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mikewinddale
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ECC support for Ryzen

Fri Jul 27, 2018 7:36 pm

Is there a feasible way to construct a Ryzen system that supports ECC? I'm seeing a lot of AM4 motherboards say they support ECC if the CPU is a Ryzen Pro. However, I can't actually find any Ryzen Pro CPUs for sale anywhere.

Now, I know Threadripper is an option, but I was hoping for something cheaper.

Am I missing something? It's very frustrating. I was hoping for an alternative to a Xeon.
 
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Re: ECC support for Ryzen

Fri Jul 27, 2018 7:56 pm

Ryzen Pros are just validated for ECC support and they are OEM-only. The memory controller on regular Ryzen do support ECC but it is not "validated". They are a few bugs with the small number of motherboards that claim to have ECC support namely they don't do 2-bit error detection system halt. It is mostly a firmware issue though.
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mikewinddale
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Re: ECC support for Ryzen

Fri Jul 27, 2018 8:14 pm

Krogoth, thanks.

So let's say a particular AM4 motherboard says ECC support only for Ryzen Pro. So you're saying that if I buy a regular Ryzen, it ought to support ECC, but it's not just validated?

So will the ECC option in the BIOS still show up and let me activate it?

In other words, are you basically saying that it should work (subject to the 2-bit caveat you mentioned), but that the manufacturer just doesn't guarantee it?

I wouldn't want to go buy a Ryzen and a motherboard, only to find out that the ECC option in the BIOS is greyed out or something.

Anyway, the fact that 2-bit error halt often fails, is not a promising sign. Ugh, sigh. Damnit AMD, you're so close to offering a product that's competitive with the Xeon.
 
mikewinddale
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Re: ECC support for Ryzen

Fri Jul 27, 2018 8:19 pm

And now I'm looking at Threadripper motherboards. I could have sworn that a lot of them supported ECC, but nope, it looks like I was wrong.

Damn, why won't AMD just sell the Ryzen Pro retail? Sigh.
 
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Re: ECC support for Ryzen

Fri Jul 27, 2018 11:02 pm

ECC memory is typically used in true server/workstation-tier. So if you want proper ECC support without any caveats or stupid issues. You are pretty much stuck with Xeon, Ryzen Pro and Epyc. As far as motherboard vendors are concerned, Tyan and Supermicro are really the only safe bets. The other vendors require a lot of careful researching on their line-up.
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Topinio
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Re: ECC support for Ryzen

Sat Jul 28, 2018 1:55 am

All of which sucks, but I could live with it if I could actually get a Ryzen Pro and board for it from one of those 2.

Edit: maybe in time for Picasso next year?
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thecoldanddarkone
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Re: ECC support for Ryzen

Sat Jul 28, 2018 1:04 pm

Topinio wrote:
All of which sucks, but I could live with it if I could actually get a Ryzen Pro and board for it from one of those 2.

Edit: maybe in time for Picasso next year?


Or just buy a coffee lake xeon?
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JustAnEngineer
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Re: ECC support for Ryzen

Sat Jul 28, 2018 1:07 pm

...or EPYC in socket SP3.
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thecoldanddarkone
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Re: ECC support for Ryzen

Sat Jul 28, 2018 1:11 pm

JustAnEngineer wrote:
...or EPYC in socket SP3.



That as well. Or a skylake-x xeon, etc, etc.
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Topinio
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Re: ECC support for Ryzen

Sat Jul 28, 2018 3:06 pm

Because and EPYC or Skylake-X build is a whole different price game.

In my case, the next upgrade is the HTPC and I want a Ryzen Pro build. My last 4 personal CPU purchases have been Intel (7 if we include laptops) and while AMD is competitive I want to support it because monopolies suck. If by some miracle the pound stops being in the toilet, my next main machine in 2019-2021 should be a 1S workstation build with a decent big chip ...
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Waco
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Re: ECC support for Ryzen

Sat Jul 28, 2018 5:33 pm

ASRock boards for TR support ECC out of the box (including double bit halt/reboot) from what I've read. I think their regular Ryzen boards do the same.

I'll be building a TR NAS with ECC RAM once we get our 8086K swapped out for a 1950X - ASRock is probably the vendor I'll go with since they seem to be the only ones consistently supporting "odd" features like ECC.
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Bauxite
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ground truth

Sat Jul 28, 2018 6:52 pm

There's conjecture, then there is reality.

Buy asrock. Then buy samsung b-die.

I have logged (WHEA) corrected memory errors on their X370 and X399 boards with a 1700X and a 1950X. 9 chip ram with only 8 chips initialized doesn't correct itself ;)

You can have your overclocked cake and eat it with ECC icing too, as I type this on 64GB of DDR4 running at 2933.

I have a X470 with a 2700X as well but haven't gotten around to pointing a hairdryer it while running at bleeding edge timings.

The consumer APUs are a no-go apparently, probably the dual ported IMC (or whatever is different) makes bios support harder. Either that or AMD took a page from intel and blew an e-fuse. My money is on the former.
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Topinio
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Re: ground truth

Sun Jul 29, 2018 4:43 am

Bauxite wrote:
The consumer APUs are a no-go apparently, probably the dual ported IMC (or whatever is different) makes bios support harder. Either that or AMD took a page from intel and blew an e-fuse. My money is on the former.

Do you have any links on that? I'd be happy enough to buy a pro APU only they don't seem to be sold anywhere, and was considering trying a consumer one. (My build will have a dGPU anyway, but as I found with the main machine, saving a few quid on the iGPU-less chip is a false economy...)
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deruberhanyok
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Re: ECC support for Ryzen

Sun Jul 29, 2018 8:19 am

I'd add ASRock Rack to that list of vendors to check out. It's their "workstation" brand. Although as has been pointed out some of their regular boards should work with it as well.

I've been having real good luck with ASRock recently, and I'm actually looking at one of their Rack branded boards for a workstation build I might need to do soon.
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mikewinddale
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Re: ECC support for Ryzen

Thu Feb 14, 2019 11:28 am

I'm using a Gigabyte X470 Aorus Gaming 7 Wifi with Kingston DDR4 2666 MHz ECC KSM26ED8/16ME.

My CPU is a Ryzen 7 2700X.

According to Gigabyte's spec sheet,
Support for ECC Un-buffered DIMM 1Rx8/2Rx8 memory modules
* ECC is only supported with AMD Ryzen™ and Athlon™ of PRO-series CPU.


But when I bought the motherboard, what it said was that ECC was supported on all non-APU Ryzens (i.e. all Ryzens lacking integrated graphics). I'm not sure why they changed the specification.

When I run "wmic memphysical get memoryerrorcorrection" in the Windows command line, the result is 6, which means "Multi-bit ECC". So ECC seems to be working.

Here's the bottom line, as far as I know:
APUs never support ECC.
Ryzen Pro is officially validated
A non-Pro, non-APU Ryzen ought to support ECC as long as the motherboard supports ECC too. So if the motherboard suggests any form of ECC support, you ought to be good with a non-APU Ryzen. But no guarantees.

By the way, here's what the Asrock X470 Taichi says:
- AMD Ryzen series CPUs (Pinnacle Ridge) support DDR4 3466+(OC) / 3200(OC) / 2933/2667/2400/2133 ECC & non-ECC, un-buffered memory*
- AMD Ryzen series CPUs (Summit Ridge) support DDR4 3466+(OC) / 3200(OC) / 2933(OC) / 2667/2400/2133 ECC & non-ECC, un-buffered memory*
- AMD Ryzen series CPUs (Raven Ridge) support DDR4 3466+(OC) / 3200(OC) / 2933/ 2667/2400/2133 non-ECC, un-buffered memory*


So regular Ryzens (Pinnacle Ridge and Summit Ridge) support ECC while APUs (Raven Ridge) do not.

The Gigabyte X470 Aorus Gaming 7 Wifi used to have a very similar statement, so I don't want why they changed it. I'm using the latest BIOS, and the ECC support doesn't seem to have been withdrawn. But if you want to be safe, go with an Asrock.

I just submitted a support ticket to Gigabyte, asking if ECC support is being disabled or withdrawn. I'll update if I receive a response.

And as I mentioned, I'm using Kingston DDR4 2666 MHz ECC KSM26ED8/16ME memory.
 
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Re: ECC support for Ryzen

Thu Feb 14, 2019 1:14 pm

I think the spec needs to be parsed as ECC is only supported with AMD Ryzen™ and (Athlon™ of PRO-series) CPU. Or perhaps they're playing CYA, since AMD doesn't officially validate ECC support on Ryzen.

But yeah, my understanding has been if the motherboard supports it and you're not using an APU, you should be good.
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Airmantharp
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Re: ECC support for Ryzen

Fri Feb 15, 2019 5:31 am

If you could actually get Ryzen Pro APUs, then you'd be fine with one- but AMD isn't selling those to anyone but OEMs AFAIK.
 
reeeebooo^
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Re: ECC support for Ryzen

Fri Feb 15, 2019 7:36 am

Normal Ryzens should work, APUs is a no go, never seen the Pro APUs, wouldn´t trust them in any normal motherboard.

Verifed ECC with my Asus B450 and Ryzen 2700.

Worth to note is:
- How the OS handles the errors seem to be a bit weaker on AMD than for intel.
- Support for "unsupported" feature worked better on some OSs than others.
- BIOS settings are probably not there (maybe on some asrocks ?)
-Verify!

Some vendors are shady and support ECC DIMM, but not ECC, in other words they work as normal modules, with no ECC.

What I did to feel "safe" was this:
Installed linux, then using an ECC aware memtest utility (passmark memtest86), tighten timings until there was a reasonable level of errors, say one per 30 minutes to an hour. Verified that I still had errors (corrected) when I booted the OS, by using whatever tool your OS has for that.
Verfied that prime95 using blend and lot´s of ram was stable over night.
The I ran two VMs one with prime95 blend and one with a memtest in my guest, verified that the guests had zero errors and that the host had enough errors to make me feel "safe", 20-30 overnight.

Actualy I did this above with linux (works like charm with a lot of ryzen features), freenas (works ok) and vmware (sucks a lot with ryzen, bye bye powersave) and a more odd tests that is most likely a massive waste of time.

The when done released all timings back to normal, checked for errors and has been running FreeNAS since.
 
Waco
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Re: ECC support for Ryzen

Fri Feb 15, 2019 10:50 am

An easier route is to boot up an Ubuntu thumb drive or something else Linux and confirm the running EDAC config.
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reeeebooo^
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Re: ECC support for Ryzen

Fri Feb 15, 2019 11:29 am

Waco wrote:
An easier route is to boot up an Ubuntu thumb drive or something else Linux and confirm the running EDAC config.


Yes, or passmark =)

But it might be important to know that your OS detects the errors, not just the hardware.
Also I wanted to know that it was solid, lot´s of "opinions and knowledge" on what is bugged and what´s not.
You can push the OC so far that you start to get multibits to.

But you are correct that it is no need to make it too complicated.
 
jihadjoe
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Re: ECC support for Ryzen

Fri Feb 15, 2019 11:58 am

Tried running the rowhammer test on it to see if having ECC on does actually protect against the exploit?

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