ECC RAM... sell or build with it

[johnnyquest]

I'm in the process of building a nice PC for various audio/video stuff. I never play games on the pc. I'm set on some sort of variant of a P4 dual/single core. I'm trying to stay cheap and salvage anything I can. I do have (2) 1GB sticks of DDR266, PC2100 ECC REG dimms that I'm wondering if I can use. They are meant for dual xeon servers... but my questions are...

Can I build a nice ECC comp. setup that's not a "server"? I was having trouble looking for ECC compatible boards on newegg

Will these be "dual channel" since they are identical? How does this work?

Should I just sell them and purchase specific other RAM?

i appreciate any input!

[Rick]

Those are OLD ram dimm's
If you use them your memory speed (PC2100) will be a Bottle neck and reduce system speed across the board..
In fact I think those are the same chips I used in my AMD 1.8
Not something you want to use ina new build

Ecc is for error checking
it won't hurt to use them in work station BUT it needs to be an older/slower cpu..

[hockey man]

If you are looking for suggestions, start a thread in Buying and upgrading- just remember to post your budget!

[saphalline]

In order to get ECC/registered support in a modern mobo, you'll have to get one of the high-end chipsets (like i955X/i975X) and double-check the specs of the mobo to be sure it supports it. Or you could get a server-oriented mobo using Socket 603.

The problem is that most consumer-oriented desktop mobo's don't support ECC/registered RAM because it's so darn expensive. And on the practical side of things, I think the slow speed of that RAM would do more harm than good. Not to mention that registered RAM adds another layer of latencies.

I say sell it and get desktop-class "normal" RAM. You'll get better performance and compatibility.