That's Intel's PR. Only "enterprise hardware", with a bigger markup, supports ECC memory. Adding ECC today should add only 12% to memory cost.
AMD decided to break Intel's pricing model. Good for them. Now if we can get ECC at the retail level...
The original IBM PC AT had parity in memory.
I don't know if AMD really intended to break Intel's pricing model. Their higher end Ryzen chips you'd use in servers and capital W Workstations don't seem to have a huge price difference from equivalent Xeons. Even if they're a bit cheaper you still need a motherboard that supports ECC so it seems at first glance to be a wash as far as price.
That being said if I was putting together a machine today it would be Ryzen-based with ECC.
You can actually, most AMD consumer chips (except the ones with integrated graphics) have ECC support, even though it's not officially supported. See this Reddit thread for more details: https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/ggmyyg/an_overview_of_...
[0] https://www.asrock.com/mb/amd/a320m-hdv%20r4.0/index.asp#Spe...
This is the legacy of Intel's policies.
As such features that are unattractive to the regular consumer go into workstation/enterprise offerings where the buyer understands what they're buying and why.
Citation needed.
I would bet that your typical ram-purchasing consumer is not seeing or even considering the existence of the ECC model.
> ECC realistically adds to the BOM (board, modules) more than LEDs do. So the price goes up with seemingly no benefit for the user.
LEDs are a great opportunity to increase profit margin, so I'm not sure about your price conclusions.
It would definitely be great to have more reliable hardware generally available and at less of a price premium.
