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Comment by mixmastamyk | Hacker News Reader

Recently decided not to buy the AMD laptop from framework because they didn't bother to implement ECC. Started me thinking that I don't really need a new laptop, have an old one... so why continue to suffer from compromised parts at my desk?

Unfortunately AMD has been going the wrong way with this. Oddly enough, Intel has quietly added a few cheaper models with ECC support.

Unlike the author I don't have time for building a new PC and a bunch of maybes. I found this machine that's pretty cheap:

https://www.dell.com/en-us/shop/desktop-computers/precision-...

This one has a CPU option with a TDP of 65 W. What do y'all think?

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I think you're being a bit harsh to AMD on this, you still can run ECC on their consumer CPUs, you just need to research the motherboard because any motherboard/chipset combo could have ECC support.

That Dell has the Intel W680 chipset that is responsible for giving any Intel CPU ECC, just more pointless market segmentation by Intel. I don't know if I would give Intel a glowing review for that, you can also buy an OEM system with an Ryzen Pro processor if you want that kind of ECC guarantee.

You're not going to find Intel offerings with ECC solutions for light laptops either right now.

> Just need to do a bunch of research and trial and error

Or just buy one?

> buy an OEM system

Who sells certified ECC systems with AMD at similar prices? I did look but didn’t find much already assembled.

>Who sells certified ECC systems with AMD at similar prices?

I don't think you can blame AMD for the OEMs choices. Lenovo does compete in a way. You have to buy a GPU on their Threadripper workstations because of no iGPU for the computer to fall back on like the Dell's Intel iGPU. Also your Dell comes with 1 non-ECC 8GB DIMM standard, you have to pay $247 to upgrade to an ECC DIMM. Lenovos Threadrippers come with the ECC standard and can even run registered DIMMs.

But yeah it is a $2500k Threadripper workstation with no GPU compared to a $1300 I5 workstation with no GPU.

If you want to build an ECC AMD system some manufacturers want your money: https://www.supermicro.com/en/products/motherboard/h13sae-mf

Frankly "shopping" OEM sites makes me crazy and it's why I build my own.

I haven't looked but I suspect not many laptops support ECC, if any. That's not a good reason to skip AMD.

The Dell may support ECC, but as any workstation it's pricier than consumer grade desktop with equivalent performance. If you need it, you need it but usually individuals don't pay for that, their employers do.

It’s a thousand and change, cheaper than a similarly specc’d laptop.

And never been given the option.

There are some xeon thinkpads that have full fat ECC capability, however you need to be exceptionally rigorous in making sure that's what you are getting. Only some of the laptop xeon models support ECC, and it's not as simply as "higher cpu model number better", it's a fucked up matrix that intel loves to do.

I believe that there might be issues with it not being enabled properly if you buy the machine with a minimum of non-ecc memory intending to switch it out, because lenovo does something fucky if you don't get ECC from the get go. I could be misremembering that last bit, it's been a couple of years since I looked at ECC capable workstation laptops.

But yeah, when framework comes out with an ECC workstation laptop is when I'll finally consider getting a new laptop.

It’s not a question of whether we want it or not. You’ll have to take it up with AMD on enablement of ECC support on non-PRO U-series mobile processors.

Thanks for clarifying. That said, if you did want it, couldn’t you just offer a PRO series option e.g. AMD Ryzen 7 PRO 7840U?

Do we not deserve pro parts? Just a bunch of amateurs over here at HN? ;-)

I suspect the group that wants to physically maintain their laptop but doesn’t care about data integrity isn’t too large.

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