 Linus Torvalds may not have been polite about it, but he was definitely right. While PC gamers enjoy blazing fast tech in their gaming rigs at home, they have paid a price. Thanks to Intel's innovative strategy of intentionally disabling features, then giving them back to you in a different, more expensive product, this ECC memory that I'm holding actually physically fits in this slot, but it won't work, at least not fully. But guess who's got your back, gamers? Facebook. No, I'm just kidding. It's AMD. It's always AMD, isn't it? While they haven't fully validated the feature, AMD at least had the decency to leave ECC support enabled on their consumer platforms, leaving it up to motherboard manufacturers to implement. And guess what? Some of them have. That means that in theory, you could have the stability of a server right in your very own gaming rig, raising the question, well, should you? Maybe. But first, you should check out our sponsor, GlassWire. With GlassWire, you can instantly see your current and past network activity, detect malware, and block badly behaving apps on your PC or Android device. Use offer code Linus to get 25% off GlassWire at the link below. ["Skyrim 2.0 Remake"] ["Skyrim 2.0 Remake"] Before we can say if we should use it, we need to understand what ECC memory actually is. ECC stands for Error Correction Code, which essentially means the RAM uses clever tricks and specialized code to find and even correct in real time errors in memory, or actually the same principle can apply to storage. To do that, ECC RAM modules need extra memory chips to store parity data, which can tell the memory controller on your CPU what the value of a bit is supposed to be. See, here's the thing. Both of these sticks are labeled 32 gigabytes, but this one clearly has nine chips on it instead of the normal eight. Now there are a number of different error correction methods, but the most common is ECC DED or SECDED Hamming code, which can silently correct for a single bit flip or detect when two bits have flipped, and in some cases even inform the user that there's been an error. Now what's a bit flip? I'm glad you asked. It's a spontaneous change in the stored value of a bit, either from a zero to a one or vice versa, and it can be caused by minor hardware failure or even external factors such as cosmic rays. No, but really, and its impact can be tremendous. Research labs that run simulations, for example, need ECC memory to prevent instabilities or incorrect values during their calculations. For example, without ECC, a bit flip could change a byte's value, potentially leading to an inaccurate result or even a system failure depending on the circumstances. But I hear you calling out from your Mountain Dew decorated desk and Dorito dust-coated fingers. What does this mean for me, the average gamer? Well, I'm glad you asked that too. Although games or work from home usually aren't as high stakes as high precision lab research, RAM errors can happen to any system regardless of what it's being used for or where it is. And these aren't detectable by most normal consumer hardware. So they can either go completely unnoticed or affect a critical bit causing program instability, system instability, or even a full-on crash. So even if ECC would only kick in very occasionally, just like using RAID to protect against a physical drive failure. Holy shit. Oh. It's a precaution that in an ideal world, we would all take all the time. So how do you do it? Well, pretty easily actually. There are different types of ECC memory, UDIMs, RDIMs, LRDIMs, and FBDIMs. But only UDIMs will work with our Ryzen setup. So that simplifies our choices a little bit. The reason is that the other types of DIMMs have various types of registers, which are designed to take load off of the CPU's memory controller and allow the system to address a greater capacity of RAM per module and a greater number of modules overall. Now that trade-off in servers and in the data center is worthwhile for the extra latency. But on a desktop, we don't really want that anyway. So we kidded ourselves out with four 32 gig sticks of 3,200 megahertz memory from Neemix and all right, we're ready to start gaming, right? Let's game. Not quite. These RAM modules are unbuffered. So they'll actually work in any motherboard that supports their capacity and the DDR4 standard. But ECC, that ninth chip per side, will only be active if we choose a motherboard that explicitly supports the feature. Now we had originally intended to use this one from ASRock Rack, but we had some difficulty adjusting memory timings. So we switched over to an ASUS B550M A Prime motherboard, which explicitly lists ECC support. To max out our system, because we can, we're using four of these to give us a total of 128 gigabytes of RAM in our gaming system. And we're hoping that because they run at high speed, similar to gaming modules, although not as fast, we won't be giving up too much performance when we pair it up with our Ryzen 9 3900 XT and RTX 2080 Super. And then we're gonna be comparing to some crucial ballistics. And wow, these numbers really aren't impressing anyone. That is, unlike our CPU pillow from lttstore.com. Are you gonna throw that to me? Ah, there it is. Ha ha! In games, the ECC memory hardly makes any difference at all, which if you think about it, kind of is impressive. Here's the thing. Even though both of these kits are clocked at 3,200 megahertz, ECC memory tends to run at higher latencies, even if you don't have a register. And these Neemix modules are no exception to that rule. The worst performance loss was about 6% in CSGO, and otherwise we were basically within our margin of error. So, okay, how about productivity? I mean, this stuff is designed for workstation and server use, right? So let's crunch some numbers. And if I didn't tell you that these were different configurations, you probably wouldn't know. The difference in performance is even less pronounced than in the few games we tested. So if you were hoping for a performance uplift by spending considerably more on ECC memory, you're in for a big disappointment. But you also probably weren't paying attention to anything that I said up until now anyway. ECC isn't about performance, and it never was. It's about reliability, which is why Linus Torvalds was so upset about the way that Intel artificially locked it out of their consumer platforms, effectively driving up the cost of entry. I mean, I can see why Intel did it. ECC is critical for professional work where procurement departments are spending money they didn't have to earn anyway, and won't care about the extra cost as long as it has some benefit to their business. It's only a nice to have for everyone else. But he made a couple of other excellent points. First, that the marketing that ECC shouldn't be important to gamers or overclockers is nonsense. 100%, man. Like what? Regular people aren't doing anything important, and they should just deal with random crashes, and then have no idea what caused them, even if it was a defective memory module. And guys, for years I've been saying, overclocking your system memory isn't worth it. You know why I've said that? Because under normal circumstances, with unbuffered non ECC dims, you have no way of knowing if it's operating correctly at your overclocked speed. If it had ECC, it would spit out an error right away when you push it too far. And his other point was that as memory speeds have continued to ramp up, it's become more and more essential to the point where they can't keep ignoring it. DDR5 actually has ECC built right into the standard now. So the bottom line is if you're all about redlining performance and saving a buck, ECC probably isn't gonna make it into your gaming rig yet. But if you want the utmost instability and you don't mind losing a few FPS here and there, hey, at least AMD gives you the option. So thanks AMD, and thanks Linus for bringing this to everyone's attention in your characteristic, not to mention charming manner. Speaking of charming, I'm gonna charm you to check out our sponsor. Drop and THX came together to create the Drop THX Panda Wireless Headphones. And there's a bunch of talking points in here. THX, AAA technology, distortion-free wireless headphones. They sound the same on wireless and a wire Bluetooth 30 hours battery life, blah, blah, blah. The point is they sound freaking great. They are audiophile grade Bluetooth headphones. They sound so good. They weigh only 375 grams. You can get a detachable gaming mic. Just go check them out at the link below. We actually did a review for these like ages back before they sponsored anything about them. They're flipping awesome. Just go get them if you have the money for them because they're great. If you guys enjoyed this video investigating the performance differences between gaming RAM and ECC memory on Ryzen, you might also enjoy our look at different speeds of gaming RAM on Ryzen and how they impact performance. It's a good one.