reading through, i find it hilarious that the simple statement of "i'd rather stick with Intel" immediately activated AMDSH1LL.EXE in some people. now from what i can glean, person is going with AMD even though they're not comfortable with it.
when someone states what they'd prefer, and then that gets ignored, that's pretty bad.
thus, if something does fail or not work as intended, they're going to blame the new part and/or whomever suggested it whether or not the part is actually faulty or not, driving them deeper into their original bias.
I am arguing not for ECC, I am arguing against RAID. If your data is secure (because backups) the desktop is interchangeable. And again, there is a lot of things to do that will help with system stability before it comes down to redundancy or error correction. Hence my list.
This redundancy relies on an additional system. Which is a point of possible failure.
When someone has outdated information and might make a bad decision based on that, I think it would be worse to not point that out.
as long as that's your motivation, and not "huehuefuckintel", then that's fine with me. intent is very hard to discern over text.
Disk failures were the second most common reason people brought me work as a tech, the first being malware. The best protection against system failure then, is 1) backups, 2) RAID (incl software RAID), in that order. Assuming the system passes stability testing, everything else that can be done to increase stability is secondary.
Which makes the system more stable overall due to that very redundancy.
You still haven't answered my basic sanity question overtly:
I did, two times. You just keep refusing my answer.
Look, ECC is a functionality that sits on the end of a chain. You have to have RAM, ECC is just checking the system that is already in place. RAID is in between storage and compute, it sits right in the middle of a chain. It is a point of failure. So yes, in my mind a system with one drive is less likely to fail than one with a RAID1 setup.
Which is directly contrary to the reality of why systems actually fail and what RAID1 actually helps protect against and also my experience. In addition, we also have different definitions of failure. A "failure" is not "a bit getting written incorrectly" but rather a user not being able to use their computer to do what they intend to use it for, which is the entire point of computers existing in the first place. Thanks for admitting you believe something flatly false, that RAID 1 causes instability, rather than mitigating it. Now I know to ignore your future input on this topic and we can both just go our separate ways. Have a good day.
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If you do go with AMD and your not overclocking I would highly suggest going with the 1600X over the 1600. The 1600X is about as fast as an average overclocked 1600 but with a higher single core advantage since it can boost to 4.1ghz. Many 1600's can only get to 3.8-3.9...
If you want stability dont expect to overclock on ryzen right now. Bios are in a growth stage right now and stabilty is all over the place. If you want the most stable make sure the memory and the storage are on the QVL for your motherboard. I expect this platform wont be fully stabilized until just before Zen 2 chips are available.
Is my psu and mobo high enough quality? should i stick with the stock cpu cooler or get a cheap cooler master hyper t2? Everything will be at stock speeds and i probably will get ecc memory.
thanks for the input. ill check out the price difference in the x and will check the qvl of mobo
I actually completely forgot about the stock fan. If you are not going noctua level or water cooling, hey the one that comes with the chip is free. And from everything I've heard it is not a bad cooler at all. The 1600X does not come with a cooler (I think, can someone verify?) So that might be a factor.
The Asus Prime X370 Pro is perfectly fine. I am running exactly that board and even OC to 3.8GHz on my 1700 and 32GB of memory it runs completely stable. You could go B350 chipset for cheap but pretty much all of them are built with lower quality components or simply less of them, especially in the power delivery.
I don't think seasonic even has a truly bad PSU in their line-up. Personally I would look more after efficiency rating than wattage. With those components a hamster in a wheel could power the machine. 
Also if you really want to stick with that crappy case, you might want to consider going at least semi modular to not end up with a rats nest of cables.
Thanks ill check all of that out. What wattage should i have to make sure there is enough power if i switch to a more efficient one.
edit: seems that kinston ecc memory isnt on the qvl list 
With a 65W TDP CPU and a RX550, two drives and no OC.... basically any PSU is enough. I think the cheapest seasonic is like 300W, even that is fine. A lot of the high efficiency PSUs are also higher wattage, simply because they can.
That list is constantly changing but I would be shocked if Kingston ECC isn't supported.
ok thanks for the help! the m.2 nvme isnt on the list either 
This thread has exploded with info :). If only one thing or point for user experience is storage speed. It is the slowest thing in a computer. Put fast storage in a new machine.
ya i want to put a fast nvme in but the one i choose isnt on the qvl list
SSD is SSD, lists don't really matter for those. It is a good idea to look at lists for memory (although I am running memory that is not listed either and it is fine) but storage just works. I like the Intel P600 SSDs, they are pretty cheap and low latency. Throughput isn't that important for spreadsheets.
Edit: 600P not P600. I always mess that up...
ok thanks
Everything has been ordered. Thank you all for all of your input. I went with 1600x and everything else the same(ecc and nvme). Any laptop suggestions for him so he can do the same with work mobile. Max $700 budget but would like to save as much as possible.
Did you check for a cooler?