Need is a slippery quantity. If present works, and throwing a bit more of the same to it makes it work better then go that way. If one wants to live on the bleeding edge, check and see how much blood one has to bleed. :)

Simply: Do you need it? Are there failures for not having it? If no to either keep on truckin'.

I still tend to default to ECC RAM on servers and non-ECC RAM on workstations.

Make sure your motherboard actually does the error checking and doesn't just "support" ECC RAM. There were a few MBs years ago that would take ECC modules and then not do the error checking. ;-)

I am curious about your comment - DDR2 ECC RAM isn't *that* expensive. I see a 2x4096GB kit sub-$400.

^ agree -

ECC on servers non ECC on workstaions.

and wow about thos motherboards wouldn't that be a suprise.