Comment by marcan_42
4 years ago
> Traces aren’t entirely free. Modern boards are densely packed and manufacturers aren’t interested in spending extra time on routing for a feature that consumers aren’t interested in anyway.
Or they just don't care because it's not already popular and unbuffered ECC RAM isn't even particularly widely available. The delta design cost of routing another 8 data lines per DIMM channel is tiny. Especially on ATX boards and other larger formats. I could see some crazy packed mini-ITX layout where this might be a bit harder, but definitely not in the normal cases.
(I've routed a rather dense 4-layer BGA credit card sized board; not exactly a motherboard, but I do have a bit of experience with this subject. It was definitely denser than a typical ATX board per layer.)
> ...unbuffered ECC RAM isn't even particularly widely available.
Every time I've gone looking for unbuffered ECC RAM over the past three or five years, I've had no trouble finding it. In my experience, the trick is to shop for "server" RAM, rather than "desktop" RAM.
Are there speeds or capacities here that you'd particularly like to see that aren't present? <https://nemixram.com/server-memory/ecc-udimm/>
It's available, but not nearly as widely, and even less so at reasonable prices. Last time I had to buy ECC RAM over here in Japan, I had to go to a niche webshop to get a decent price on the capacity I was interested in. For every other PC part I'd just use Amazon and get it delivered next day, usually at the market lowest price or almost.
> Last time I had to buy ECC RAM over here in Japan, I had to go to a niche webshop to get a decent price on the capacity I was interested in.
I've been quite satisfied with the three orders that I've placed with Nemix. I see no indication that they _don't_ ship to Japan, and indications that they _do_ ship internationally... so consider purchasing from them next time you have a need for such memory.
Or, hell, I'd be _shocked_ if there wasn't a company in JP or or KR or CN that also does what Nemix does (that is, yank RAM from decommissioned servers, test it, and sell the stuff that's solid).
And, with Ryzen (and Ryzen Threadripper) becoming ever-more popular, I would expect ECC RAM to continue to drop in price when compared to non-ECC RAM. (But, let's be real here, when you spread the price out over five or ten years, it's _totally_ worth it to have RAM you can rely on.)