because of IO or other parts of CPU drawing some idle, not because a higher TDP or core count draws more power, unless you find good evidence that they would.
 

Yorick

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There's been some discussion about Ryzen and ECC in these forums. It's been shown to work on AsRock Rack boards, though IPMI notification continues to be a work in progress.

AsRock have stated that all their AM4 boards support ECC.
Asus supports it on some boards, see https://rog.asus.com/forum/showthre...hat-Support-ECC-Mode-with-Ryzen-(ECC-Enabled)
MSI doesn't bother with ECC, it's not "consumer grade" and thus not their target market
Gigabyte has a few boards that support ECC: I don't know how many, and it's clearly not a focus for them

Both AsRock and Asus have "entry server board" aspirations, and AsRock seems further ahead with their ECC implementation, just in terms of offering it across the entire lineup. Those two companies would be your go-to. If you're choosing Asus, check first whether the particular board you want implements ECC.

Edited to add: I see a business opportunity to bring AsRock and Supermicro boards to Australia. Clearly, there's a market niche not being addressed.
 
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