Removing ECC from Ram

[leham]

just a thought..

I have some DDR3 ECC sticks of RAM here and was wondering how one could make them non ECC and operate like standard memory?

The main difference visibly on the PCB I can see between ECC and non ECC is one large IC usually in the middle of the pcb. On the RAM I have here it's part number is insste32882lv-gs02 DDR3(L) - Registering Clock Driver with Parity Checking

If I where to just desolder that part what do you think would happen?

I have a feeling nothing ....

[Psi]

Have you tried it as is?

Some BIOS's support it but don't tell you in the manual

[leham]

yes I have and it did not work :C

[oPossum]

Seems like you have registered EEC RAM typically used in servers, and the system you want to use it in requires ordinary non-registered RAM. Having the extra bits for ECC usually isn't a problem - they are just ignored by systems that don't support ECC. The incompatibility is due to it being registered. Removing the chips won't magically fix that.

[amyk]

You could try removing the register and then bridging the appropriate balls to convert it into a non-registered DIMM. The SPD EEPROM would probably need its contents modified too.

That particular part has no datasheet I can find, but it looks like a "32882" is a standard DDR3 clock driver+register with a common pinout. Here is a detailed datasheet.

Look up the JEDEC standards (they're freely available) for more information.

http://www.jedec.org/standards-documents/results/taxonomy%3A2827

http://www.jedec.org/standards-documents/docs/jesd82-29a

http://www.jedec.org/standards-documents/focus/memory-module-designs-dimms/DDR3/240-pin%20Registered%20DIMMs

[TiN]

As already mentioned before, using ECC unbuffered DIMM is straight-forward, extra byte for ECC will be simply ignored if not supported by platform.
You can visually identify ECC UDIMM by it's look, it will just have extra DRAM chip for ECC byte, making up for 72 bit databus (64+8), while usual DIMM have 8 or 16 chips (8*8 = 64 bit databus).

Registered or buffered DIMM is whole another story, as it's addressing/command topology is different.

You can see in example diagram from internets here:



And in your case, you have ECC RDIMM, which cannot work in usual platform. There are some exceptions, for example most PC motherboards on Intel X79 and Intel X99 platform (LGA2011 socket), which can support RDIMMs if Xeon CPU is installed, but that's because this platform is natively goes from server design.