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Comment by spystath | Hacker News Reader

Oh yes, I understand that. I only wish that ECC support in general starts getting more traction in consumer electronics. Nowadays (unless you go to super noisy super expensive server hardware) maybe with an AMD processor maybe a motherboard manufacturer will have a 20-links-deep document that says that these ECC modules may be supported, proceed at your own risk, might set your flat on fire, kill kittens etc. When you had a couple of gigs of ram it was probably irrelevant but if you have multiple TB of RAM caching file access ECC should become normalised.

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ECC isn’t that hard to get in consumer platforms now. The situation has changed a lot from what you’re thinking.

You can get ECC support on Intel 12th and 13th generation parts by buying a motherboard with a W680 chipset.

You can get ECC support on modern AMD CPUs by picking a motherboard that lists ECC support listed on the product page. It’s not that hard.

And you can get reasonably priced notebook with ECC by...?

Lenovo has them. Again, not hard if you look.

I know some people won’t be happy until every laptop has ECC RAM and is super cheap, but the reality is that the demand for ECC RAM is very low. The majority of users would choose the extra battery life and lower price if given the option.

I looked and it's hard. Had to resort to reddit recommendations.

Nice circular reasoning. But nothing will change till we're not vocal enough about ECC benefits and shady pricing. I assure you though, it's not about my happiness :)

Yea, the biggest downfall of ECC in computers was Intel intentionally disabling ECC in dies uses for the consumer processors and leaving it only for Xeons. As a way of forcefully keeping the market segregated.

AMD otoh has brought ECC to the table in Ryzens without the same shenanigans

I love ECC RAM, but I disagree on one small point.

Registered (meaning ECC and buffered) RAM is common in the workstation market, so it is not limited to noisy servers.

Check out HP Z series and Dell Precision workstations. They are available used / refurbished at low prices.

Do you think apple will reintroduce it in the Mac Pros?

There’s lots of off the shelf laptops available with ECC memory, some even in slim form factors. For desktops the entire Thinkstation lineup has ECC available to option or as standard.

For the higher priced models you cant even order them with non-ECC memory.

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