1

There are 2 types of server RAM's

  • UDIMM unbuffered (or unregistered) ECC (Error correction)
  • RDIMM registered (buffered) ECC memories.

The main difference between them is that UDIMM are using CPU's memory controller, while RDIMM use their own memory controller. For that reason RDIMM memories can scale up to huge amount of RAM (for example 64GB of ram per module etc).

My question is: which hardware do I need in order to be able to use either of these?

I have a supermicro server board that supports ECC memories, and Intel Xeon E3 which also claims to support the ECC, so I suppose that BOTH motherboard and CPU must support it in order to use it? What about RDIMM? Does it also need to be supported by both motherboard and CPU? How do I determine if server can support these kind of memories?

Improve this question

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
1

Whatever type of RAM you want to use must be supported by both motherboard and CPU. Some Xeon CPUs use the same socket as consumer CPUs but you can not mix a consumer CPU and server motherboard or vice-versa if you want the server RAM.

Improve this answer
7
  • What happens if you mix consumer MoBo with Xeon CPU? Is it possible to use Xeon CPU with normal RAM? I am asking just out of curiosity, I only have 1 server board for this socket.
    – Petr
    Commented Apr 20, 2015 at 11:34
  • What would happen if I plugged RDIMM into that combination? server motherboard (this one is X10SLL-F) with Xeon E3? Is that 32GB memory limit bound to CPU or memory controller within CPU?
    – Petr
    Commented Apr 20, 2015 at 11:35
  • I have seen Xeon CPUs working with a consumer motherboard and normal RAM, it isn't common to do that though because Xeons are more expensive and they do not have the consumer features like overclocking etc. I am not totally clear on your exact situation here but I do know that registered memory doesn't usually work on consumer boards. There may be exceptions which you would have to check the board individually.
    – user438322
    Commented Apr 20, 2015 at 17:07
  • Well, my situation is that I just wanted to know what kind of hardware you need in case you wanted to build for example a system with lots of ram (like 200GB of ram+ etc). I know you can do that using registered memories, but I have no idea what hardware is needed to support them, or whether a regular server board that supports ECC is enough to utilize RDIMM as well.
    – Petr
    Commented Apr 21, 2015 at 13:19
  • Almost all ECC RAM is also registered so if it is a server board and it supports ECC then 99.9% chance it supports registered. You definitely can not do 200GB+ of RAM with current consumer boards although I bet it will happen in the next couple years when they come out with 32GB DDR4 DIMMs
    – user438322
    Commented Apr 21, 2015 at 16:12

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .