[RndTbl] Ryzen + ECC

[Trevor Cordes]

To follow up on the in-meeting roundtable the other day:

I found some newer reports that ECC can work on Ryzen, if the stars are 
aligned.

http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum/hardware-canucks-reviews/75030-ecc-memory-amds-ryzen-deep-dive-5.html

Basically says they got to the stage where EDAC in linux recognized the 
ECC and could get single-bit errors generated and logged.  That's all I'm 
interested in, really (double-bit errors don't concern me as much, esp if 
they're still logged).  So this looks promising.

Looks like you have to be quite selective in mobo, and the one they tested 
was: ASRock X370 Taichi (not cheap!)

I wouldn't buy a Ryzen mobo for ECC support unless someone had already 
tested it like they did to confirm it supports ECC.

So it's nice to see it is possible, though the support & guarantees are 
pretty dodgy.  Ah, back to the good (bad) ol' days (2000-2005) of VIA 
chips and Intel boards that maybe/maybe-not had ECC that actually did 
something.

===

If you want guaranteed (validated) ECC on Ryzen, looks like you go with 
the recently released Ryzen Threadripper 8c/16t CPUs and HEDT "high-end 
desktop" boards.  However, then you are looking at prices like Intel 
"workstation" products, though you will get more threads/buck.

Personally, I don't have a use for tons of threads (yet), so for me a 
lower-end Xeon with a workstation board might on the table again, unless I 
want to take the risk with a maybe/might/should-work regular Ryzen.

Adam's article (coming soon!) on Ryzen random mem latency for routing 
might be the straw that breaks the Ryzen camel back for me.  We'll see...

As always, if someone beats me to building (from parts) an ECC 
*workstation* (i.e. real, full x16 slot) in '17 or '18, post your results 
here!!