Help me to find a ATX Main board with ECC that is not for gaming + tower case

[Zucca]

Hi,

I burned my fingers with the ASUS Pro WS X570-ACE. I don`t like it, and I returned it (I make the story short).

This is what I am after:

CPU: AMD 5900X
Cooler : Noctua NH-D15S
RAM: 2x32GB 32GB ECC UDIMM DDR4-3200 PC4-25600 Memory for QNAP TS-h1886XU-RP-D1622-32G!<-- very important for me it. ECC must work.
PCIe 4.0
Support for two Nmve M2 SSD
GPU: Geforce GTX 3090
Dual LAN: Nice to have... not critical
WIFI: Not required
Fan for chipset: not required, I would like no fan in the Motherboard if possible.
No overclocking!
COM Port: oh yes! very nice to have

It must be a motherboard more workstation oriented and less gaming as possible.
Main goal is stability. I do not like RGB led at all.

And since we are here please suggest me a good tower case.

I would also try to not buy ASUS.

PS: why it is so hard to build a PC that is not for gaming today?

[Zucca]

If you don't like gaming LEDs, just turn them off or desolder them.

Perfectly doable, but what about the ECC support? Looks like AMD X570 is supporting ECC out of the box... but I don't like to buy something hoping it will work...
Anyway in other words, what is the most reliable motherboard you would suggest?

[Zucca]

Interesting reading

https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/lh3m42/demystifying_ryzen_ecc_support/

[mariush]

As far as I know, Gigabyte boards support ECC well.

I have Gigabyte B550M Aorus Pro-P : https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/B550M-AORUS-PRO-P-rev-10#kf

No over the board RGB, just some orange highlights, only downside is that is has only 4 sata ports and maybe pci-e layout could have been better (I mean have a pci-e x1 slot above the video card slot)

Only one ethernet card, but you can add one in the bottom slot, if it's not blocked by video card.

2nd m.2 is provided by chipset, so it has pci-e 3.0 lanes.

But look at the ATX Gigabyte B550 boards , b550 Aorus Pro and up. Elite is OK but they cheaped out on IO shield features (has dvi and few usb connectors)

All boards or pretty much all boards have COM headers, so you can just buy a bracket with the serial ports separately, it's like 1-2$. Don't look for serial ports on IO shield, look for onboard headers.

[mapleLC]

I burned my fingers with the ASUS Pro WS X570-ACE. I don`t like it, and I returned it (I make the story short).

Kindly share the long form version?  I'm due for a laugh.

[wraper]

X570 is a waste of money for 99% of use cases and only gives you more power consumption and additional noise from chipset cooler. ECC support has nothing to do with a type of chipset, more expensive chipset does not give you more chances of motherboard supporting ECC. No reason to go above B550 in the vast majority of cases. AFAIK most of motherboards which support ECC are from ASUS and Gigabyte. IIRC MSI had none when I researched this. I personally use Gigabyte B550M AORUS PRO-P with ECC. There are workstation motherboards with no LEDs but they are much more expensive, so it's more wise to just disable them in BIOS settings.

[wraper]

Also frankly "gaming" in the name or description has nothing to do with gaming. It even does not mean there will me more LEDs than on other motherboards. Pure marketing wank. I just checked a few B550 Motherboards on Gigabyte website and all of them support ECC. Gigabyte is very clear about this. Last time I checked ASUS it wasn't that clear about this but I just checked their website and it's very obvious in RAM specifications.

[Zucca]

Kindly share the long form version?  I'm due for a laugh.

Let me do some tests tonight and then we will laugh even harder...

[SiliconWizard]

I don't think you can use ECC RAM with CPUs that don't support it. I know Intel stuff better than current AMD stuff, but I doubt you can use ECC RAM with "consumer" AMD CPUs. That's not just a matter of the motherboard itself.
So I would expect to need at least a EPYC CPU or maybe? Threadripper Pro.
Let me know if I'm wrong. I'm curious.

[mariush]

The regular Ryzen processors support ECC, it's just not "official",  depends on motherboard if it's working or not 

The Ryzen Pro processors (which are OEM parts in desktops made by companies like Lenovo) officially support ECC and I think AMD enforces the rule that systems with Pro processors must have motherboards that also support and have ECC tested/validated.  Besides ECC, Pro versions also have some management features ... and that's pretty much all.

I wouldn't expect a Ryzen to have working ECC on a motherboard with a A320 or A520 chipset (which are "budget" chipsets), but the standard B550 motherboards should support ECC, no reason they shouldn't, unless they can't be bothered with the bios.

You say intel is better... maybe is more clear which processors support ECC and which don't... but Intel is worse in the sense that even though their controllers supports ECC, Intel artificially locks it away only to some processors, so you're forced to pay more.
For example i5 6500  vs xeon e3-1220 v5  ... pretty much same die, just 6MB vs 8MB cache and ECC support enabled ... $200 each at launch.

[wraper]

I don't think you can use ECC RAM with CPUs that don't support it. I know Intel stuff better than current AMD stuff, but I doubt you can use ECC RAM with "consumer" AMD CPUs. That's not just a matter of the motherboard itself.
So I would expect to need at least a EPYC CPU or maybe? Threadripper Pro.
Let me know if I'm wrong. I'm curious.

Yes you are wrong. Did you read my post? I run Ryzen 3700X with ECC, and previously did the same with 1700X. ECC works and I can see WHEA corrected memory errors in event viewer if overclock it too much. Every Ryzen CPU supports ECC except APU type. Both intel and AMD use the same silicon for consumer and server market. Intel disables ECC on consumer CPUs (except some very low end ones), AMD doesn't.

[wraper]

I wouldn't expect a Ryzen to have working ECC on a motherboard with a A320 or A520 chipset (which are "budget" chipsets), but the standard B550 motherboards should support ECC, no reason they shouldn't, unless they can't be bothered with the bios.

It has nothing to do with chipset but if manufacturer bothered to implement additional PCB traces to memory slots. Gigabyte, ASUS and Asrock do bother, MSI does not. Here is Gigabyte A520 board which supports ECC https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/A520M-DS3H-V2-rev-10/sp#sp

[wraper]

Just in case someone still thinks ECC does not exist on consumer CPU/Motherboards.

[Zucca]

No reason to go above B550 in the vast majority of cases. AFAIK most of motherboards which support ECC are from ASUS and Gigabyte. IIRC MSI had none when I researched this. I personally use Gigabyte B550M AORUS PRO-P with ECC.

Gigabyte B550M AORUS PRO-P looks good. Thanks
X570 vs B550: do you think a PCIe3.0 is a issue vs PCIe4.0 in a M2 NVME SSD?

[Zucca]

Kindly share the long form version?  I'm due for a laugh.

I am done with ASUS.

Bought the first ASUS Pro WS X570-ACE, put CPU 5900x and RAM and a graphics card.
No boot/POST VGA Led stuck on.
Tested 3 different graphics cards even in different PCIe slots, still no joy. Same problem.
Oh well MoBo is a lemon. Bought a second ASUS Pro WS X570-ACE.
Same effing problem. No boot/POST VGA Led stuck on.
Returning the second MoBo now.
Now I am trying a new CPU, since I read here the CPU can give a false warning on the VGA LED.

If with the new CPU it will work good, if not I will buy a Gigabyte or MSI. ASUS does not exists anymore on my planet.

See also here 

BTW the term Workstation on the ASUS Pro WS X570-ACE is pure marketing... yes it does have a dual Lan which can manage the PC from remote, but if you look how they did it, it's just a bunch of clowns offering features that nobody needs. The manual is awful, not technical at all. Good for teenager.... Very disappointed by myASsUS. Never again.

[wraper]

No reason to go above B550 in the vast majority of cases. AFAIK most of motherboards which support ECC are from ASUS and Gigabyte. IIRC MSI had none when I researched this. I personally use Gigabyte B550M AORUS PRO-P with ECC.

Gigabyte B550M AORUS PRO-P looks good. Thanks
X570 vs B550: do you think a PCIe3.0 is a issue vs PCIe4.0 in a M2 NVME SSD?

B550 motherboards support PCI-E 4.0 for GPU and one NVMe slot. IMHO do not bother about SSD, especially if you do not have top of the end one. Even then it makes some improvement only for some very specific tasks, not overall. Cheaper SSD even though often have PCI-E 4.0, it's barely justified for practical reasons if at all.

[wraper]

Kindly share the long form version?  I'm due for a laugh.

I am done with ASUS.

Bought the first ASUS Pro WS X570-ACE, put CPU 5900x and RAM and a graphics card.
No boot/POST VGA Led stuck on.
Tested 3 different graphics cards even in different PCIe slots, still no joy. Same problem.
Oh well MoBo is a lemon. Bought a second ASUS Pro WS X570-ACE.
Same effing problem. No boot/POST VGA Led stuck on.
Returning the second MoBo now.

Maybe you got some with very old bios? You could try updating bios. What I found on internet about Asus Pro WS X570-Ace:

I had the same motherboard. It does not have the BIOS flashback feature. However, you can update BIOS via its Realtek management interface.

You will need a Windows machine in the same subnet and install ASUS Control Center Express (ACCE) Setup. You can checkout ACCE manual Section 4.10 for more details.

I used this way to recover from a bad flash (my machine froze during BIOS update and became completely dead after reset), and can confirm it works. The only problem was that ACCE wasn't straightforward to use, so you probably need some time to figure out how to use it. But I am 100% certain it works, and it does not require a license.

[wraper]

Also I would try different RAM as it's what most often causes issues IME.

[Zucca]

Maybe you got some with very old bios? You could try updating bios. What I found on internet about Asus Pro WS X570-Ace:

Possible but unlikely since It was reproducible in two motherboards.
Also upgrading BIOS through a ETH port it's asking for problems, especially if we know that this board was designed by certified Muppets.

I swap the CPU, and this is my last card to play. CPU could have something to do with VGA not booting because there are CPU with GPU integrated, so a shitty BIOS could not manage well a no GPU included CPU like my 5900x.
I bought a brand new 5950x, again with no integrated GPU, for testing purposes. My current 5900x was a used Ebay thing, so there is a chance I got a lemon as well.

RAM? Everything is possible at this point. Honestly if the new CPU does not fix the problem I do not want that board, I wasted too much time already on that POS myASsUS.

[bw2341]

I think it might be the BIOS too.

https://www.asus.com/motherboards-components/motherboards/workstation/pro-ws-x570-ace/helpdesk_cpu/?model2Name=Pro-WS-X570-ACE

https://www.asus.com/motherboards-components/motherboards/workstation/pro-ws-x570-ace/helpdesk_bios/?model2Name=Pro-WS-X570-ACE

It looks like 5900X and 5950X needs BIOS Version 2311 from 2020/10/20. The oldest BIOS available is Version 0702 from 2019/07/05.

This predates Ryzen 5000 Zen 3 completely.

I was super paranoid when I bought my Ryzen 5500 and motherboard. The 5500 was the cheapest Zen 3 locally, but it was also one of the newest. I made sure to get a motherboard that could flash from a USB key with no processor installed. I also bought the CPU, MB and RAM from the same local store so that I had someone to complain to if they weren't compatible.

[David Hess]

I built a system not long ago with similar requirements.  I used an Asus PRIME X570-PRO because it was the least expensive motherboard I could find which supported at least three x16 PCIe slots, albeit with x4 and dual x8 electrical, for GPU, HBA, and networking.  In the past such motherboards were more common for support of Crossfire and SLI.  I did not want the chipset fan, but it runs at low speed so do not expect any problems.

I installed 64G of ECC memory and as far as I can tell from testing, it seems to be supported and working correctly.

I wanted the Fractal Design Define XL R2 case for 8 3.5" internal and 4 external 5.25" bays, but could not find one available so went with the larger Define 7 XL.  Two years later and the Define XL R2 is still not available.  These cases are roomy making assembly easier and have filters to keep dust out.

[Zucca]

Beating the dead horse 

Tomorrow I will try to update the BIOS over the ACCE ETH.

Holy water from Lourdes is already prepared.

[olkipukki]

Hi,

I burned my fingers with the ASUS Pro WS X570-ACE. I don`t like it, and I returned it (I make the story short).

I'm using this MB quite a while (approx 2.5 years), no issues, but still 3rd Ryzen generation - planning to 5950X upgrade once a price drops a bit more

I would agree, ASUS don't take carry at all...
Does board (that cost ~$400 now) supports Windows 11 or any Linux?! Nope, according ASUS - just Windows 10 

You can try to find some ASRock Rack MBs on AM4 (or upcoming new AM5), be ready to pay a premium.

https://www.asrockrack.com/general/products.asp#Server
 

[wraper]

Hi,

I burned my fingers with the ASUS Pro WS X570-ACE. I don`t like it, and I returned it (I make the story short).

I'm using this MB quite a while (approx 2.5 years), no issues, but still 3rd Ryzen generation - planning to 5950X upgrade once a price drops a bit more

I would agree, ASUS don't take carry at all...
Does board (that cost ~$400 now) supports Windows 11 or any Linux?! Nope, according ASUS - just Windows 10 

You can try to find some ASRock Rack MBs on AM4 (or upcoming new AM5), be ready to pay a premium.

https://www.asrockrack.com/general/products.asp#Server

Their website literally says it's win 11 ready. Not to say OS support barely depends on mobo manufacturer, unless you're after "official support".

[coppice]

I don't know what happens with DDR5, but with DDR4 consumer grade ECC is a bit of a PITA. Most ECC memory sticks are registered, but most consumer motherboards that will accept ECC memory sticks will only accept non-registered ones. I found some non-registered ECC memory sticks that I tried with my Asus Prime X399-A Threadripper board. The machine kinda half recognised them, but wouldn't actually use them. I swapped them for non-ECC memory and the machine works fine. As far as I know those ECC memory sticks worked in someone else's machine, so they were not faulty. Just a bit quirky about compatibility.

[Zucca]

I don't know what happens with DDR5

Well it should be easy since finally the ECC will be integrated by default in the DDR5 protocol AFAIK.
In other words all DDR5 are ECC.

It makes kind of sense, since the speed is so high you need some error correction by default.

The above is just some youtube info I got, I could be wrong since I did not read all the DDR5 protocol tech specs...

[wraper]

I don't know what happens with DDR5

Well it should be easy since finally the ECC will be integrated by default in the DDR5 protocol AFAIK.
In other words all DDR5 are ECC.

It makes kind of sense, since the speed is so high you need some error correction by default.

The above is just some youtube info I got, I could be wrong since I did not read all the DDR5 protocol tech specs...

DDR5 has on chip ECC but it's totally internal, memory bus must have it's own ECC the same as previously.

[Twoflower]

I'm not sure if all DDR5 DIMMs are ECC. If I got that right the on-die ECC that DDR5 specifies has nothing to do with the ECC known from DDR4 and earlier releases.

If understand that right the on-die ECC corrects errors that happen within the memory array on the die itself. The data transmission from and to the CPU are not covered by that. For this there are still DDR5-ECC DIMMs available that has more RAM and additional data-lines the 'conventional' ECC needs.

The big question is what is the biggest source of bit-flips. It is possible that the memory array itself is the biggest source here the on-die ECC could help. Also the success of attacks like Rowhammer might reduced by that.

[DavidAlfa]

ECC RAM? Did nerd gamers ran out of hype?
I have some money, what else can I buy with it?

I wonder how 99.999% of people have survived without ECC all these years.
Nevermind - To overclock it 5% more without crashing, gaining 0.001% actual framerate increase 

[wraper]

ECC RAM? Did nerd gamers ran out of hype?
I have some money, what else can I buy with it?

I wonder how 99.999% of people have survived without ECC all these years.
Nevermind - To overclock it 5% more without crashing, gaining 0.001% actual framerate increase 

Easily, with occasional bit flips, and small data corruption somewhere, usually unnoticed. With current amounts of RAM it's not a question if it will happen but how often it will happen. Especially considered that most of consumer RAM is factory overclocked and runs faster than IC manufacturer guarantees.

[coppice]

ECC RAM? Did nerd gamers ran out of hype?
I have some money, what else can I buy with it?

I wonder how 99.999% of people have survived without ECC all these years.
Nevermind - To overclock it 5% more without crashing, gaining 0.001% actual framerate increase 

About 20% of computers are servers, and they have always used some kind of memory protection. First parity to detect errors, then ECC to work through the errors. Most domestic PCs used to have parity as standard in the 80s. Then it was gradually dropped, as memory became more reliable. Quirky memory problems are not unusual. Many a motherboard gives some small percentage of memory errors when you put more than one memory stick on the same memory bus. Its not at all unusual to see things like memtest86 flush out some obscure memory issues.

[wraper]

The problem is that it's not only problematic RAM, CPU or motherboard. There ace cosmic rays which will occasionally flip a bit even if there are no hardware problems whatsoever. In the past I had enough of RAM problems which drove me nuts and which no RAM test would detect. The worst part was that I could not figure out where the issue was without starting randomly changing the hardware and testing for months to catch that nasty once in two-four weeks BSOD. And it happened to me several times. So in the end I decided a big no to my main PC without ECC.

[nightfire]

This Sh*tshow with AMD CPUs and some chipssets I had with different mainboards and graphics cards. At work, I built some rigs with the mentioned ASUS x570 WS ACE mainboard for our software developers, and with a Nvidia P400 it worked mostly fine. My own Gigabyte board (budget thing because I did not need more comfort) and an ASUS Prime series board exhibited lots of initial problems which were caused by initial init of the graphics card- putting in a different card, got them to boot, and after that everything was fine.
So probably a BIOS problem in some combinations.

At work, I have about 6 systems with  that board, 5 with 3700X CPU, one with 5950- all running stable and our devs use VMs with VMWare on them. In our setup I found them to be reliable.

For cases, I really liked the FRactal Design 7 compact- nice if you do not need to place traditional 3,5" HDDs in it. Big enough to allow for water cooling.

[DavidAlfa]

I know what ECC is lol, cosmic rays flipping a bit is an extremely rare event.
In the 0.00000000001% chance of it happening you'll get a BSOD, the system will reboot and you'll resume gaming with your RGB hype, it's not a mainframe/server that should stay on at all costs, where a single minute off means $$$ fleeing away.

[SiliconWizard]

I know what ECC is lol, cosmic rays flipping a bit is an extremely rare event.
In the 0.00000000001% chance of it happening you'll get a BSOD, the system will reboot and you'll resume gaming with your RGB hype, it's not a mainframe/server that should stay on at all costs, where a single minute off means $$$ fleeing away.

The OP explicitely said it was not for gaming.

Sure ECC may be overkill even for workstation use. My main workstation has 64GB of std DDR4 and can run for several weeks without a reboot. Actually I've never had it blue screen except when I was testing a buggy custom driver.

But funny thing is, in particular if you buy it second-hand, DDR4 ECC for a given capacity may not be more expensive than std DDR4 - at least if you compare ECC with std DDR4 than can be overclocked (thus with XMP profiles and usually large heatsinks.) There's a fricking lot of available second-hand DDR4 ECC out there from decommissioned servers.

I don't think you can use ECC RAM with CPUs that don't support it. I know Intel stuff better than current AMD stuff, but I doubt you can use ECC RAM with "consumer" AMD CPUs. That's not just a matter of the motherboard itself.
So I would expect to need at least a EPYC CPU or maybe? Threadripper Pro.
Let me know if I'm wrong. I'm curious.

Yes you are wrong. Did you read my post? I run Ryzen 3700X with ECC, and previously did the same with 1700X. ECC works and I can see WHEA corrected memory errors in event viewer if overclock it too much. Every Ryzen CPU supports ECC except APU type. Both intel and AMD use the same silicon for consumer and server market. Intel disables ECC on consumer CPUs (except some very low end ones), AMD doesn't.

Your post was not very explicit and didn't mention which CPU it was, so uh. But as I said, it was more of a question than an assertion, as I don't know AMD CPUs well.
It's interesting to know that ECC is supported on their consumer Ryzen CPUs, even though it's not documented - at least I couldn't find any official AMD info about that. So they could very well decide to disable this in more recent CPUs without any notice.
Yes, Intel disables ECC support on their consumer CPUs and only enables it (along with support of much larger RAM capacities) on their Xeon CPUs, which I'm more familiar with. Intel consumer CPUs rarely support more than 128GB of RAM, while many Xeon ones support > 1TB RAM. And of course ECC.

Intel disables ECC on consumer CPUs (except some very low end ones),

Not sure which low end ones that would be? Do you have examples?

[wraper]

The worst two shitshows I had were with ASUS PRIME X370-PRO and Asrock Fatal1ty X370 Gaming K4 I had a few years ago. My PC at the time had that ASUS and Ryzen 1700X and that Asrock laying around. I used Asrock first but IIRC it had some weird issue with image sometimes not appearing with two of my monitors connected, so replaced it with ASUS. I figured out I could put together a PC with my 1700X for my sister who lives in UK when she was visiting Latvia and get 3700X about two weeks later when there is supply of them available as they just came out. So first I updated Asus board with latest bios which was the first version to support Ryzen 3000 series to avoid any issues later. Then put CPU into Asrock board and build up PC from some used and new parts. Decided to use an old OCZ CPU cooler (Had it since AM2 socket but it's compatible with AM4) but it had some slight sleeve bearing noise which I was not comfortable with. So I decided to get a new Sunon non-PC fan from nearby electronic component shop with tach output but no PWM in, which was fine since motherboard can control CPU fan voltage too, I just needed to crimp a proper connector. So I did that, gave ECC RAM some overclock (previously got more than I need eBay), set everything up and it worked just fine. So then move it around and then post fails (mobo has post code indicator). I take out battery to reset reset the bios, everything boots. But then I figured out If I disconnect power, it post will fail but it works if I shut it down until first power disconnect. If I don't change bios settings, it boots after disconnecting power. Change them, it does not. Wasted ton of hours during a few days on that garbage. Then I already needed to drive to another town to my parents whom my sister visited, so I brought it as is thinking I'll figure out bios settings there. Lo and behold, the issue was effing fan setting. If I set it to analog mode, mobo hangs during post after removing power  . Bios downgrade did not help either.  So to keep fan speed control (was a bit too lout without it) I ended up ordering a whole brand new cooler with PWM fan to get it fast while I was still there. Just in case checked and it had the same issue with analog control setting with proper PWM fan used. Great effing job Asrock.
  But my suffering was far from the end. So after some time I got back at home, got 3700X, put it in ASUS mobo, and it immediately booted just fine. Newer bios just came out but I did not update it yet. Changed some bios settings, maybe RAM speed, don't remember. And this garbage never booted again. I took out the battery for hours, used cmos reset jumper, different PSU, GPU, nothing helped. As a cherry on top this board does not support bios flashback. I felt something really fishy, so ordered cheapest Athlon AM4 CPU for like EUR 35, put it in and this bastard booted just fine. Updated bios to the latest version, put 3700X back and  this garbage again booted just fine. 

[wraper]

But funny thing is, in particular if you buy it second-hand, DDR4 ECC for a given capacity may not be more expensive than std DDR4 - at least if you compare ECC with std DDR4 than can be overclocked (thus with XMP profiles and usually large heatsinks.) There's a fricking lot of available second-hand DDR4 ECC out there from decommissioned servers.

Registered ECC RAM used in servers does not work with desktop CPUs. You need unregistered ECC which is much more scarce and not that cheap even used. It works with desktop intel and AMD motherboards that don't support it too, you just don't get ECC functionality. BTW at least some old intel consumer motherboards (like X79 with LGA2011 socket) support registered ECC RAM, but you need to put Xeon in them for it to work.

[BravoV]

COM Port: oh yes! very nice to have

Modern mobos especially for workstation/desktop no longer carry that on board.

I used this below PCIE x1 to 1 parallel + 2 serial ports WCH382L based card (there so many other variants too), and it just works. The driver for Windows 10 x64 and Linux x64 downloaded from the manufacturer's web works flawlessly, and its dirt cheap. Oh, the parallel and serial ports all are full fledged featured COM and LPT port like the good olde PC days eg: COM with crazy 8Mbps baud rate  , and LPT port can be set like various mode : EPP , ECP and etc.

Details => http://www.wch-ic.com/products/CH382.html

Click image to enlarge

[BravoV]

As a desktop Ryzen ECC RAM user, I did make a thread almost 3 years ago -> Do you feel sinful overclocking an ECC RAM ? 

All I can say is I am happy, content and satisfied with my decision, and what most important for me is "a peace of mind" ... as I can afford it. 

As wrapper mentioned, for desktop AMD Ryzen, it must used unregistered ECC RAM, becareful as they are totally different animal compared to the popular former server's RAM "registered" ECC.

Mine below, Samsung B-Die  ECC unregistered used at my current Ryzen, and to trigger the ECC error "deliberately" , (not easy though as I needed many tries & errorr for the OS to capture the corrected error or its totally crashed it), I was using undervolted RAM wildly to provoke the error. Yes, my B-Die is a great overclockers even though I don't overclock it. 

[DavidAlfa]

My bad, I completely misread the topic, thought it was another RGB fanboy seeking new ways of wasting money.

[Zucca]

The problem is that it's not only problematic RAM, CPU or motherboard. There ace cosmic rays which will occasionally flip a bit even if there are no hardware problems whatsoever. In the past I had enough of RAM problems which drove me nuts and which no RAM test would detect. The worst part was that I could not figure out where the issue was without starting randomly changing the hardware and testing for months to catch that nasty once in two-four weeks BSOD. And it happened to me several times. So in the end I decided a big no to my main PC without ECC.

spot on on everything!

[Zucca]

Details => http://www.wch-ic.com/products/CH382.html

Thanks the  ASUS Pro WS X570-ACE looks like it has a serial. Good to know about that board!

[Zucca]

this garbage again booted just fine. 

Thanks for sharing, this push me even further in direction GIGABYTE or MSI.
Too bad that SuperMicro does not have AMD ATX MB AFAIK.

[nightfire]

Anecdote: Last employer was a datacenter where we had in around 2003/2004 some SUN Sparc E4500 in operation. 14 CPU, 14GB memory, meaning lots of modules.
And when statistics said that sunspot activity was on high (some colleagues monitored websites measuring sun activity), the amount of  correctable ECC errors went up.

I agree, that overall quality of memory modules went up in the past two decades, but another trend is contering it, as stated- factory "overclocking".
Its somewhere between moments where simply the spec does not specify certain setups, but technology easily allows, and manufacturers really stretching consumer goods to the max.

[SiliconWizard]

BTW at least some old intel consumer motherboards (like X79 with LGA2011 socket) support registered ECC RAM, but you need to put Xeon in them for it to work.

X99 too. And with Intel CPUs you need Xeons anyway to use ECC RAM.

As I said, I knew nothing about AMD supporting ECC RAM on their "consumer" CPUs, and have learned here that they required unregistered ECC. So that's good to know in order to avoid wasting money.

I have otherwise recycled a X99-based workstation with a Xeon CPU and registered ECC DDR4, and that turned out cheaper than expected.

[wraper]

Mine below, Samsung B-Die  ECC unregistered used at my current Ryzen, and to trigger the ECC error "deliberately" , (not easy though as I needed many tries & errorr for the OS to capture the corrected error or its totally crashed it), I was using undervolted RAM wildly to provoke the error. Yes, my B-Die is a great overclockers even though I don't overclock it. 

I use a pair of shitty old 2133MHz Hynix MFR (16GB Hynix branded sticks made in 2016) but I bought like 6 of those for cheap some years ago. It's well known for poor overclock. It totally sucked to overclock with Ryzen 1700X and X370 motherboards. Especially on Asrock X370, it would not overclock at all without adjusting drive strength. Was a bit better on on ASUS X370. Later on the same ASUS X370 and Ryzen 3700X it clocked better and could be run something like 2933 CL19 stable. On current Gigabyte B550 PRO-P and same 3700X it surprisingly runs 3200MHz at it's stock CL15 timings by just adjusting RAM clock multiplier and voltage to 1.35V.

[David Hess]

Well it should be easy since finally the ECC will be integrated by default in the DDR5 protocol AFAIK.
In other words all DDR5 are ECC.

It makes kind of sense, since the speed is so high you need some error correction by default.

The above is just some youtube info I got, I could be wrong since I did not read all the DDR5 protocol tech specs...

I did study the DDR5 specifications just to resolve this question.

All DDR5 implements limited ECC internally as part of the bus interface and *not* the sense amplifiers.  Data is corrected in the bus interface, but is *not* automatically written back to the DRAM array, so no scrubbing takes place.

However DDR5 with a conventional ECC configuration does exist, with the 32 bit wide memory channel being expanded to 40 bits.  Normal DDR5 has two 32 bit channels, and ECC DDR5 has two 40 bit channels.

[BravoV]

However DDR5 with a conventional ECC configuration does exist, with the 32 bit wide memory channel being expanded to 40 bits.  Normal DDR5 has two 32 bit channels, and ECC DDR5 has two 40 bit channels.

So it means, those internal ECC is just not "good enough", hence the creation of 40bit version.

[Zucca]

Beating the dead horse 

Tomorrow I will try to update the BIOS over the ACCE ETH.

Holy water from Lourdes is already prepared.

Did not work, the client board needs to have an agent already deployed to throw a BIOS over the ETH   

More details...
https://forums.servethehome.com/index.php?threads/asus-pro-ws-x570-ace-bios-flashback.31319/#post-296223

Anyway now I am pretty convinced it is a old BIOS topic, I ordered a AMD Ryzen 3 3200G on Amazon that I will return 5 minutes later after the BIOS is upgraded.

BTW ASUS is not even trying, I would have put at least a big * on everywhere for the not supported newer CPUs

Pro WS X570-ACE

AMD AM4 socket: Ready for AMD Ryzen™ 5000 Series*

*Ready it does not mean it will work, you will need to upgrade the BIOS. By the way with a newer processor installed on this board, the Pro WS X570-ACE will not boot and you will not able to upgrade the BIOS. You could use our USB BIOS FlashBack® technology but this board it not supporting it. This means you are stuck with a not booting brick.
Yes we at ASUS are certified monkeys and do not know how to sell motherboards, we of course don't care if our customers will be grounded in front of a black screen with a newer processor on our board. We simply don't want to have more customer in the future. ASUS wants to decrease its income because designing motherboards and selling them is a boring a frustrating process. It sucks.
ASUS just wants to file for bankruptcy as faster as possible, and to not provide a salary to anyone anymore. After that the ASUS employees will finally just stay in the jungle and eat bananas all day long.
Please support us and avoid buying ASUS products. We don't want your money, if you agree with our future company vision please send us bananas.
If there are still money left will will pay for them, if not please consider a donation, of bananas of course.

[Zucca]

All DDR5 implements limited ECC internally as part of the bus interface and *not* the sense amplifiers.  Data is corrected in the bus interface, but is *not* automatically written back to the DRAM array, so no scrubbing takes place.

Will then the outside world get notified it such a correction on the bus interface happened?

[David Hess]

All DDR5 implements limited ECC internally as part of the bus interface and *not* the sense amplifiers.  Data is corrected in the bus interface, but is *not* automatically written back to the DRAM array, so no scrubbing takes place.

Will then the outside world get notified it such a correction on the bus interface happened?

I assume some sort of status word is updated internally and made available to the memory controller on demand, but I could not find it in the specifications.  Scrubbing would require the memory controller to write that word back.

The reason that the ECC is done in the bus interface and not when loading a DRAM row is that the later would require too much power.

[Zucca]

Anyway now I am pretty convinced it is a old BIOS topic, I ordered a AMD Ryzen 3 3200G on Amazon that I will return 5 minutes later after the BIOS is upgraded.

It works, but I lost a year of life plus a kidney.

Removed everything, installed the 3200G. POST finally ok, BIOS 4201 on the effing MB.
Upgraded to 4402.

Swapped back the ebay used 5900X, installed a good known graphics card.
NOTHING LED VGA STUCK ON.

Just because it was on my desk, I swapped the 5900X with the brand new 5950X.
Guess what, now that bastard boots.

Why on earth the boot error VGA LED is on and if I swap the CPU it boots fine? Thanks ASUS to point me in the wrong direction.

I am so wasted I will now keep the 5950X and sell for parts the 5900X at loss.

Currently hammering the 64GB ECC with memtest86, next step Win10 check if everything is recognized okay and the prime95 as final test.

Wish me luck.... I feel like I am painting without eyes.

 

[Zucca]

After
- 12 pass tests with memtest86
- 24h of prime95
- about 30min of 3d furmark
- some other GPU memory checks

I declare my new machine stable and ready to host arch linux.