I have an old Mac Pro I decided to upgrade. I found a company on eBay selling "16GB 4X4GB DDR2 MEMORY RAM PC2-5300F 667MHz ECC FB-DIMM" for a good price so I bought two units (32GB total). (Kingston PN# F51272F51)
I installed the memory and all 32GB of the RAM is showing in System Report, but it does not show as ECC.
Here's about the Mac itself:
Here's the memory section:
According to Wikipedia, most Registered ("Buffered") RAM is also ECC, but Buffered RAM can also be non-ECC RAM.
Is the RAM I purchased ECC?
Best Answer
It's not showing as ECC because it's not ECC.
That's not exactly correct. Registered memory has ECC functionality, but not all ECC is registered. Kingston goes on to explain the difference in the FAQ: What is the difference between registered, unbuffered, ECC and fully buffered memory?
Secondly, the memory you specified, the Kingston F51272F51 is not listed anywhere as being ECC. It is listed as being Fully Buffered, however.
Finally, looking at the "supported systems" for this memory on Kingston's website, Apple is nowhere to be found. So, while is technically works, it's not "correct."
Unfortunately, what you purchased on eBay was not accurately described. The actual memory that you need from Kingston is KTD-WS667