When do i need ecc ram

On a server, that would never be enough. You need high-end, battery-backed fully hardware RAID with onboard RAM to ensure that you don't lose data due to a power outage, disk failure, or whatever. The benefit simply will not justify the price.

It's not just a matter of "I don't run a server, so I don't need it". It depends how much you value your data. It's not just a matter of occasional crashes - the problem is you could get corruption and have no way of knowing that it's going on.

On a database server where that RAM might be in a disk buffer, a bit error can corrupt disk storage as well. Generally you would expect to use ECC memory on a server. On a desktop PC you may view it as overkill. ECC RAM is designed to aid in preventing and fixing memory based errors, usually using some sort of hamming code or modular redundancy.

This is very useful in servers that contained important data, or need high availability, but it comes at a cost. Whilst its probably worth paying the extra for your important servers, do you really want to do so for your desktop machine, does it matter if there is the occasionally memory error?

Sure it matters if your SQL database drops some data during a transaction, but do you care if your word document is affected by a slight memory blip? It will crash less often and work done on it and documents cached in RAM will not be randomly corrupted. While running a long memtest86 session will usually find any problems, there may be very specific problems with the RAM which only show up rarely and in certain use cases. This can still happen much more frequently than the corruption that perfectly good ECC RAM is designed to protect against -- maybe once every month.

So if you install monitoring software, you can be sure that your RAM is good, or replace bad chips. So check prices; if prices are anywhere close, buy ECC if your workstation accommodates it. If you just mean the average desktop PC, then that is usually based on a platform that doesn't even have ECC support. If you mean a workstation class computer, then it quite likely comes with ECC memory whether you care about it or not. Overall, the workstation class is typically based on essentially server hardware but with proper graphics and packaged in a different form-factor.

The expected workload is also more taxing than that of the desktop PC, so if you acknowledge that ECC makes sense for servers, then I think it's not much of a stretch that ECC also makes sense for workstations.

It can absolutely be argued that everything ought to have ECC but, right now, it's not practical as the industry has decided to make ECC a feature to differentiate higher end hardware. The incidence is probably a few in a year, but it depends on the usage. So in a server environment the correctable errors might not be that important, but you boot the server machines rarely, so uncorrectable errors caused by failing RAM can be there undetected for a while corrupting your data.

I think that's the main reason why servers need ECC. Workstations boot and so check RAM frequently, so hardware failures can be detected by every reboot. If we are talking about memory errors, it is better to version the important documents on the server.

So if the workstation reads and modifies something, then the original content should not be overwritten on the server. Regular backups can do the same for you. Another aspect of this question is security.

If your workstation is connected to any non-safe network, then it might be vulnerable to the row hammer attack , which exploits a DRAM related phenomenon. However, all registered memory is ECC memory. This reduces how hard the memory controller has to work and also makes it possible to use more RAM modules than there would have been otherwise. This article is part of the Tom's Hardware Glossary. Scharon Harding has a special affinity for gaming peripherals especially monitors , laptops and virtual reality.

Previously, she covered business technology, including hardware, software, cyber security, cloud and other IT happenings, at Channelnomics, with bylines at CRN UK. However, because of the extra processing required on the RAM chips, ECC may have a slight impact on memory performance. But with users prioritising the error minimisation and maximum uptime that ECC RAM provides, even if it does come with a minor performance hit, this is hardly a major issue.

The slight performance advantage that comes with non-ECC memory over ECC memory is outweighed by the potential risks of a harmful single-bit error occurring. For business-critical server applications, ECC memory is often well worth the short answer is yes. But on a server handling sensitive customer details or financial transactions, even a single error holds the potential for catastrophe.

To protect against financial loss caused by corrupted data, or reputational damage caused by downtime in the aftermath of a system failure, ECC RAM is highly recommended for organisations that process large volumes of customer data online. With a Bare Metal server, you get all the advantages of your own dedicated hardware, combined with the features of our latest cloud hosting platform.

What are single-bit errors? The causes of single-bit errors come in two main flavours: Hard single-bit errors are caused by physical factors like temperature or power variation, and stress on the hardware. Soft single-bit errors result from factors that are harder to observe, such as magnetic interference and even cosmic rays.