Why don’t PCs use error correcting RAM? “Because Intel,” says Linus

Previous discussion: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=25622322" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=25622322</a>

I absolutely love that Linus speaks his mind. Candor and telling it honestly is getting rarer...

Interesting. Looking online, it seems AMD&#x27;s desktop-grade Ryzen line supports ECC, although motherboard ECC support is still somewhat rare. Yet another reason to prefer AMD these days I guess. This reddit comment has more info on Ryzen ECC support: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;Amd&#x2F;comments&#x2F;ggmyyg&#x2F;an_overview_of_ecc_memory_on_ryzen&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reddit.com&#x2F;r&#x2F;Amd&#x2F;comments&#x2F;ggmyyg&#x2F;an_overview_of_...</a>

Given the current RAM and disk sizes, and how much we put trust on computers, every cell phone or computer should use ECC RAM and checksummed filesystems these days.

The market killed ECC for consumers. It used to be widely available to desktop class hardware (I used to have some), but it was slower and more expensive than non-ECC RAM. None of the marketing-types made a good case for why normal people should pay more money for less-performant hardware, so the market disappeared.<p>Even the security issues only meaningfully impact servers.<p>People like Linus can buy server-class hardware if ECC is so important to them.

While I don&#x27;t think he should be flipping the bird, his technical arguments are absolutely spot on.<p>An aside question for readers: How often does RAM error, and is it a significant problem in practice?<p>I don&#x27;t have any direct experience with this (that I could tell) using consumer computers for the past 15-odd years of programming.

If I understand it right, all of the AMD Ryzen processors support ECC, provided the motherboard&#x2F;chipset do as well. Which somewhat supports Linus&#x27; opinion.

Makes me think how many blue screens&#x2F;crashes I&#x27;ve experienced over the years on my desktop could have been avoided by ECC. On a global level, think of all of that time &amp; productivity lost due to an arbitrary policy&#x2F;penny pinching.