Quote Originally Posted by josh1980 View Post
Speederlander, why 8GB? What happens at 8GB that makes ECC important? Or are you just trying to say that if you use it as a permanent RAM drive you should use it? I wouldn't recommend ever disabling the feature. 1/9th of your capacity isn't much to lose to prove your data is correct via ECC.

Me personally, I intend to buy 4GB sticks for all 8 slots and make it my boot drive, with 2x1TB hard drives for storage space. I have a RAID5 array consisting of 8x1TB drives, so I don't really need to keep alot of storage space on my workstation.

I'm sorry I haven't had a change to test the RAID0 using the onboard RAID chipset. Work has kept me busy this weekend, but I intend to get results as soon as I can. I'm just as curious as others to see what the RAID chipset can do. My motherboard is an Asus P5E if anyone wants to look up the RAID chipset. I think it's the ICH9R.
I say 8GB only because people tend to add in 4GB increments. At 4GB, RAM suffers from the occasional transient bit error but probably not enough to worry, especially when used as simple volitile memory (though I would, since I really value my data).

The original Corsair rule I recall is: 1 bit error occurs in 256MB of ram every month.
4GB = 15 bit errors/month
8GB = 31 bit errors/month
16GB = 62 bit errors/month
32GB = 125 bit errors/month

However, other more recent sources maintain 1 bit error per gigabyte per month, so that cuts those numbers by a factor of 4, i.e.:
4GB = 4 bit errors/month
8GB = 8 bit errors/month
16GB = 15 bit errors/month
32GB = 31 bit errors/month

Which is more correct? My guess is that it's somewhere in between, governed by the quality of the RAM, the luck of the draw, and a host of other issues.

There is a reason that server boards only use ECC RAM.

At 8GB, is the incidence still acceptable? You have to decide. But if that RAM is now operating as an always on, permanent drive, to not use ECC when you will probably be using 16GB or more would be nuts.