1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:05,880 the way I see it if you want to use the heated seats in your car you should just 2 00:00:04,020 --> 00:00:10,620 pay extra to activate them high beam assist just twist the iDrive dial after 3 00:00:09,059 --> 00:00:13,920 swiping your credit card in the convenient little reader down here I 4 00:00:12,240 --> 00:00:18,720 mean don't get me wrong I know this stuff was already in the car you paid 5 00:00:15,960 --> 00:00:24,720 for I just love the convenience of unlocking things later for more money 6 00:00:20,760 --> 00:00:26,640 thanks Big Otto said no one ever but at 7 00:00:24,720 --> 00:00:32,099 least when it comes to cars the only hurdle is the paywall Intel on the other 8 00:00:30,240 --> 00:00:36,960 hand has sort of been doing this for years except worse because in order to 9 00:00:34,739 --> 00:00:42,660 get access to those hidden features in your CPU you often need to buy outright 10 00:00:39,600 --> 00:00:44,820 different Hardware up front with no way 11 00:00:42,660 --> 00:00:51,600 to unlock them after the fact in today's case we want access to that sweet sweet 12 00:00:48,300 --> 00:00:53,820 ECC or error correcting memory that will 13 00:00:51,600 --> 00:00:59,480 give our 12th gen core processor an extra stability boost but we cannot has 14 00:00:56,879 --> 00:01:06,540 it unless we buy their special workstation grade motherboard with the 15 00:01:02,039 --> 00:01:07,860 w680 chipset which is like what 500 for 16 00:01:06,540 --> 00:01:13,680 a motherboard thing better be very special and very 17 00:01:10,860 --> 00:01:17,400 worth it like our sponsor build Redux build Redux makes it easy to configure 18 00:01:15,540 --> 00:01:20,220 your new build with support guides to help along the way they also offer 19 00:01:18,900 --> 00:01:26,700 competitive pricing as compared to building a PC yourself so head to build redux.com Linus and start your new build 20 00:01:24,479 --> 00:01:32,100 today this little guy is really cool it's got the ability to use either 21 00:01:28,500 --> 00:01:34,619 regular unbuffered memory modules or ECC 22 00:01:32,100 --> 00:01:39,360 modules but only if you shell out anywhere from two to three hundred 23 00:01:36,900 --> 00:01:46,259 dollars more for a w680 chipset motherboard in our case the Gigabyte 24 00:01:42,439 --> 00:01:49,740 mw34-sp0 but why this consumer grade 25 00:01:46,259 --> 00:01:52,200 board has the exact same CPU socket with 26 00:01:49,740 --> 00:01:57,600 the same copper traces connected to the same ddr4 dim slots and as The Savvy 27 00:01:55,979 --> 00:02:02,880 among you will know the memory controller is baked right into the CPU 28 00:02:00,180 --> 00:02:08,759 these days not the motherboard chipset so how is it that a motherboard could 29 00:02:05,759 --> 00:02:14,060 prevent you from taking this stick of ECC RAM and putting it into a z690 board 30 00:02:14,580 --> 00:02:21,360 the answer is Intel Intel prevents you and unfortunately this isn't exactly a 31 00:02:19,860 --> 00:02:26,700 new business practice from them let's take a little trip down memory lane to 32 00:02:23,340 --> 00:02:28,940 2010 and the first upgradeable Intel 33 00:02:26,700 --> 00:02:35,160 processor the Pentium g6951 nice out of the box it was a two 34 00:02:32,640 --> 00:02:40,140 core two-thread desktop chip with three megabytes of level 3 cash pretty 35 00:02:37,379 --> 00:02:45,300 pedestrian even for the time but the big selling feature was that for an extra 50 36 00:02:42,239 --> 00:02:47,879 bucks you could upgrade both the Chip's 37 00:02:45,300 --> 00:02:53,160 cash and hyper threading capabilities turning it into a g6952 even nicer now 38 00:02:51,480 --> 00:02:58,080 some of you might be thinking well hey that's kind of great isn't it I can save 39 00:02:55,920 --> 00:03:03,840 a buck today and then I can upgrade it later without tearing apart my PC or 40 00:03:00,599 --> 00:03:07,080 taking it to the Geek Squad and you're 41 00:03:03,840 --> 00:03:08,940 right seriously for many people I could 42 00:03:07,080 --> 00:03:13,560 actually see this kind of after the fact upgradeability being not only a 43 00:03:11,040 --> 00:03:18,000 non-issue but even a good thing but I'm not most people let's go back to 44 00:03:16,019 --> 00:03:22,860 cars for a moment many of them have Governors or limiters that cap their 45 00:03:20,459 --> 00:03:26,220 maximum speed and these days they're typically way higher than you should 46 00:03:24,300 --> 00:03:31,980 ever drive on a public road for example in the UK most cars are limited to about 47 00:03:28,340 --> 00:03:35,159 155 miles per hour so most people are 48 00:03:31,980 --> 00:03:37,620 pretty indifferent to them but I also 49 00:03:35,159 --> 00:03:41,400 understand the car enthusiasts who feel like well damn it if I paid for the 50 00:03:39,780 --> 00:03:45,120 whole speedometer then I should be allowed to use it you even if it is only 51 00:03:43,739 --> 00:03:49,860 on track days and that's exactly how I feel about 52 00:03:47,220 --> 00:03:54,060 Electronics if it was already Factory validated to handle the additional 53 00:03:51,599 --> 00:03:59,280 strain whether it's a clock speed Target or a feature then darn it it should be 54 00:03:57,180 --> 00:04:03,780 accessible I mean imagine this in other Industries you buy a backpack from 55 00:04:01,200 --> 00:04:07,920 lttstore.com and half the pockets won't open until you send us another 56 00:04:05,159 --> 00:04:11,400 micropayment I mean to be clear it's a great product and frankly it would still 57 00:04:09,540 --> 00:04:17,519 hold a lot of stuff but have you not already spent enough and in the Pentium 58 00:04:14,659 --> 00:04:22,560 g6951s case we were talking about hyper threading on a dual core chip where it 59 00:04:19,859 --> 00:04:27,660 really does make a huge difference to be clear it's normal to bin 60 00:04:26,340 --> 00:04:32,400 processors according to their capabilities and then turn around and 61 00:04:29,880 --> 00:04:37,199 sell the same silicon at a bunch of different price points in fact around 62 00:04:34,560 --> 00:04:41,520 that same time AMD had tri-core processors in their lineup that were 63 00:04:39,180 --> 00:04:45,780 just quad core processors with one of the cores disabled 64 00:04:42,960 --> 00:04:52,259 the big difference though is that AMD allowed you to play silicon roulette and 65 00:04:48,900 --> 00:04:54,000 turn the extra core on sometimes yeah it 66 00:04:52,259 --> 00:04:57,780 was unstable the thing really was defective but sometimes you got free 67 00:04:56,699 --> 00:05:02,699 real estate good guy AMD enough about ancient history though 68 00:05:01,139 --> 00:05:08,340 let's turn our attention back to the paywall du jour ECC memory on Intel's 69 00:05:05,580 --> 00:05:12,419 12th gen CPU most people think it doesn't matter for gaming rigs but do 70 00:05:10,259 --> 00:05:17,160 they actually know that or have they just bought into the marketing error 71 00:05:14,759 --> 00:05:20,100 correction code or ECC memory is more important than you might think and 72 00:05:18,660 --> 00:05:24,660 there's a reason that it's used in servers around the world the difference 73 00:05:22,020 --> 00:05:30,900 between these two modules the non-ecc and ecc-1 lies primarily in this extra 74 00:05:28,380 --> 00:05:36,660 chip of dram on either side of the stick it acts as a parity check that says hey 75 00:05:34,500 --> 00:05:41,460 all of these bits are valid you're good to go before passing data back and forth 76 00:05:39,000 --> 00:05:46,560 between the RAM and the CPU we explain this in a bit more depth in our last ECC 77 00:05:43,560 --> 00:05:49,080 video but essentially bits can flip 78 00:05:46,560 --> 00:05:53,820 spontaneously and cause soft errors like data corruption or crashes if they 79 00:05:51,300 --> 00:05:58,860 aren't detected and corrected there are a few factors that affect the soft error 80 00:05:56,160 --> 00:06:04,500 rate of memory notable ones include the capacity speed and density all of which 81 00:06:02,639 --> 00:06:10,080 will increase the probability of bit flips as they go up and unfortunately 82 00:06:07,440 --> 00:06:16,259 for us or fortunately I suppose for our gaming FPS RAM does keep getting bigger 83 00:06:13,080 --> 00:06:18,120 faster and denser so perhaps the more 84 00:06:16,259 --> 00:06:24,300 relevant study was one done by Google that showed that roughly 32 percent of 85 00:06:21,479 --> 00:06:29,460 all servers and eight percent of all dims experienced at least one memory 86 00:06:27,360 --> 00:06:33,720 error per year now fortunately for them they were servers and they were using 87 00:06:31,380 --> 00:06:39,360 ECC so these errors were caught and corrected before they could bung up your 88 00:06:35,819 --> 00:06:40,979 YouTube so so so so so so so clearly 89 00:06:39,360 --> 00:06:45,419 there's a valid argument to be made for ECC in modern computers what's the 90 00:06:43,680 --> 00:06:50,699 drawback then there are actually a couple first up is that using ECC memory 91 00:06:48,000 --> 00:06:54,840 in our system did result in lower Benchmark results across the board 92 00:06:52,259 --> 00:06:58,259 compared to regular gaming RAM even running at the same frequency our 93 00:06:56,819 --> 00:07:03,840 crucial ballistics RAM managed performance anywhere from the same to as 94 00:07:00,600 --> 00:07:05,699 much as 20 percent higher than our safe 95 00:07:03,840 --> 00:07:10,440 and stable choice and there's also the small matter of 96 00:07:08,100 --> 00:07:16,139 price while they do use the same commodity chips ECC modules legitimately 97 00:07:13,979 --> 00:07:22,259 cost more to manufacture than typical dims because of those extra parity chips 98 00:07:19,139 --> 00:07:25,319 so this is not just paywall BS with that 99 00:07:22,259 --> 00:07:27,840 said we're talking at best a 12 increase 100 00:07:25,319 --> 00:07:32,520 in materials cost and as for the performance issue well nothing would 101 00:07:30,360 --> 00:07:37,740 actually prevent a memory manufacturer from designing and building higher 102 00:07:34,680 --> 00:07:39,960 performance ECC modules in fact mushkin 103 00:07:37,740 --> 00:07:43,860 does just that and their pricing is pretty reasonable for them kind of like 104 00:07:41,639 --> 00:07:47,759 Floatplane.com which has exclusives like this extra footage from the build with 105 00:07:45,360 --> 00:07:53,280 my sister the big question then is why aren't we all using ECC and basically 106 00:07:51,360 --> 00:07:58,020 it's because Intel decided that consumers either didn't need it or 107 00:07:55,740 --> 00:08:02,639 couldn't afford it and artificially locked the feature to their business 108 00:07:59,759 --> 00:08:07,560 class products for decades the only real difference now is that it's more obvious 109 00:08:05,220 --> 00:08:12,120 now that they've dropped the facade of having parallel Xeon and core branded 110 00:08:10,080 --> 00:08:17,580 product lines that use the exact same silicon but have overclocking and ECC 111 00:08:15,479 --> 00:08:24,900 support as their main differentiating features however the uncomfortable truth 112 00:08:21,419 --> 00:08:27,660 is that Intel really isn't that wrong 113 00:08:24,900 --> 00:08:31,860 about this most consumer desktops are far more likely to crash because of a 114 00:08:29,400 --> 00:08:36,719 Windows update or a driver error Than A Memory bit flip and consumers have shown 115 00:08:34,080 --> 00:08:40,800 time and time again that they would rather save a buck than invest in 116 00:08:38,399 --> 00:08:45,620 Mission critical features like redundant power supplies and ECC 117 00:08:43,020 --> 00:08:51,899 which raises a pretty important question are paywalls actually a better solution 118 00:08:49,260 --> 00:08:57,000 Intel showed us a special motherboard in their Testing Lab that could have its 119 00:08:53,640 --> 00:08:59,100 chipset ID reconfigured on the Fly and 120 00:08:57,000 --> 00:09:03,120 if you could just change your mind and you wanted to overclocking support a 121 00:09:00,839 --> 00:09:08,519 year later wouldn't it be kinda awesome to add the K designation after the fact 122 00:09:06,360 --> 00:09:12,420 I mean if only a fraction of the buyers of a product will use a given feature 123 00:09:10,200 --> 00:09:16,740 doesn't it kind of make sense that they should be the ones to pay for it even if 124 00:09:14,399 --> 00:09:21,000 the cost is disproportionately high this is the defense that I usually see 125 00:09:18,779 --> 00:09:26,339 for Tesla's heated rear seat option in the model 3. it simplifies manufacturing 126 00:09:23,880 --> 00:09:30,360 to just put it in every car they say and that way only the people who buy it end 127 00:09:28,440 --> 00:09:34,380 up covering the cost allowing Tesla to hit a more aggressive base model price 128 00:09:31,920 --> 00:09:40,380 point for everyone else so who cares they say well I do just because a 129 00:09:37,980 --> 00:09:45,660 decision makes business sense doesn't mean that we should lie down and take it 130 00:09:42,240 --> 00:09:46,680 if it is actually a negligible cost to 131 00:09:45,660 --> 00:09:50,760 the point where they're just going to put the seat heating Hardware in every 132 00:09:48,660 --> 00:09:58,320 single car it is then it should just be active on a 133 00:09:54,240 --> 00:10:02,399 forty thousand dollar car just like ECC 134 00:09:58,320 --> 00:10:04,260 should be active on my 500 CPU and 135 00:10:02,399 --> 00:10:09,420 that's without requiring an additional couple hundred bucks for the arbitrary 136 00:10:06,779 --> 00:10:13,560 workstation board that to its credit worked well in our testing but is 137 00:10:11,580 --> 00:10:19,320 missing features that I might care about as a consumer like better IO better vrms 138 00:10:17,160 --> 00:10:24,120 or even aesthetic gimmicks like RGB lighting headers the very worst part of 139 00:10:21,360 --> 00:10:30,720 all of this is that AMD has already shown Intel the path forward Intel just 140 00:10:27,120 --> 00:10:32,820 refuses to take it for years AMD has 141 00:10:30,720 --> 00:10:38,160 taken actually a very similar stance that ECC is a workstation and server 142 00:10:36,300 --> 00:10:43,560 class feature that general consumers probably don't need they only validate 143 00:10:41,339 --> 00:10:47,880 it on their professional products the difference is that like that third core 144 00:10:46,019 --> 00:10:52,860 unlocking situation they haven't outright disabled the function on their 145 00:10:50,040 --> 00:10:56,760 consumer CPUs and chipsets this allows their ecosystem Partners like 146 00:10:54,480 --> 00:11:01,560 motherboard makers to activate it should they choose and this is the best of both 147 00:10:59,160 --> 00:11:06,480 worlds because it gives businesses a validated solution one that they will 148 00:11:03,779 --> 00:11:12,959 pay extra for AMD server CPU sales are clearly doing just fine while still 149 00:11:09,720 --> 00:11:15,779 giving consumers the choice to Save A 150 00:11:12,959 --> 00:11:20,040 Buck or seek out an ECC compatible motherboard and ECC RAM whether it's 151 00:11:18,300 --> 00:11:25,019 because they're sticklers for stability or because they are repurposing their 152 00:11:22,440 --> 00:11:29,760 gaming CPU years down the line as a home storage server which has a clear E-Waste 153 00:11:27,720 --> 00:11:33,839 reduction benefit the ECC controversy though is arguably coming to a close now 154 00:11:32,100 --> 00:11:39,779 that we're moving on to ddr5 which contains eight ECC bits per Channel 155 00:11:36,660 --> 00:11:42,000 but my main point here is not the ECC 156 00:11:39,779 --> 00:11:46,260 memory my main point is that there are many examples of this practice of 157 00:11:43,920 --> 00:11:51,899 locking performance or features behind additional paywalls be it GPU driver 158 00:11:48,779 --> 00:11:54,120 features or overclocking support and as 159 00:11:51,899 --> 00:11:58,560 consumers we should be thinking long and hard about whether it's something that 160 00:11:55,980 --> 00:12:04,680 we actually want before we stop making noise and just accept it like you accept 161 00:12:01,260 --> 00:12:06,360 the segue to our sponsor jackery jackery 162 00:12:04,680 --> 00:12:10,200 makes solar ready portable power stations designed to improve outdoor 163 00:12:08,339 --> 00:12:15,480 Life by providing power Outdoors whenever and wherever you need it the 164 00:12:12,779 --> 00:12:18,779 new solar generator 1000 Pro is their fastest solar and wall recharging 165 00:12:17,160 --> 00:12:23,399 generator yet boasting three times faster charging than the normal sg-1000 166 00:12:21,240 --> 00:12:27,720 it consists of a jackery Explorer 1000 Pro portable power station and 80 watt 167 00:12:25,740 --> 00:12:31,560 solar panels plug it into the wall and get a full charge in under two 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