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i7 4930 K on ASUS P9X79 LE LGA 2011 race horse, recommendations please for over clocking and memory


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Downclocking did sound better, less irritating hf, but I should probably retry that since isolating the naa with fibre the hf has become completely non fatigueing. Whats silly is I used lower power cpu's before but faster and downclocked cpu's always sounded better to me, totally clueless to the why. That was before hqp in my jriver/jplay days though. My naa is an i7 3770t downclocked to 1.6ghz. Thats however a little too much for dsd128 upsampling, not running a 100% trouble free. Hence im thinking getting the e5-2603 v3, its a bargain at $200 anyway..

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Today running HQP desktop (no NAA) doing Redbook to DSD 11.288, I found no perceptible sonic advantage of the 4930 over the 3770 using the Corning USB cable to an E22

 

I had not tested Pipeline for awhile, and to my surprise, the Quadcore sounded better with Pipeline than without, which was not the case when I tried Pipeline when it was first released

 

let us know if you go down the Xeon road, and how it sounds

Sound Test, Monaco

Consultant to Sound Galleries Monaco, and Taiko Audio Holland

e-mail [email protected]

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The hexcore has always been running with the Pipeline.

 

I will try down clocking but not until the second week of May. Note that with the Corning USB cable, the DAC is pretty immune to RF coming from the PC.

 

in terms of SQ differences, I am getting much bigger SQ changes / improvements with OS tweaks and Pipeline on or off than with my recent CPU changes.

 

I am trying to be patient waiting for my Regen to show up !

Sound Test, Monaco

Consultant to Sound Galleries Monaco, and Taiko Audio Holland

e-mail [email protected]

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  • 1 month later...

Ive done a few experiments with different clockspeeds on my main and naa pc's (both i7 3770T), both powered by a LPS, FMC's on the NAA.

 

Differences are actually minor now.

 

I hear small differences in the NAA between 800, 1600, 2000 and 2500 MHz (turbo disabled). Differences are smaller then selecting different "filters" in audiophile optimizer.

 

On the pc running hqp-desktop I left it on the 2500MHz setting since thats the only setting I dont have cracks/ticks between some tracks and the rdp app is much more responsive.

 

BTW I reinstalled the hqp-desktop pc and the Audiophile optimizer makes quite a difference in running HQP, without I have a buffer underruns on low latency settings, once AO is installed and run, no problem at all even on the lowest 5ms latency setting..

 

Previously when using jriver and jplay I heard significant differences when switching clockspeeds but that was without FMC's aswell.

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I have tried Win 10 (virgin) running HQ Player Realtime priority with Softperfect Ram Disk on the Hexcore, playing to NAA on Win 10 optimized and Realtime priority on the 3770 with very good results.

 

IMHO well worth the effort of getting 2 SSD's and installing Win 10 on both. Are you powering your SSD's with battery ?

Sound Test, Monaco

Consultant to Sound Galleries Monaco, and Taiko Audio Holland

e-mail [email protected]

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I use msata ssd's so cant power them seperately very easy. Thinking of buying a new xeon based setup in a large case to be able to do some comparisons. I have a cubox aswell, maybe worth a shot again with fmc's and a regen when it arrives (2nd batch).

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I use msata ssd's so cant power them seperately very easy. Thinking of buying a new xeon based setup in a large case to be able to do some comparisons. I have a cubox aswell, maybe worth a shot again with fmc's and a regen when it arrives (2nd batch).

 

Is there the same reason to battery power mSATA or M.2 SSDs? What about NVME? In any case my 4930k goes to DSD512 using poly-sinc-mp-2s without hiccups while I'm also using the machine for other light stuff.

 

My current project is going to be getting my new x520-DA2 (10Gbe ethernet) to work under OS X 10.10

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I guess I should also be trying some flavor of Linux and see how that compares to WS2012 + AO

 

turns out the mobo has a quad channel memory controller with speed support up to 2133 Mhz, so have ordered 4 x 4 gb from Corsair to match :-)

 

You really should have done more research before you jumped on this. X79 is not the best platform for your goals. Also, the motherboard you chose has not got the best power delivery which is going to add some noise.

 

The fact that you didn't even know about the quad channel memory controller worries me. No offense or anything. I'm a computer technician.

 

You aren't going to be able to go fanless with this system. Not with a 130W CPU. You could undervolt it and use a very open case and run fanless on something like an NHD15 but you'd have to bring the TDP of the CPU down to about 115W or so to pull it off by undervolting.

 

Fans and spinning hard drives add noise to your system. Noisy power delivery components add noise to the system. Crappy motherboards add noise to the system. Some RAM adds more noise than other RAM. There's a lot of variables at play here.

 

Since audio processing is basically a single core process, I think you would have been better served by something like a Pentium G 3258 overclocked to 4.4Ghz which would only run you a TDP of about 70W on a crappy chip and as little as 60W on a good chip. which you could easily cool fanlessly in a fanless case with a large heatsink.

 

I would urge you not to change your BCLK when you overclock your i7. Leave it at its default. Personally I would leave it stock, put an NHD15 on it, undervolt it, and put the phase control on full duty so you're using all the power phases.

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You really should have done more research before you jumped on this. X79 is not the best platform for your goals. Also, the motherboard you chose has not got the best power delivery which is going to add some noise.

 

The fact that you didn't even know about the quad channel memory controller worries me. No offense or anything. I'm a computer technician.

 

You aren't going to be able to go fanless with this system. Not with a 130W CPU. You could undervolt it and use a very open case and run fanless on something like an NHD15 but you'd have to bring the TDP of the CPU down to about 115W or so to pull it off by undervolting.

 

Fans and spinning hard drives add noise to your system. Noisy power delivery components add noise to the system. Crappy motherboards add noise to the system. Some RAM adds more noise than other RAM. There's a lot of variables at play here.

 

Since audio processing is basically a single core process, I think you would have been better served by something like a Pentium G 3258 overclocked to 4.4Ghz which would only run you a TDP of about 70W on a crappy chip and as little as 60W on a good chip. which you could easily cool fanlessly in a fanless case with a large heatsink.

 

I would urge you not to change your BCLK when you overclock your i7. Leave it at its default. Personally I would leave it stock, put an NHD15 on it, undervolt it, and put the phase control on full duty so you're using all the power phases.

 

I had the CPU, and wanted to replace / upgrade my gaming machine. The X79 was a reasonable choice for a game machine with a big graphics card. I was curious about what sonic difference more processing power and faster memory would make to HQ Player. When I am done with my next audio build the X79 will be a gaming machine

 

Some questions :-)

 

- Which Ram do you find the quietest ?

 

- could you further explain power phases ?

 

Please note that all of my computer audio explorations are in the processing environment of using HQ Player to upsample PCM to DSD 256. HQ Player has a settings option called "Pipeline" which distributes the sigma delta modulation over several cores and works well with quad cores and hex cores

 

My new project is to explore the sonic effect of more stable mother board clock on HQ Player. For this endeavor I will be using a Gigabyte H97M-D3H with a i7 4790 and the OCXO from Paul Pang Audio

 

I look forward to any guidance, tips or insights you might have

Sound Test, Monaco

Consultant to Sound Galleries Monaco, and Taiko Audio Holland

e-mail [email protected]

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I had the CPU, and wanted to replace / upgrade my gaming machine. The X79 was a reasonable choice for a game machine with a big graphics card. I was curious about what sonic difference more processing power and faster memory would make to HQ Player. When I am done with my next audio build the X79 will be a gaming machine

 

Some questions :-)

 

- Which Ram do you find the quietest ?

 

- could you further explain power phases ?

 

Please note that all of my computer audio explorations are in the processing environment of using HQ Player to upsample PCM to DSD 256. HQ Player has a settings option called "Pipeline" which distributes the sigma delta modulation over several cores and works well with quad cores and hex cores

 

My new project is to explore the sonic effect of more stable mother board clock on HQ Player. For this endeavor I will be using a Gigabyte H97M-D3H with a i7 4790 and the OCXO from Paul Pang Audio

 

I look forward to any guidance, tips or insights you might have

 

The other question is whether, when connecting this machine to NAA via optical ethernet, there is any real benefit to "quiet" ... my idea is to modify the DN2800MT with OXCO. I've already got a PPA USB V2. One could also consider using the single PCI-e x4 slot for a 1000base-SX card ... probably best to use the PPA USB V2 instead.

Custom room treatments for headphone users.

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I dont really know how to explain what a power phase is. Basically, the more, and the better, power phases you have, the more current you can supply to the cpu and the more cleanly you can do so. Having more, stronger phases is critical to overclocking, particularly with high TDP CPUs where you're pulling 200W overclocked.

 

An exacmple of how too few, crappy phases can be bad can be found on any tech forum. People buy AMD 8350s and put them on garbage 760G boards with 4 garbage power phases and usually a power delivery component on the motherboard ends up exploding or catching fire. Nobody's died yet but it fries your board and your CPU and often everything else as well when that happens.

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The other question is whether, when connecting this machine to NAA via optical ethernet, there is any real benefit to "quiet" ... my idea is to modify the DN2800MT with OXCO. I've already got a PPA USB V2. One could also consider using the single PCI-e x4 slot for a 1000base-SX card ... probably best to use the PPA USB V2 instead.

 

I am relying on the Corning USB and Regen Green to carry out enough re-clocking of the USB ;-)

Sound Test, Monaco

Consultant to Sound Galleries Monaco, and Taiko Audio Holland

e-mail [email protected]

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This article although quite old now discusses phases and is useful to read in full, this is the last page:

Everything You Need to Know About The Motherboard Voltage Regulator Circuit | Hardware Secrets

 

Some manufacturers such as Asus have amended the x99 2011v3 socket details below :

Yet Asus is doing something that, as far as we know, no other rival company is it is using a custom LGA2011-v3 implementation known as 'OC Socket'. Two questions arise here. Why is it custom, and what difference does that make?

Intel historically supplies motherboard manufacturers with detailed architecture/engineering guides that help when designing boards, which is important when accessing various voltage lines. Recent moves to fully-integrated voltage controllers has meant that such access has been curtailed, none more so than on X99, where motherboard partners are pretty much left in the dark. Intel prescribes a range of voltages and adjustments that can be made in the BIOS, mobo guys follow suit.

Asus, however, believes the enthusiast should have unfettered access to all manner of voltage. Engineers, it says, have examined the LGA 2011-v3 CPUs in excruciating detail and deduced the role played by each of the pins on the bottom; the new chips have different pin-outs than their predecessors.

The end result is that, fully tapping into this new pin-out, Asus' OC Socket has more pins than a standard LGA2011-v3. The extra pin-outs, located at six sections around the socket, enable all Asus X99 boards to circumvent the voltage limits imposed by Intel and provides a means by which more voltage rails can be monitored. What's more, the company says, enhanced monitoring and regulation helps when really pushing the CPU to the limit (think 1.6V-plus), minimising voltage drops and increasing overall efficiency by only allocating the exact voltage required. Intels integrated voltages, accessed by other boards, aren't that fine-tuned, apparently.

Review: Asus X99-Deluxe - Mainboard - HEXUS.net

 

These kinds of builds are extreme and need good cooling and high power in larger cases than an average music server case. I have something I could use and may do just for the comparison.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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I'm 99.99% sure that you can't use an X79 CPU in an X99 motherboard. The sockets are different.

I was thinking of CPUs that matches with the X99, I can see where my post is confusing referring to x99 in a thread discussing the x79. Example CPUs:

ASRock > X99E-ITX/ac

 

I have a build in mind with an X99 but it is expensive just for a comparison.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Good thread EuroDriver! I am enjoying reading something different.

 

I have ordered 2 H97M-D3H mobo's and a OCXO upgrade kit from Phil / PPA. This way I will be able to switch back and forth between stock clock and OCXO. OCXO needs 30 mins to stabilize. It will be end of the month by the time I am ready to do some testing.

 

we will also be comparing the sound to Xeon's on server boards, as well as the 3770 on DH61DL warhorse

Sound Test, Monaco

Consultant to Sound Galleries Monaco, and Taiko Audio Holland

e-mail [email protected]

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