Could’ve just gotten a Ryzen then. These Epycs are essentially relabeled Ryzen CPUs.
Could be but finding a motherboard that has verified ECC is tricky. Most say works but not tested/supported so you’re on your own to figure out if ECC fully works.
The server/workstation focused ASRock Rack AM5 mainboards list plenty of ECC modules in their QVL. The “gaming-focused” ASUS B650E-E I’m using even has two ECC modules listed in its QVL.
So you could’ve already gotten verified ECC support, the fact that the same CPUs now exist with a different (EPYC) branding doesn’t change that. Finding these mainboards isn’t particularly tricky either.
The AsRock says ECC but not verified with Ryzen.
So you end up having to test it yourself like this guy and hope the version hasn’t changed between when he bought the motherboard and now.
“ASRock” and “ASRock Rack” are two different series of motherboards.
Here’s the QVL of one of their AM5 mainboards: https://www.asrockrack.com/general/productdetail.asp?Model=B650D4U-2L2T/BCM#Memory - it doesn’t limit these modules to specific CPUs. All CPUs with ECC compatibility also support these modules on this mainboard. Some of these Rack boards are over a year old, and they always had some ECC modules on their QVL. This - again - isn’t EPYC 4004 specific, they couldn’t have validated it with EPYC 4004 CPUs a year ago. In fact, their CPU support list doesn’t even list EPYC 4004 CPUs as of today, as they haven’t released a BIOS update adding (official) compatibility in for these CPUs (it will probably be released shortly though).
ASRock Rack AM4 mainboards also officially support ECC memory. So if you wanted verified ECC support on a comparatively cheap AMD platform you could’ve always gone for one of these boards with a regular Ryzen CPU (not an APU). The boards are a bit on the expensive side but if you want official support (for whatever reason you’d need that in a homelab environment) you can get it.
I’ve read there is an id pin on Epyc cpus that differentiates them from Ryzen. Der8aur made it work by masking the pin on the socket.
