ECC & Athlon 5350/5150

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kac77

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Has anyone tried this? I had no idea these chips supported ECC but they do. So has anyone built a file server around them? How do they perform for this task?
 
You need first a motherboard that supports ECC. The go-to brand for this is Asus, and their AM1 boards don't seem to support it.
 
Aesma said:
You need first a motherboard that supports ECC. The go-to brand for this is Asus, and their AM1 boards don't seem to support it.
Click to expand...

I thought the same thing until someone said the manual was updated which mentions ECC support on the AM1M-A. Oh well it's only $100. It couldn't hurt to try. At the absolute worst is becomes a HTPC.
 
I went by what was written on the Asus website, but if it's in the manual I guess it should be good.
 
So the MB and CPU came in the mail on Friday. The manual does say that it supports up to 8GB per slot of ECC unbuffered RAM. Unfortunately I don't have unbuffered ECC just registered laying around (which i should have realized).
 
Indeed registered is now relegated to multi-socket systems featuring dozens of DDR slots.

With my Phenom X6 and FX-8350 systems I use Kingston 1600MHz ECC unbuffered RAM with good results.
 
So everything finally arrived.



So I can report that my LSI 16i HBA loaded fine. I installed the ECC RAM (16GB total & low voltage).

dmidecode reads:

Physical Memory Array
Location: System Board Or Motherboard
Use: System Memory
Error Correction Type: Multi-bit ECC
Maximum Capacity: 16 GB
Error Information Handle: Not Provided
Number Of Devices: 2

The only thing that is questionable is that there isn't a way that I know of that will allow you to actually test that ECC is being used.

The previous system was this:

Opteron 4130
8GB of ECC Registered
SUPERMICRO MBD-H8SCM
LSI 9201 16i
Intel 24 port Expander
2x 64GB Crucial M4-CT064M4SSD2
6x 2TB WD20EZRX
Lian-Li PC-343
ENERMAX ENM750AWT

Now it's this:

Athlon 5350
ASUS AM1-A Micro-ITX
16GB of ECC Unbuffered
LSI 9201 16i
Intel 24 port Expander
2x 64GB Crucial M4-CT064M4SSD2
6x 2TB WD20EZRX
Lian-Li PC-343
ENERMAX ENM750AWT

So what's the power savings?

Startup:
Before: 251W
Now: 157W

Idle:
Before: 130W
Now: 87W

File Transfers had a range:
Before: 160W - 200W
Now: 111W - 115W


How about performance?

Sequential Reads:
Before: 418 MB/s
Now: 425 MB/s

Sequential Writes:
Before: 302 MB/s
Now: 307 MB/s

All is not gravy though. Memory bandwidth dropped.
Before: 2004684061 bytes (2.0 GB) copied, 0.587048 s, 3.4 GB/s
Now: 2004684061 bytes (2.0 GB) copied, 0.832626 s, 2.4 GB/s


All in all I'm pleased. I just need to find a way to make sure the ECC is actually being used.
 
Nice, this is good to know! :)

Where can I find the source of this information? I can't find anything about it on the Asus website.
 
Ignoring the lower memory bandwidth issue, this may make for a low powered file server alternative to those Atom-based file servers. I'm still deciding between going Mint with ZFS on Linux or FreeNAS with ZFS.

What file server OS are you running?
 
octoberasian said:
Ignoring the lower memory bandwidth issue, this may make for a low powered file server alternative to those Atom-based file servers. I'm still deciding between going Mint with ZFS on Linux or FreeNAS with ZFS.

What file server OS are you running?
Click to expand...

Ubuntu 12.04.

I do have another update. I decided to call Asus Tech Support for what it's worth to see if I couldn't find a better answer. So far what I was told was that the chip supports ECC but the motherboard doesn't.

All in all though i really do like the chip. So far it's the only low power chip that doesn't cost hundreds of dollars that supports ECC + AES. Now I just have to wait for a motherboard that supports ECC.

Either way I have nice little HTPC project now for the holidays.
 
We're back to what was said on the website then, and my gut feeling that it's a processor line that won't get ECC unfortunately.
 
Physical Memory Array
Location: System Board Or Motherboard
Use: System Memory
Error Correction Type: Multi-bit ECC
Maximum Capacity: 16 GB
Error Information Handle: Not Provided
Number Of Devices: 2
Click to expand...
According to dmidecode you do have ECC memory. I wouldn't trust Asus tech support. They hardly ever sit with knowledge like this.

I belive /var/log/syslog would print ECC memory corrections. I've never seen ECC errors in there though.
 
I have seen ecc corrections in the mcelog in the past however I have not had a recorded ECC correction in several years on any of my servers.
 
olavgg said:
According to dmidecode you do have ECC memory. I wouldn't trust Asus tech support. They hardly ever sit with knowledge like this.

I belive /var/log/syslog would print ECC memory corrections. I've never seen ECC errors in there though.
Click to expand...

Well yes his memory is ECC. The question is, does the mobo have the actual traces between CPU socket and memory slots for ECC ?
 
Aesma said:
Well yes his memory is ECC. The question is, does the mobo have the actual traces between CPU socket and memory slots for ECC ?
Click to expand...

You can use edac-utils for this

sudo apt-get install edac-utils

then see status with

edac-util -s
 
Can op try this? I'm very interested in the results of "edac-util -s"
 
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