[citation needed] (for real, I would love to know if this is true)

ECC really does help. For home use non ECC memory is probably acceptable as most errors are going to be in graphics data etc. But, for a few $ more you can significantly increase your computers stability.

"Recent tests give widely varying error rates with over 7 orders of magnitude difference, ranging from 10−10−10−17 error/bit•h, roughly one bit error, per hour, per gigabyte of memory to one bit error, per century, per gigabyte of memory.[7][11][12]" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_random_access_memory