Phenom II X4 960T support for unbuffered DDR3 ECC

[flalalla]

I cannot find any definitive answer on the Internet. Do Phenom II X4 CPUs support unbuffered ECC DDR3 RAM? My own CPU is a 960T model.
For whatever reason ECC modules sell for lower prices than regular unbufferd non-ecc ram, so I was thinking of buying that. Has anyone here ever run a Phenom II X4 with ECC ram and can confirm if they work or not?

 

[WhitehawkEQ]

I'm not sure about the CPU, but you should check the MB manual to see if ECC support is there. Also check the Qualified Vendors List (QVL) to see if there is support.

 

[flalalla]

Yes the motherboard says it supports unbuffered ECC, but I'm not sure about the CPU. The memory controller is in the CPU after all, right? I'm pretty confident that the X6 line of CPUs supports it, but I couldn't find anything wrt X4.

 

[trents]

I doubt it seriously. Most consumer CPUs don't. Ryzen is an exception.

 

[flalalla]

OK I've tried the ECC ram and the PC boots up correctly. But there is a problem... I cannot enter the BIOS when the ECC ram is installed, only when the non-ecc is. I've never seen this issue, any idea??

 

[trents]

The OS must provide the inf needed to run the RAM after it boots but something is missing in bios to fully recognize what it is.

 

[flalalla]

Sorry I'm a bit at a loss here. At this stage during booting the OS has not been called into yet... there's only the BIOS. What kind of information should the OS provide and how?

 

[trents]

Don't know. But whatever it is the OS fills in the rest. The bios has low level drivers that enable the computer to work with the hardware components needed to boot. But if the instruction sets programmed into the bios are missing or incomplete some component may not function or not be fully functional at that level. I've seen this with older computers that, for instance, won't recognize a USB flash drive or a DVD drive as a boot device but will use either once into Windows.

Hard to say exactly what is going on there in your case. But, what you do know is that the ECC RAM is not fully compatible with the platform you are tying to use it on. Maybe if you never have to enter bios you'll be fine.