Does A520 support ECC memory?

Hardware Motherboards
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I recently got a Ryzen 5 4650G and am wondering if the AMD A520 chipset handles ECC memory.

I also recently got a pair of Kingston KSM26ES8/8ME ECC sticks (8GB 2666 single rank) and put them in the only board I had appropriate, MSI B450M Gaming Plus. It works well with my 3400G, but the newer APUs only have a crappy beta bios that has plenty of issues.

This got me thinking, would A520 have anything against ECC memory? My goal is to make a compact coding machine with an APU and ECC ram.

Which brand would be most likely to be compatible? My first thought was ASRock, because they advertise 4000G series support with every board, but I can’t find any in my country. My choices are Gigabyte, ASUS, or MSI.

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With an ordinary 3400G APU ECC will not work since up to and including the Zen+ APUs AMD decided to Intel and disable ECC in the CPU itself (only “PRO” variants have it enabled).

Unfortunately don’t know about the A520 motherboard part of your question.

3

Thanks for your reply

What I meant to say was the board itself is fine in its original state with the 3400G and old Hynix ram as everything works, but in order for the Pro 4650G to boot I need to install a buggy beta bios. So now I have to step up the motherboard ladder.

I’m seeing some ASRock praising here: ECC is supported on the Pro series as well. My home server is running Ryzen 5 Pr... | Hacker News
which is unfortunate cos I can’t really get those, maybe a B550M Pro4.

I’m a bit afraid of the B550 chipset cos I saw people were having a lot of USB issues, returned boards, new board revisions. At least in the price range I’d be willing to pay for this board. Don’t know if it’s related to Gen4 PCIe taking priority, but I figured since A520 doesn’t have that, it should be a safer bet.

4

AFAIK chipset doesn’t have anything to do with ECC support.
The board can function just fine without a chipset - it just makes sense to use it from the OEM perspective - lots of connectivity for relatively low BOM cost increase.

What determines if the ECC is functional are:

  1. AMD allowing it to function on a given CPU (non-pro APUs being a notable ones where ECC does not work). This comes in a form of a memory controller changes or AGESA code.
  2. OEM providing the BIOS support - you need ‘glue code’ that will allow for handling of ECC dimms, and to relay the info to the host OS.

Edit: And to confirm - Asrock has an A510 boards with ECC support. For example: ASRock > A520M Pro4 not really a proof - it just means that ECC dimms will function but not necessarily correct errors

5

Thanks

I was looking at Gigabyte A520I AC, which has some (Crucial) ECC memories on the Renoir QVL, I’m just not sure if that also means that ECC is enabled. I’ve fired off a support ticket @ Gigabyte and also questions on Amazon product pages, hopefully one of those leads will return positive.

Alternatively ASRock is probably a good fallback, I just hope the motherboard Display Port supports daisy chaining, cos I’d like 3 monitors, which is why I’m looking at the Gigabyte first.

6

You are right, the same thing applies to asrock.
Listing modules on QVL doesn’t necessarly mean ECC is functional. (dimms can function without detecting/correcting errors)
So the board I listed is not a 100% safe choise.

That being said other asrock boards with the same same descriptions do have functioning ECC. In my case B450M steel legend - i verified that the ECC works, corrects errors and reports them to the host OS.

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I have a Gigabyte X570I Aorus Pro Wifi with a 5900X as my main system. It lists the same ECC sticks from the QVL between it and the A520I AC. If I were to put my ECC Kingston ram in, how would I go about making sure ECC is enabled, in Windows? Run OCCT memory tests with some bad timings and watch for hardware errors? Or I just boot Memtest86 from usb and believe what it tells me.

This is Swiss cheese logic I know, but maybe the bioses share enough code base to assume if it works in one, it’ll work in the other too.

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I guess there should be something in system log somewhere. Not sure, I dont use windows. But if you manage to trigger ecc errors then simple memtest86 should be sufficient to verify - if it will see the errors then windows will most likely see them too.

This is unfortunetely problematic - the most sure way is to go the hardware route - shorting dimm pins - explained here:

OC could also work but it is difficult to get just right amount of instability. Not all unstable OC settings will trigger ECC errors, you may just see reboots instead.
You can try this route but you get one of 2 outcomes:

  1. you succeed in triggering ECC errors - then all is good and you know what you wanted.
  2. you don’t see any ECC errors - in this case you know nothing new - either ECC just doesnt work or the OC wasn’t right.

(this is also described in the post linked above)

EDIT: there is also row-hammer attack

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