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Observation: The X230 with i7-3612QE does not support ECC RAM (lemmy.ml)

submitted 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) by monovergent@lemmy.ml to c/thinkpad@lemmy.ml

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After learning that the 3612QE itself supports ECC RAM in contrast to the stock CPU options and that the QM77 chipset also does, I purchased a DDR3 SODIMM with unbuffered ECC. I have not been aware of any other attempts to test this combination.

The machine did not POST and did not produce any beep codes. Absolutely no response to any input aside from shutting down when briefly holding the power button. Everything returned to normal upon putting the original RAM back.

I suspect the BIOS lacks support, but whether this changes with coreboot remains unknown to me, at least until I learn how to prepare and flash coreboot.

This is purely an exercise in curiosity.

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[–] Jumuta@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 week ago

never knew about the existence of the E variant, that's interesting

building coreboot from scratch can be intimidating (it's not actually as hard as it looks though), if you're interested I recommend skulls which has pre-built images and makes it really easy if you have a raspberry pi or something

[–] pastermil@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Didn't know laptops can do ECC

[–] monovergent@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 week ago

It's usually confined to mobile workstation-class ones, which have Xeon processors. The 3612QE was intended for embedded machines and is one of the few i7 variants to support ECC.

[–] fuckwit_mcbumcrumble@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 week ago

I know my P1 gen 4 could be optioned for ECC ram, but that was if you bought the xeon version instead of the i9. But I thought ECC on laptops started with DDR4