Buy the ECC for your R730.

Don’t. That server likely won’t even boot with standard non-ECC DDR4.

The real performance difference in a home media server is basically zero — ECC’s job is catching bit flips, not speeding things up. For streaming movies or running Plex, a single-bit error is invisible. But the PowerEdge R730 is picky: it expects registered ECC (RDIMMs). Stick a stick of non-ECC in there and you’ll probably get beeps and blank screens.

Even if it did work, saving $40 isn’t worth the random crash when a memory error hits your ZFS array or Docker database. For a media server you just want to run for years, ECC is cheap insurance.

Don’t fight your hardware. Pay the extra forty bucks and sleep better.