Design a PC/Server for ROON and HQ Player

[Solstice380]

Roots-man, I've been going through the same exercise trying to convince myself I could get away with fanless. I haven't built a PC IN OVER 10 years so my knowledge of what will fit and work with what is really old skool. LOL Andrew went small on the mobo but stayed with the 6700K. I don't have the guts (balls) to risk it in the small cases available thinking a CUDA video card for major upsampling to DSD512 is in my future. I'm thinking you might cut down heat and open up space using an external PSU like a HDPlex as TedB says but you'll be hard pressed to get all those cards in. And you'll have a $700 power supply. Gulp!

 

Decisions, decisions...

 

I'm sure you've found the Fractal and Silverstone cases as well as the Streacom, yes? May have to end up with lowest possible noise and not fanless.

[Solstice380]

RAM Question:

 

For loading in 32 GB of RAM, is it better to use 4x8 or 2x16?

[Solstice380]

For best performance it is best to have all memory channels in use. So check what kind of memory bank designations your system has.

 

Tnx. 4x8 it will be! [emoji12]

[Solstice380]

I'm looking at the Kingston Savage with a CL of 12.

 

HX424C12SB2K

 

But, it takes 1.35V vs 1.2 for the Fury. I can get it in the US for only US$10 more than Fury. Any downside other than voltage and heat? Maybe lifetime?

[Solstice380]

Plus the Savage is XMP.

 

And, oops, it's US$20 more at 4x8G.

[Solstice380]

I fell into a good buy from a friend on a build he had made for him. I caught him at a weak moment when he needed cash!

 

Asus Z170 Deluxe mobo, i7-6700K, water cooled, Asus 970x 4Gb graphics, Intel USB 3.1, 8Gb SDDR4 G Skill 2400, 720W Seasonic PSU, Win 10 Pro, in a nice case. Now looking to increase RAM. The processor is running at 4.16 MHz right now and the fan for the CPU water cooler never goes above idle. There is a fan on the graphics card and 2 - 120mm case fans at 600 RPM idle, 1 in and 1 outflow.

 

Stripped down Win install, pretty clean. Still running too many processes but I'd say it sounds about as good as my Uptoned Mac Mini. Sure like seeing Closed-form filter doing 44/16 to DSD128 (DoP) only pushing the CPU to 15%.

 

My goal is to use this for a Roon/HQPlayer server so I'm interested in more RAM. It has 2 network ports so I'm going to try setting up a direct network connection between the two like Alex C. did, with the Mini as a Win/ASIO/NAA, so I can keep it off my main network. If it is problematic I'll go the router route.

[Solstice380]

There are Seasonic fanless power supplies with higher wattage.

[Solstice380]

Awesome Server PC Available in (mostly Midwest/Eastern) US

 

If you have a MicroCenter store near you check out this awesome deal! Available for in-store purchase only. Limit 1. It is built and backed by MicroCenter. It's got everything you need to be an excellent server machine for Roon/HQP/DSD512 upsampling. I can't believe the price on this is only US$1199. Quick specs:

 

i7-6700K

16 GB G-skill DDR4-3000 RAM

nVidia GeForce 970 GPU

Hyper CPU cooler

ASRock Z170 gaming mobo

500W PSU

 

PowerSpec G416 Desktop Computer 915314 - Micro Center

 

For a modest fee I'd go get one for somebody and send it to them. This is a steal!!

[Solstice380]

I know, tell me about it, lol.

 

I Bootcamped mine and am using it as a Win10 NAA to run ASIO drivers - I think a T+A DAC 8 DSD is in my near future. [emoji41] AO 2.0 for Win 10 will be out (official non-beta) in about 2 weeks. Just ran into a pristine McIntosh C500 preamp (solid state) and my wife said that I exceeded this month's audio budget already. [emoji12]. So, next month! Timing is good with all of the great products coming out, and I found a preamp that I really wanted.

[Solstice380]

That's great and good luck. But at this time I have no plans on using the Mac Mini as a NAA. Mine is already boot-camped (W8 Pro will be upgraded to W10 Pro) and tweaked with Uptone Audio power supply and fan control.

 

The PC I am building, should be done tomorrow, is to be as quite as can be at a very reasonable price. And later I hope to have something more special.

 

Remember, it took Sound Galleries a lot of tweaks (many of them custom hardware) for the one PC approach to better a 2 PC setup. Let us know yours turns out!

 

I have the JS-2 and MMK in my Mini and with only a slightly tweaked W10 Pro it is one of the best sounding CA systems I've heard. LPS on the network switch, EMO Systems network isolator before NAA and Uptone REGEN after NAA. Dead quiet background, beautiful timbre and striking dynamics.

[Solstice380]

6 hours ago, leftside said:

 

All good tonight. Most of the filters cause the CPU(s) to run between 40% - 60%. The poly-sinc-hb seems to be a bit higher. I can't run the regular xtr filters without the PC stuttering. 

 

 

That level of CPU utilization will give some stuttering.  I have an i7 6700K with GTX970 GPU and can't run the non-2s xtr filters.  Not much OS optimization, though.  

 

I find the non-mp filters to sound more like delta-sigma DACs, even through the chipless DSD512 module in my Golden Atlantic.  I tend to prefer the -mp filters when upsampling to the higher DSD rates.  Miska has said that the -mp filters are the best (most accurate?) for transients.  Maybe I'm more sensitive to the pre-ringing of linear filters that I feel make the sound harsh on even well recorded jazz and rock.

[Solstice380]

13 minutes ago, tboooe said:

My CPU is at 70-80% when converting to PCM to DSD512 and I dont get any stuttering.  I do get occasional stuttering when I converting DSD t64 or 128 to DSD512 though.  I also do 2 ch convolution.

 

You are lucky!  What are your individual cores at?  What CPU, etc.?  50% on a core can be max for some processors.  I can do DSD 64/128 to 512 without issues with non-2s filters, except xtr so I use the 2s variant.  So many variables in our servers / networks it's often difficult to determine where the issue is. 

[Solstice380]

7 minutes ago, tboooe said:

I do wonder if the stuttering is due to @leftside connecting his NAA via wireless versus having it hardwired to this network.

 

Good point!

[Solstice380]

4 hours ago, Miska said:

A bit expensive maybe though...

 

Gulp!!  Definitely go the high power CPU path for HQP work.  ?

[Solstice380]

1 hour ago, rickca said:

I'm curious what is the price for the extreme 2.16x?  

 

IIRC it’s north of US$15K. 

[Solstice380]

On 10/10/2018 at 4:23 AM, Miska said:

 

Some more processing power... Raw numbers show that 2080 has about 2/3rds of the processing power of 2080 Ti. Price difference is pretty much exactly the same (1000€ vs 1500€).

 

 

The benchmarks I’ve seen show only a slight improvement for the Ti.  At US$400 more it doesn’t seem like a big increase in performance.  

 

Another question:  if I have room in my case is it better to go for a dual fan model (or triple fan Gaming)?

[Solstice380]

1 hour ago, Miska said:

 

Yes, the dual fan model is likely more quiet and the STRIX triple fan is likely even more so. At least in the single fan "Turbo" model, fan gets noisy at higher speeds (loads). The triple fan 1080 STRIX I have in my big server is totally quiet under all loads I've thrown at it.

 

 

Thanks, that was my common sense thought as well.   Glad to hear about the 1080 noise level.

 

I recently had a pump go out on my Corsair water CPU cooler.  The fan on the new version is quieter and the temp dropped a couple degrees, too.  

[Solstice380]

I can also confirm the RTX2080 STRIX OC Gaming with a 6700K (I need to fix my sig says 7700K) can do non -2s xtr 44/16 to 44x512 with CPU @ 27-33% and GPU at 70%.  Core temps will spike during filter build for a couple seconds and music starts within 4-5 seconds.  I’m impressed!  It will also do 48/24 to 44x512 with an additional 5% added to the CPU and GPU utilization.  Filter build takes about 2X it seems.  

 

I’ll play around with some other filters.  I think I remember closed form or another being more difficult to crunch.

[Solstice380]

3 hours ago, Em2016 said:

 

The thousand dollar question that few of us can answer.... (at DSD512..) how does non-2s sound versus -2s?

 

Any different?

 

 

To me, there is a little difference.  It’s subtle, but music is smoother while retaining excellent impact and quickness.  A little less harshness, but my Lampi doesn’t tend toward harshness. 

 

@jabbr I upgraded to a 2080 Gaming with my i7-6700K and can do the non-2s.  I’ll have to go through some of the filters AGAIN and note the CPU/GPU.  I mostly use the sinc-shrt-mp and that runs around a reported 22% CPU (so 44%, right?) and 13% GPU.  I’ll check xtr again. 

 

When the filter builds, however, it’s a different story.  The CPU pegs at 100% for over 2 round trips of the progress bar, and the GPU is at 2%.  

[Solstice380]

4 hours ago, jabbr said:

Installed the NVIDIA RTX2080 Ti wow!

 

DSD512 poly-sinc-xtr-mp (Dell T420, 2x Xeon E5-2470 V2, 96Gb -- 20 cores) -- stereo

 

without CUDA: 1400%

with CUDA: 300%

 

The 2080 series seems very powerful.  

 

44K > DSD512 xtr-mp CPU 29% (58) GPU 70% and the filter builds in 3 secs, again with no real GPU contribution.  But playing, 70% means it’s workin’!

 

I’ll try the closed form when I get a chance.  Enjoying Aja with xtr-mp now... great bass and great spatial cues but seems the slightest bit muffled or congested compared to sinc-short-mp.

[Solstice380]

On 12/23/2019 at 5:09 PM, Miska said:

Hard to say, I have only RTX 2080 and 2080Ti. And I was surprised how much faster 2080Ti was compared to 2080.

 

 

@Miska  Which specific 2080 TI model did you get?  I'm guessing you got one of the 11GB RAM models, but did you go for a Turbo or OC Gaming model?  Thanks!

[Solstice380]

38 minutes ago, dctom said:

 

I get your point, it's just that I want to use my Paul Hynes 12v psu to connect directly to the cpu ATX.

 

The Hynes PSU should have enough wattage but use the heaviest gauge cables you can get our hands on!  Like Jussi said, you don't want voltage drop due to resistance heating.

 

[Solstice380]

39 minutes ago, dctom said:

Yeah its a balance really between low temp and processing power. I use an i3 at the moment which can upsample to 2 x DSD at a struggle depending on filter used but gets very warm. The combination of the 9700T and Asrock MB should run a lot cooler at 128DSD without any stress and in "theory" improve SQ. The HDplex case is supposed to be able to deal with CPUs up to 95w. The system might even mange 256, time will tell😀

 

Let us know if it passes the smoke test!  And we want pictures if it doesn't!!!

[Solstice380]

On 8/20/2019 at 8:14 AM, rando said:

 

This continues to be a sticking point after reading this.

 

 

Which is why I listed two commercially viable retailers more than capable of meeting your commercial needs and working towards a parts list they will use to build it for you.  Once that is set we can address improving audio performance for your leisure time. 

 

Late to the party, here, but...  There are just as good computer builders in every town.   Want to ship your system back when it breaks?  I didn’t think so.  Not the best recommendation in my view.

[Solstice380]

@jabbr  I'm assembling the components for an i9-9900KS build and stumbled across this review that has some comments about the Ryzen 3900 being better at heavily loaded multi-thread operations.  The 3900 max speed is 4.6GHz vs the 5.2 they got OC'ing the KS.  Not sure how the 10900K stacks up.

 

https://www.techpowerup.com/review/intel-core-i9-9900ks/20.html

 

Have you purchased / progressed with the build yet?