Skip ECC for your budget TrueNAS homelab.

Probably not.

ECC memory is great if you’re running production servers or storing irreplaceable data. But in a budget homelab where you’re tinkering, storing media, or testing configs, the protection it gives during scrubs is marginal at best. Memory errors that actually corrupt a scrub checksum are rare with stable non-ECC RAM. The cost premium for ECC-compatible motherboards and CPUs — especially on the Intel side — eats into your storage budget fast.

If you’re worried, run a full memtest