So I'm working on a build for a friend and recently came into getting an asrock 970fx extreme4 motherboard and an FX4130 for the extremely low price of $35 (that's Australian dollarydoos).
Now after getting those so cheap I was keen to keep the system as cheap as possible, and when it comes to RAM, used ECC is crazy cheap, I've never used it before and Im finding it a touch hard to figure out comparability. I've gone through all the documentation for the motherboard as I can and it doesn't mention ECC support anywhere, however the documentation for the CPU says it has support for ECC. I was under the impression that ECC support had more to do with the board and BIOS.
So my question is, is ECC support down to the CPU or the motherboard or both? Would it be worth grabbing some cheap ex server ECC memory, updating the BIOS and crossing my fingers or no?
It's both, as far as I know pretty much all AMD memory controller support it, but if it doesn't have the options in the BIOS you won't be able to use it. Just google the board and ECC and see if anyone else has any experience.
Make sure that the ECC memory you're looking at is unbuffered and not registered. Registered memory tends to be very cheap so it's likely that that's what you're looking at, but it won't work in a desktop board.
It might work, but it might not as well. It's worth checking if anyone else has experience with it as just because it doesn't say it supports it doesn't mean that it won't work. But boards can be weird about memory.
Your motherboard does not support ECC or registered memory. Your cpu however supports ECC. If you where to replace your motherboard with say for example an asus sabertooth 990fx then you would be able to use ECC non registered ram. What I can tell you for sure is that registered ram will not work. It needs buffering circuitry on the motherboard.
ECC ram in non ecc motherboards is like playing with the lottery. Sometimes it works just fine, sometimes you can't boot with it. And sometimes people manage to overclock it.