Kaby Lake Xeons vs Pentiums

[Apo]

cool thanks. I was wondering about the BIOS situation. There seems to be contradictory information online about whether Kaby Lake non-Xeon processors support ECC memory. ARK says they do but NONE of the 7th gen i3 i5 i7 processors do...

keep us posted : ) and good luck!

 

[Stux]

I did order a Kaby Lake Pentium, so in a few days I should be to confirm whether or not it does use ECC RAM like Ark states. Speaking of which, how can I tell whether a system is actually using the ECC RAM properly?

One method is to use dmidecode (iirc) and look for a 72 bit data bus to your memory and it should state if error correction/detection is enabled

 

[Ericloewe]

I dont think you can find E3 v6 Xeon right?

Those aren't out yet. Probably won't be in quite a while, either. Kaby Lake and Cannonlake are just Skylake with new names and maybe higher clocks. Same die stepping and all.

 

[Ericloewe]

One method is to use dmidecode (iirc) and look for a 72 bit data bus to your memory and it should state if error correction/detection is enabled

Even that isn't reliable. It's crazy how difficult it is to find a useful "ECC is nominally working" flag.

 

[Stux]

Even that isn't reliable. It's crazy how difficult it is to find a useful "ECC is nominally working" flag.

Yep, but if it says that it's not ECC and 64 bits it's probably not ECC

 

[Jasse Jansson]

Good thing I found this thread.
I had the impression that all i3's had ECC support, but the 7:th gen requires an E at the end to do that.
Good thing I haven't ordered the CPU yet.
I have a Supermicro X11SSM-F in transit to me. Gets it next week. ECC memory got here today.
Might buy a 6:th gen i3 instead, the difference cant be that big anyway.

 

[Stux]

Good thing I found this thread.
I had the impression that all i3's had ECC support, but the 7:th gen requires an E at the end to do that.
Good thing I haven't ordered the CPU yet.
I have a Supermicro X11SSM-F in transit to me. Gets it next week. ECC memory got here today.
Might buy a 6:th gen i3 instead, the difference cant be that big anyway.

That's what I'd do.

 

[Ericloewe]

Might buy a 6:th gen i3 instead, the difference cant be that big anyway.

They're the exact same thing, in fact.

 

[Jasse Jansson]

No, there's one or two things that differs, but those things seems beyond important.
I compared them via Intels ARK website, but the diffs didn't impress me.

But if I go flatline and buy a gen7 i3 but have the pre2.0 bios, can I update the bios or will it brick ???
Anyone tried that stunt ???
Mostly curious because I have never owned a Supermicro mobo before.

 

[Ericloewe]

No, there's one or two things that differs, but those things seems beyond important.

They're the same die. Kaby Lake is not a real, new CPU. It's rebadged Skylake.

But if I go flatline and buy a gen7 i3

The only model with ECC is a low-TDP model, IIRC. Why would you do that?

will it brick ???

Worst case, it doesn't boot.

 

[Jasse Jansson]

They're the same die. Kaby Lake is not a real, new CPU. It's rebadged Skylake.

Oki, I take your word for it.

The only model with ECC is a low-TDP model, IIRC. Why would you do that?

Poisonus mushrooms (I'm a decendant of the vikings, goddammit), V8's, speedway motorcycles to name a few reasons to go bananas ;-)
But those reasons are good reasons, but not good enough to buy the wrong CPU.

Worst case, it doesn't boot.

Oki.

 

[Stompie79]

I did order a Kaby Lake Pentium, so in a few days I should be to confirm whether or not it does use ECC RAM like Ark states. Speaking of which, how can I tell whether a system is actually using the ECC RAM properly?

Jon did you get your Kaby Lake processor and does it support ECC as per Ark?
I just ordered a G4600 instead of a G4400 and am now wondering if I mucked up. The X11SSM-F-O motherboard specs seems to say it supports the 7th gen processors with BIOS 2.0 and the board only supports ECC RAM so I'm hopeful.

I'd love to hear your experience in case I need to change my order ASAP.

 

[Jon Smark]

Jon did you get your Kaby Lake processor and does it support ECC as per Ark?
I just ordered a G4600 instead of a G4400 and am now wondering if I mucked up. The X11SSM-F-O motherboard specs seems to say it supports the 7th gen processors with BIOS 2.0 and the board only supports ECC RAM so I'm hopeful.

I'd love to hear your experience in case I need to change my order ASAP.

The TLDR is that it should work, but if your board ships with BIOS < 2.0 you won't be able to boot with the Kaby Lake CPU. You'll need to either "borrow" a Skylake CPU to update the BIOS, or use IPMI to update the BIOS. The latter option requires a OOB license from Supermicro. More info on this thread:
https://forums.freenas.org/index.ph...on-first-boot-with-supermicro-x11ssm-f.52594/