> However since the Atom doesn't support ECC RAM (for that matter > neither does the mighty Core i7) I'm somewhat cautious about trusting > it as an always on file server without additional checksums in > software. Pretty much all AMD chips support ECC RAM, although of > course mobo/BIOS support is a different matter.
i think you're right. ecc hardware is hard to live without. i have not used ecc memory with amd hardware. so i can't comment on that. but if you want ecc with intel hardware, you just need to get the xeon version of the processor: socket 1156 core iX xeon [elwx]3[45]xx socket 1366 core i7 xeon [elwx][35][56]xx you can get the xeon versions at a similar price to the core iX versions, but usually the frequency is a bit lower. ecc motherboards can be competitive, too. it looks like newegg is selling the x8sil for $159. it comes with two fairly nice i82574 nics. i can verify that this motherboard works correctly. - erik
