Will ECC Ram for Multipurpose Gaming/Workstation/Storage hold me back???

R

Romeomium

Limp Gawd
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Feb 9, 2017
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I am beginning to assemble hardware for a new Ryzen build, and am hoping ECC ram will be supported. I want to build a single PC that I can utilize as my main PC for both gaming, general use and use as my workstation for AutoCAD and Solidworks projects, as well as Plex Media Server and photo storage. I toyed with the idea of a separate NAS, but don't want to go that route right now. (Yes, I know it would be better) I plan to use SnapRAID+Drivepool for my media through NTFS & Windows 10, or may eventually work through a Linux VM. ECC is only important for me due to the error checking/correcting for the media storage. My CAD use is not critical enough to warrant ECC.

My question is - Do we anticipate the lower clocked ECC 2133 CL15 or 2400 CL17 DDR4 will cause noticeable bottlenecks vs. the higher clocked 4000mhz+ sticks? I read through some testing/benchmarks and there seems to be conflicting information. Can I overvolt/overclock ECC ram if I throw on some heat spreaders/heat sinks?

As Ryzen hasn't been released yet, everything is up in the air until we get reviews. The leaks suggest that only 2400mhz ram will be officially supported, with mobo manufacturers potentially allowing faster clocks.
 
You dont buy ECC RAM and then overclock it, thats just stupid. If your data is important enough that you need ECC, get ECC. If it isn't, it isn't. That being said, other than a few, isolated benchmarks you aren't going to notice much difference in real world situations.
 
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Since ECC ram will check and correct errors, why not attempt overclocking, and monitor the error checking? I wouldn't anticipate extreme clocks, but ~20% should be more than doable. Is it silly/stupid? Probably. But why the [H]ell not. If it doesn't work, you can always put it back to stock.

Glad to hear you don't think slower memory will bottleneck too much. It's been awhile since I've built a new rig, still rocking DDR3 1333...
 
ram speed just effects cpu efficiency a bit and only in programs that frequently need data not already in the cpu cache
if you could get 2133c13 or 2400c14 would be preferable but im guessing not with ecc?
 
dasa said:
ram speed just effects cpu efficiency a bit and only in programs that frequently need data not already in the cpu cache
if you could get 2133c13 or 2400c14 would be preferable but im guessing not with ecc?
Click to expand...

Tightest timings I've found are 2133CL15 or 2400CL17 with ECC. That's why I'm more interested in the overclock, to overcome the slightly higher latency.
 
Up until 6 months ago I was gaming just fine on a workstation running 16GB of DDR2 ECC ram! As long as you have a good CPU and GPU its more the amount of RAM than its overall speed.
 
Short answer:

No.

Long answer:

Outside of benchmarks, no. You won't notice any difference between stock ECC DDR4 clocks in real world tasks, even in gaming unless you're extremely concerned with raising min framerates by 1-5 FPS (in which case you need to upgrade your CPU or GPU instead of RAM timings).
 
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