Yes! - ECC RAM with AMD socket AM3+ ...seeking mobo advice


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Hi Folks,

 

I am trying do build a couple of Servers, kinda lotek style.  ;D ...wIth ECC Support and Server CPU (OK, I can't have IPMI with that directly but lets consider thia a lower priority for now).

 

So, what is the most power efficient chipset for AM3+ socket out there?

 

This is what I already have....

 

- ASUS M5A78L-M/USB3 (NB760G/SB710)

- AMD Opteron 3350HE (AM3+ Socket, 45WTDP)

- 2x 2GB Kingston ECC UDIMM, DDR3-1333

 

Everything is working, Yes, ECC is confirmed from BIOS and MemTest86+  :D

 

I tested with Win7-64 and power consumpton is not OK.

- PSU: Corsair CX430

- System Disk 128GB Kingston SSD

- 1x USB wireless stick for PS/2 keyboard and mouse.

- CPU fan on standard mode

- BIOS all tuning settings on Auto.- Parallel, Serial, HD-Audio and USB3.0 disabled

 

Power draw:

- idle 39W  :(

- max: 80W  :o

 

since CPU has a TDP of 45W, I take it that it is the chipset that is causing 90% of the idle power draw.

Are there any better chipsets for AM3+ out there?

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...I am based in Germany...looked into my favourite price-portal and one shop had mobo+CPU marked as available within 3 business days....purchased on Saturday nite...delivery arrived on Thursday....excellent.

 

I'll be shopping three more of these as soon as I have the first one up...still testing with power-management.

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...i completed my first build, with a fully encrypted array.

 

- ubuntu server 12.04.2-LTS on local SSD.

- LUKS full disk encryption (AES-256 with AES-NI enabled)

- zfsonlinux on top of the encrypted disks

- 4x 2GB ECC UDIMM DDR3-1333 (8GB total)

- Opteron 3350HE (4 cores 2,8GHz)

- 1x M1015/9211-8i in IT, FW P16

- ASUS M5A78L-M/USB3 (NB760G/SB710)

- 7x 2TB all green (WD-EARS, HGST, WD-EARX) in a raid z2 array

- 1x 5-in-3 cage with 80mm fan.

- 3x 12cm fans for further cooling case and remaining 2 disks.

 

...I am getting 295MBytes/sec write and 425MBytes read locally to the array.when testing with dd.

 

The box is beaming/receiving  my backups ATM and I see constant  >90MBbyte/sec via LAN on the onboard Realtec-NIC (doing rsync).

Power consumption during this session is around 105W (which is a lot compared to my X8SIL-F build),

however, I am getting full speed with AES which was not possible with my old setup.

 

The box/board and ubuntu works perfect with S3-sleep/suspend...I am going to keep it as my new backup server.  ;D

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  • 4 weeks later...

Hi,

 

I'm very interested in this setup, can you provide some more infromation on idle power consumption ?

Did you test underclocking or undervolting to atain the level of power consumption of the 3320 opteron (25W instead of 45W TDP) ?

 

I'm very interested in this cause I would like to know if it's worthwhile to upgrade my current system (Intel dualcore 6600 based with 100W idle power consumption), to this reasonably priced mobo/cpu combo.

 

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Hi,

 

I'm very interested in this setup, can you provide some more infromation on idle power consumption ?

Did you test underclocking or undervolting to atain the level of power consumption of the 3320 opteron (25W instead of 45W TDP) ?

 

I'm very interested in this cause I would like to know if it's worthwhile to upgrade my current system (Intel dualcore 6600 based with 100W idle power consumption), to this reasonably priced mobo/cpu combo.

 

..no, I did not. TDP is for high load, not during idle....my UseCase is using AES-NI so I'll be needing all cores.

My idle consumption measures give a baseline of 39W for this combo...when all cores are on high use, consuption rises about 42W...so I take it, that majority of idle consumption is caused by mobo and chipset.

There are other ASUS AM3+ boards that support ECC with more PCIe slots and without USB3 support (which I turned off in BIOS already, see my post above).

 

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I take it that this idle power draw is without any hard drives ?

 

It's a pitty you can't undervolt it to the same clockspeed as the opteron 3320, cause by doing this I think the TDP would have been the same (25W), so the 3350HE could be transformed in a 3320 for a much lower price point.

At idle I had expected them to be the same, as in their tech specs I don't see any difference between them (with the exeption of clock speed of course).

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Yes, idle consumption was taken with Win7-64 and a single SSD for OS....also only CPU fan.

 

The BIOS allows you to set negative values and base-clocks and such but I did not tweak with them...all docs out there cover overclocking

and I am no expert...my usecase is also different, so I did not bother much.

 

I think the 3320 and 3350 will idle at the same level, so undervolting will not gain you much here.

Because of that, going with a FX CPU - which is also cheaper - would let the build idle at the same rate as well...and deliver much horsepower if need be.

There is one SM server board line out there which supports the 33xx CPUs...it runs with a server chipset, but they are quite expensive, here: http://www.supermicro.nl/Aplus/motherboard/Opteron3000/

The H8SML-7F comes with a LSI 2308 on-board, which makes the deal more appealing...idle power of the H8SML-iF is mentioned here: http://www.servethehome.com/Server-detail/amd-opteron-3380-review-benchmarks-review/

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  • 9 months later...

Yes, almost all ASUS AM3+ mobos do support ECC memory...it is officail as it is listed in their spec sheets.

 

Yes it is CPU dependent...but, compared with intel it is not chipset dependent.  ;)

A few years and CPU generations back, AMD moved the complete memory management into the CPUs *and* they enabled ECC support for the desktop processors as well..at least up to and including AM3+ socket CPUs.

So as far as compatibility is concerned, IMHO *all* CPUs that will fit (are listed in the mobo compatibility list for the ECC-capable ASUS AM3+ mobos) do support ECC.

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should i buy buffered or unbuffered?  does it matter? 

 

You don't have a choice -- you have to buy whichever is required by your motherboard.  I suspect you need unbuffered, but if you post the make/model of your motherboard we can confirm it for you.

 

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should i buy buffered or unbuffered?  does it matter?  i got errors on last parity check and now i am paranoid.

 

unRAID's parity check is not related to memory, but disk. Any errors reported (or corrected) are disk errors, not memory. Without ECC, memory parity errors should results in OS halting (panic/blue screen). Memory errors corrected by ECC are logged in the motherboard's event log.

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  • 1 month later...

Hello, I have Athlon II 255 in ASUS M5A78L-M and my PC doesn't run with ECC RAM (ELPIDA 2GB 2Rx8 PC3-10600E-9-10-E1; EBJ21EE8BDFA-DJ-F). Why is that? Some compatibility problem? Today I can't check this mobo with other memory, so I'm asking you  ;)

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AFAIR all AMD Desktop CPUs for AM2, AM3 and AM3+ should support ECC, but only unbuffered, unregistered modules.

...and you must enable it in the BIOS as well.

 

Hello, I have Athlon II 255 in ASUS M5A78L-M and my PC doesn't run with ECC RAM (ELPIDA 2GB 2Rx8 PC3-10600E-9-10-E1; EBJ21EE8BDFA-DJ-F). Why is that? Some compatibility problem? Today I can't check this mobo with other memory, so I'm asking you  ;)

...what exactly do you mean by that?

Does the board not post at all or is the ECC memory not detected (how do you tell?)

 

- you should enable ECC in the BIOS

- under linux, (and unRAID, of course) the ECC-Memory kernel module will be loaded (edac) -> http://buttersideup.com/edacwiki/Main_Page

 

I have the same MB and an Athlon II X2 250u -- thinking about upgrading to a newer AM3+ MB with 8 SATA and adding ECC RAM.  Also curious if it will work with this CPU (and, frankly, if AM3+ will support this CPU)

 

...the CPU will be supported if it is listed in the mobo's list of supported CPUs (obviously)  ;)

- There is a good chance that it will work, if the socket types of CPU and mobo do match....I am running an AM3+ Opteron, that is not listed for my AM3+ board.

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  • 1 year later...

Hi all,

 

I know this is an old topic, but I just wanted to say thanks in deciding my build.

Here is the build, it will be used mostly for virtualization:

 

ASUS m5A78L-M USB3

Opteron 3350 HE

2x 4GB Patriot DDR3-1333 non-ECC (will replace for ECC later)

1x 250 GB WD2500HHTZ

2x 1 TB WD10EFRX

 

Idling at the moment at 55W, maybe i can go lower with some tweaking. Nevertheless, happy with the build  :) Hope this helps anyone.

 

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  • 1 month later...

I also know this is an old topic, but I was researching other board options as I am thinking of upgrading my unRAID processor and stumbled upon this at the top of a Google search so thought I would contribute in case it helps anybody else.

 

Basically all AMD FX processor support ECC Ram, as do all the Opeteron's but I don't think all Athlon processors do. I ended up using the following Kit for my unRAID 6 machine. After some deliberation I decided I wanted ECC because I would be running a virtual machine and my machine is always on.

 

Asus M5A78LM/USB3

AMD FX-4100 quad core (95w)

8gb (2x4) Crucial 1333mhz ECC unbuffered RAM

 

Now the issue I had was the FX-4100 isn't exactly renowned for being economical. However after basically a week of tweaking BIOS settings I managed to get the base system (i.e. without hard disks just one SSD) down from 54w idle to 48w idle and from 120w in prime95 to 89w. Also I got load temperatures down from 62c socket and about 55c on the board to 53c at the socket and 42c on the board. Which to be fair I was well happy with.

 

I achieved this by disabling all motherboard functions I did not plan on using, i.e. the onboard sound controller, serial, com, etc, etc. Once this was done and I had it running 'bare bones' I then started to tweak my voltages. I wanted to maintain performance but a big factor was of course heat and power usage. So first I ran a benchmark using novabench to get my CPU score as I wanted to maintain this. It's worth mentioning the only software I found to give me accurate temp readings on this particular board was HWMonitor. Everything else gives you garbage readings. CPU core is the on chip temp, TMP01 is the CPU socket temp and TMP02 is the motherboard / chipset.

 

I started by going into BIOS and setting everything manually to stock. So instead of everything set to AUTO you want everything set to it's standard. So processor for example is 1.375v for an FX-4100. Then I disabled turbo (as this causes havoc when trying to reach a stable clock) and compromised by manually setting the multiplier to a little over stock. So stock it is 3.6 and turbo's to 3.9. I discovered setting it stock at 3.7 with no turbo returned me very similar performance to standard. Then I went about undervolting the CPU. I found that the only two items that you needed to worry about that had the biggest effect on heat generation and power usage is the CPU voltage and VDDNB voltage. I reduced the VDDNB voltage first until I reached the lowest stable and then reduced the CPU voltage.

 

My reasons for this build is I didn't want to spend a fortune but at the same time I wanted to use ECC RAM and have a processor that could run a windows VM and a Plex docker. I have achieved this with Bells on. The processor cost me £30 off ebay and the board was about £38. The RAM for £42. Compare that to basically any Intel Xeon setup and you have saved £200 minimum. The FX-4100 can handle three plex transcode steams simultaneously v's my Athlon 610e I was using previously which could only handle one! Also it's worth noting that a TDP wattage is not the absolute wattage that a processor will use it is a guideline to it's thermals more than anything.

 

I don't have all my BIOS settings to hand, but if anyone is really interested in all the settings post and let me know and I will reboot the server for the first time in three months and check the BIOS :)

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  • 2 years later...

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