[RndTbl] firewall/router in a VM

Adam Thompson athompso at athompso.net
Fri Feb 19 11:17:13 CST 2010


On 2010-Feb-19 09:07, Kevin McGregor wrote:
> While we're on the topic, what sort of desktop-PC motherboards are
> available that support ECC memory? I've never really paid attention, so
> for all I know, ECC support is common.

Not very many.  The only non-server-grade chipset I'm aware of that 
supports ECC is Intel's X58, as embodied in their WX58BP motherboard. 
Which sells for (typically) just under $300.  That's at the cheap end of 
things, anyway.  (vis. Dell Precision T3500, for anywhere from $1400 to 
$13,000 depending on configuration!)

Note that this also requires a Xeon CPU, which thankfully isn't much 
more than its non-Xeon siblings.  The one that's most sensibly priced is 
the Intel W3520, at somewhere around $350.

There's an X38 chipset as well, which may support ECC, but it appears to 
be pretty rare on the ground in any case.  The *only* example I've found 
of a shipping system is the Dell Precision T3400!

The X38 & X58 are single-socket solutions; the Intel 5500-series 
chipsets support dual-CPU configurations.  The 5500 series is billed as 
both a "workstation" and a "server" chipset - take your pick.  Dell 
currently markets two workstations based on the 5520.

 From what I can tell, ECC is the primary differentiator between 
"desktop" and "workstation" class systems right now.  Xeon support seems 
to be the 2nd-order discriminant.

Although that's not really a hard-and-fast rule.  Dell, for example, 
bases their T1500 "workstation" on the P55/H57 chipset, which does not 
support ECC.  Of course, that's the only workstation they do sell 
without ECC - and not even the cheapest one! - so I'll forgive them that 
:-).

I'm not aware of any nVidia chipsets that support ECC.

Some AMD Opteron-supporting chipsets should support ECC, but I'm not 
familiar with that part of the market at all.

-Adam


More information about the Roundtable mailing list