ECC RAM barely sips more power.

At the same speed and capacity, the difference is negligible — think 1–2 watts per module, tops. That’s less than a nightlight. For a typical desktop or server, you won’t notice it on your electric bill.

The extra power comes from the additional memory chip (the 9th chip per rank) and slightly higher current draw on the bus. But in practice, total system power might increase by 1–3% depending on how many sticks you have. If you’re building a home server or workstation that needs ECC for data integrity, don’t sweat the power budget.

The real cost of ECC is not the electricity — it’s the motherboard and CPU support fee.