what is better between DDR2 EEC and DDR3 for RAM

[yaume]

hi,

What's better between DDR2 EEC and DDR3 ?
I've in my possession a "Pentium 4" so i can buy a motherboard between these 4 :

SuperMicro X7SBL-LN2
MSI G41M-P33 Combo
ASRock G41M-VS3 R2.0
ASRock G31M-GS


I'm beginner, so i just want to make my first NAS to try, so i don't want to give a lot of money.
I think SuperMicro is a really good card but more expensive and no DDR3, but EEC.

thanks for your reply.

best regards,

 

[Sir.Robin]

Definetly ECC. You won't be utilizing all th badwidht anyway.

Although... i dont think P4 suport ECC. You'll need a Xeon for that. Or you could do like me... use AMD for cheap ECC setup :)

 

[yaume]

i think ECC depends from motherboard ,but not from CPU.
Another question is that if there is a big difference between DDR2 and DDR3 ?

 

[titan_rw]

i think ECC depends from motherboard ,but not from CPU.
Another question is that if there is a big difference between DDR2 and DDR3 ?

No, BOTH the CPU and the MB have to support ECC.

As far as ddr2 vs ddr3, I don't think the speed difference will make much difference. Freenas much prefers larger amounts of ram vs fast ram. ECC is definately recommended, but so is lots of memory. Honestly, the P4 is such an old cpu, I wouldn't even consider using it for freenas. You'll probably be disappointed in the performance. I certainly wouldn't be buying anything in order to use that particular cpu.

You may want to look at an HP Microserver instead of putting money into 10 year old hardware.

 

[yaume]

i understand.
Really, it's just for my home, to stream HD video, FLAC audio on my TV and CIFS on my windows computer, and maybe upnp on a tablet.
i've tried freenas with an old notebook with a P4 and 512 Mo RAM, an d it's working well in my home (and it's a very small configuration, RAM is very little).
Just one problem was for HD video on TV, but i stream good with Divx and FLAC audio and CIFs share working (but with small rate).
But it's correct for me and my use.

Thanks for you reply.
I will have a look to HP micro server, i think it's maybe a good idea

 

[Richman]

No, BOTH the CPU and the MB have to support ECC.

I believe, through my research that titan_rw is correct except for the fact that it used to be ECC support mainly depended the MB before the memory controllers got put on the cpu die. AMD did this around 2005 and I believe and Intel followed suit 3 years later in 2008. So, before 2005 for AMD and 2008 for Intel ECC support depended on the chipset, namely the northbridge that was tied to the memory controller supporting ECC. Now it seams that CPU's have gotten a bit more convoluted in that, even though they have memory controllers embedded on them, I am not sure if they all support ECC. I have tried to look up info on this and its hard to find from CPU manufacturers. It is understood that most support ECC memory these days. Practically all AMD from around 2005-2006 onward do but I am not sure about all Intel from 2008 onward as there seams to be some confusion about that. Intel still makes the Pentium named CPU but its not the same as the old one that didn't support ECC thus the old one didn't have the memory controller on die. I understand the die has changed and the Pentiums of today are basically i3 chips with some features disabled. Thus the convolution. Now it depend on making sure the Intel CPU will support it. Most motherboard theoretically are supposed to support ECC since the memory controller isn't on-board anymore but then it depends on weather the BIOS allows it. For instance, the BIOS has to be written to recognize and enable it and be able to turn ECC on or off. I have read about some MB's supporting ECC even though the manufacturer claimed it didn't. Thus more convolution. I have also heard of some savoy computer geeks rewriting their BIOS to enable it but that is a whole other discussion. I do know the AMD 760, 970 chipset and BIOS on ASUS MB's supports ECC with maybe a few others.

 

[Richman]

i've tried freenas with an old notebook with a P4 and 512 Mo RAM, an d it's working well in my home (and it's a very small configuration, RAM is very little).

How long did you use this set-up with only 512MB of memory. Apparently with that little amount of RAM, the consensus here is that your NAS is doomed to imploded creating a black wormhole that sucks your whole house and 80% of the surrounding neighbors houses down into it and send it to another parallel galaxy 500 million light years away from earth.

 

[Richman]

Why did you answer a thread from June 2013?!

OMG, because nobody locked it and I believe that someone will have further questions about the same, well question and it will save them starting and opening another thread. I like to be green and save the threads and be conservative. :p

If I am researching info and find a thread that doesn't seam to be fully answered I feel compelled to add to it. Is that wrong? Should I be doomed to the silicone tarpits and flogged with SAS cables?

 

[cyberjock]

Oh, and i'll explain how this stuff works on Intels...

All of the CPUs use the same memory controller design. So "supporting" ECC isn't really a CPU "feature".

The memory controller will "turn on" the ECC feature if the BIOS and chipset "allow" the memory controller to enable the feature.

Now, there's a catch... some CPUs list ECC support as being "YES" or "NO". But.. some CPUs don't list ECC support at all! Some people have used the allegedly "unsupported" CPU with ECC RAM and there's reports it worked. Now, the ECC function may or may not work, but would you risk your server with a CPU that might not actually do ECC checking? I wouldn't...

So you really do have to have a motherboard with the chipset + a CPU that supports ECC. ;)

AMD is a totally different beast. There's no rhyme or reason as it seems to be something that is or isn't enabled in the BIOS of the motherboard, so you have to go by what the motherboard allows. So good luck with that. ;)

 

[cyberjock]

And this stuff has been explained THOROUGHLY just in threads from last month...

 

[Richman]

Oh, and i'll explain how this stuff works on Intels...

All of the CPUs use the same memory controller design. So "supporting" ECC isn't really a CPU "feature".

The memory controller will "turn on" the ECC feature if the BIOS and chipset "allow" the memory controller to enable the feature.

Now, there's a catch... some CPUs list ECC support as being "YES" or "NO". But.. some CPUs don't list ECC support at all! Some people have used the allegedly "unsupported" CPU with ECC RAM and there's reports it worked. Now, the ECC function may or may not work, but would you risk your server with a CPU that might not actually do ECC checking? I wouldn't...

So you really do have to have a motherboard with the chipset + a CPU that supports ECC. ;)

AMD is a totally different beast. There's no rhyme or reason as it seems to be something that is or isn't enabled in the BIOS of the motherboard, so you have to go by what the motherboard allows. So good luck with that. ;)

That makes more sense and gives more detail which falls in line with everything I have read. Thanks for more clarification Cyberdog. Does this mean your not going to flog me with SAS cables again? :p

 

[cyberjock]

I got the SAS cables with chains on them now! ;)

 

[Richman]

And this stuff has been explained THOROUGHLY just in threads from last month...

I am not all caught up from last month yet. I was jsut doing soem research on different Supermicro MB's that were used with FreeNAS but haven't been able to find anything on this forum site. I don't think I have the hang of the search yet as it doesn't seam to work like most site searches.

 

[Richman]

I got the SAS cables with chains on them now! ;)

OUCH, my rear HDD and backplane already hurt.

 

[gpsguy]

Just use the Ohio method for searching FreeNAS. Go to Google and type:

site:forums.freenas.org xxx

where xxx represents your search terms. Works much better than the forum search and allows for TLA's.

BTW, this works everywhere, not just in Ohio for Richman.


Sent from my phone

 

[Richman]

Yeh, um interesting. Now that you mentinoed it, I have noticed at least a dozen websites that I have searched other than and including FreeNAS will come up with something like "No results found" and then type the same search in Google with the site URI and low and behold, you get results. Supermicro is notorious for this where you can put the Model number of a Supermicro MB in their own site search and it won't find anything but then put that model number in Google and BAM! there you have the Supermicro MB specification page from www.supermicro.com. Its always of great intrigue how Google indexes websites better than the websites own search indexing. I mean, even when is is their OWN PRODUCT model number for Christ Cringles sake, their search toll can't even find it and they say their own product doesn't exist on their site when you know it definitely does.