Do i "need" ECC ram ? N54L

Randall8686

Randall8686

Randall8686

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Hi guys

Well i need some more ram for my N54L, Im running a couple of VM's on it and using it as a media center (streaming to a TV via graphics card) also a teamspeak server, File host and website host. Its a busy little box with 8tb of storage. However my question is

1) do i need ECC ram ? I dont really understand it 100%
2) can i mix non ECC with ECC ?
3) if i dont need it whats the disadvantage of not using it in my application ?


Thank you in advance
J
 
Randall8686 said:
Hi guys

Well i need some more ram for my N54L, Im running a couple of VM's on it and using it as a media center (streaming to a TV via graphics card) also a teamspeak server, File host and website host. Its a busy little box with 8tb of storage. However my question is

1) do i need ECC ram ? I dont really understand it 100%
2) can i mix non ECC with ECC ?
3) if i dont need it whats the disadvantage of not using it in my application ?


Thank you in advance
J
Click to expand...

1) Unlikely. Error Correction Code RAM recovers from memory faults that way otherwise cause a crash and so most servers have it as they may be running mission critical applications.
2) No, it's one or the other, with some servers requiring ECC.
3) You may bet a BSOD or kernel panic where otherwise you wouldn't. This is usually a very low risk though.
 
Interesting, TBH if it crashed it would not be the end of the world unless it did it every week, Now to find some Ram that fits the N54L

Thanks for you help :)
 
Do you need it? Probably not.
Can you mix it, I think you can but it means that the ECC RAM you use won't correct errors.
As per Burnsy, possible crashes or panics which could potentially lead to data corruption.
 
pretty much the same answer as above

you dont need it unless its a mission critical machine and down time is a no no

you cant mix ecc and non ecc

for you theres no disadvantage of not using it if your box crashed its not going to be the end of the world, on a plus note ecc ram is generally slightly slower than its non ecc counterpart
 
Cheers guys, i will find some normal ram that will fit and work. Its used as a file server but its backed up onto synology server too at my house then also another server at my brother inlaws so its not going to cause me an issue if worst came to worst and it cra@ped its self
 
Normal ram is fine, i use this in mine but have a crashplan account so all in the cloud backup as well but never had any issues over the past 3 years :-)
 
Randall8686 said:
Cheers guys, i will find some normal ram that will fit and work. Its used as a file server but its backed up onto synology server too at my house then also another server at my brother inlaws so its not going to cause me an issue if worst came to worst and it cra@ped its self
Click to expand...

buy the cheapest branded 1333MHz stuff you can find. Kingston ValueRAM works good.
 
binaryknight said:
you dont need it unless its a mission critical machine and down time is a no no
Click to expand...

It's not about uptime or mission criticality, it's about data integrity. ECC reduces the risk of your data becoming corrupt when it's in memory.

OP, which filesystem are you using for data storage? If you run something with built-in data integrity like ZFS then ECC is recommended, because typically users of ZFS care about end-to-end data integrity.

If you're not bothered about getting the occasional bit-flip then don't bother with ECC, but all things being equal you may as well buy it - it's not that much more expensive than non-ECC and it's less expensive than some of the XXXTREME overclocking RAM that some people insist on buying.
 
El Pew said:
It's not about uptime or mission criticality, it's about data integrity. ECC reduces the risk of your data becoming corrupt when it's in memory.

OP, which filesystem are you using for data storage? If you run something with built-in data integrity like ZFS then ECC is recommended, because typically users of ZFS care about end-to-end data integrity.

If you're not bothered about getting the occasional bit-flip then don't bother with ECC, but all things being equal you may as well buy it - it's not that much more expensive than non-ECC and it's less expensive than some of the XXXTREME overclocking RAM that some people insist on buying.
Click to expand...

This ^^

Burnsy2023 said:
If you have a mission critical app then surely you want to ensure data integrity?
Click to expand...

The impact of bit flip on an application is fairly small, as the application will likely handle these exceptions. Now in an instance where you use ZFS, the data is written to memory first, then dumped to the hard disk. The bit flip wouldn't be noticed until you went to open that file and it didn't work.
 
Burnsy2023 said:
If you have a mission critical app then surely you want to ensure data integrity?
Click to expand...

It depends, sometimes minor data corruption doesn't affect overall data quality, at least not to the point of being detrimental to the "mission". If a bit flip changes text in a "notes" field of a database for example, it might not matter too much but if the same bit flips in a referential field or something that's used for accounting then that can cause problems. In a home user context a bit flip might cause a "skip" in a music file or faults in a few frames of a video file, for example - might not be the end of the world.

For true mission critical apps although ECC is a factor it's far more important to have HA, failover and DR capability - usually when you're in that sort of scenario ECC is kind of a given anyway.
 
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