ECC Memory - Reasons For Not Using ECC

Reasons For Not Using ECC

In most computers used for serious scientific or financial computing and as servers, ECC is the rule rather than the exception, as can be seen by examining manufacturers' specifications.

However most motherboards intended for desktop (rather than server) machines cannot use ECC, and those that can are shipped with it disabled (but easily enabled, usually by a change to BIOS setup), to allow use of cheaper non-ECC memory.

ECC memory is higher cost, as each bank is 9 memory chips compared to 8 for non-ECC memory, and the lack of demand for ECC RAM allows for less economy-of-scale advantage.. In some cases the price ratio reduces to 9/8, as an example, on 2008/11/30, on Crucial.com, an ECC CL=5 unbuffered 2GB DDR2-667 DIMM cost $30 while the corresponding non-ECC part cost $28, a difference of 1/15, however some ECC modules cost twice as much as their non-ECC equivalents ). ECC-supporting motherboards, chipsets, and processors may also be more expensive, since they are priced for non-consumer markets. Furthermore, ECC RAM has a performance impact of around 2–3 percent, depending on application, due to the additional time needed for ECC memory controllers to perform error checking.