Design a PC/Server for ROON and HQ Player

[lmitche]

It also looks like the 7700k will be plug compatible with the 6600k, so no motherboard upgrade will be necessary.?. Fingers crossed!

[jabbr]

Yes, I'd like to be able to do DSD1024 along with kernel if possible and the question will be either LGA 1151 or 2011-3

[Miska]

@Miska, for ultimate performance, say i7-6900k with watercool/overclock or i7-7700k? ... along with Pascal

 

I don't know anything yet about 7700K. But it depends on how many channels / what kind of processing you need.

 

My new server is 6950X (Broadwell-E) for doing 8-channel output to exaSound e28. I posted some initial testing results on the FB page.

[Miska]

Yes, I'd like to be able to do DSD1024 along with kernel if possible and the question will be either LGA 1151 or 2011-3

 

Look for something that has as good as possible per-core performance, but still with enough cores.

 

Main difference between 1151 and 2011-3 is memory bandwidth and PCI-Express lanes. 1151 has two memory channels while 2011-3 has four. 6700K has 16 PCI-Express lanes while 6900K has 40. However, 6700K has highest per-core speed.

[blue2]

What do you think of this one EVGA 04G-P4-2983-KR GeForce GTX 980 SC Gaming ACX 2.0 Graphics Card? Seems good value at £280. Also found this indicating GTX 980 SLI is the best performing over GTX 1060/1070 and the other 9xx cards:

[Miska]

What do you think of this one EVGA 04G-P4-2983-KR GeForce GTX 980 SC Gaming ACX 2.0 Graphics Card? Seems good value at £280. Also found this indicating GTX 980 SLI is the best performing over GTX 1060/1070 and the other 9xx cards:

[ATTACH=CONFIG]29542[/ATTACH]

 

That table seems to refer to mobile (laptop) variants.

 

HQPlayer cannot utilize SLI setups (multi-GPU) at the moment. From HQPlayer perspective, only meaningful columns are the two double precision floating point ones. GTX 980 is close GTX 1060. I have tested ASUS Strix-series GTX 980 and GTX 1060 (with 6 GB RAM) and the GTX 1060 was slightly faster.

 

3GB model of GTX 1060 is around 250€.

 

 

Depending on your computer setup, you may want to look for a card that is as silent as possible. Another important aspect to note is size of the card. For example the ASUS Strix-series 1060/1070/1080 are HUGE and may be hard to fit.

 

For my Linux desktop I got the ASUS Dual-series 1060 card because it is smaller:

DUAL-GTX1060-O3G | Graphics Cards | ASUS Global

There are also 6 GB 1060 and 8 GB 1070 models in the Dual-series. Also feels cheaper than the Strix-series though.

[Miska]

Now there's a blog post about my most recent server build:

http://www.computeraudiophile.com/blogs/miska/building-new-server-multichannel-processing-702/

[sydlow]

Now there's a blog post about my most recent server build:

http://www.computeraudiophile.com/blogs/miska/building-new-server-multichannel-processing-702/

That link isn't working

[Miska]

That link isn't working

 

Now it should work. It was in draft status so displayed only to me. It wasn't immediately apparent to me, now I changed status to "publish now".

[Kal Rubinson]

Can you give us a BOM listing?

[hvbias]

Now there's a blog post about my most recent server build:

Building a new server for multichannel processing - Blogs - Computer Audiophile

 

Wow that thing will have no problem running The Witcher 3 all eye candy turned on at 4k, a server build faster than my current gaming PC

 

What is the CPU usage like with no CUDA off loading same music "5.1 channel 48/16 DVD-rip, upsampled to 12.3 MHz DSD256 using full poly-sinc-short-mp and ASDM7"?

[Blackstone]

Have you guys just compared your 4GHz cpus and gamer GPU setups to a Melco? Don't get me wrong, I have Haswell-E and GTX 980 SLI for gaming, but everytime I upgrade my rig my sound seems gets worse. Adding a second graphics card was the worst.

 

An 850 watt switching power supply for an audiophile front end? GTX 1080? At 100% load? Are you sure you aren't just gearing up for the next Battlefield game? [emoji106]

[Miska]

Have you guys just compared your 4GHz cpus and gamer GPU setups to a Melco? Don't get me wrong, I have Haswell-E and GTX 980 SLI for gaming, but everytime I upgrade my rig my sound seems gets worse. Adding a second graphics card was the worst.

 

If you feel that adding more computational capability makes sound worse, try adding a NAA. It'll move out the actual audio output to another low power device. Sonore's microRendu, SOtM SMS-200 and exaSound PlayPoint being examples of such. This way you can have both, plenty of power to do all the fancy DSP and low noise device for output.

 

However, I feel that the machine I built is pretty good for the purpose alone, I have the exaSound e28 directly connected to the DAC-UP USB port and the sound is good. One thing to note is to make sure you have a good PSU. Two cards in SLI setup can alone draw 400W, so to be on the safe side, you should have 800+W PSU.

 

I also have a fanless small CL100 to act as a Windows-based NAA with T+A DAC8 DSD running at DSD512. But as a NAA it could also handle the exaSound e28. I replaced CL100's poor stock wallwart with a better PSU.

[craighartley]

If you feel that adding more computational capability makes sound worse, try adding a NAA.

 

 

 

I also have a fanless small CL100 to act as a Windows-based NAA with T+A DAC8 DSD running at DSD512. But as a NAA it could also handle the exaSound e28. I replaced CL100's poor stock wallwart with a better PSU.

 

What size ssd and RAM do you have in the CL100 NAA?

[Blackstone]

I have an 850 watt corsair, of course. This will probably be my last SLI setup because support for SLI in Direct X 10 games is practically nonexistent. In fact I think they dumped SLI support for the sole purpose of trying to sell me a 1080 to replace my two 980s. Devious.

[Forehaven]

I have a GeForce 1080 Founders Edition card in my new build. Ever since, I've not been able to use Roon b/c I get OpenGl 3.0 isn't installed. But I have the latest driver from nVidia.

Has anyone had similar problems...solutions?

[ElviaCaprice]

Have plenty of firepower with that build to do some amazing high quality video/audio. Unfortunately HQP doesn't do video or work with a media player like JRiver that does.

[Miska]

What size ssd and RAM do you have in the CL100 NAA?

 

RAM is the max 16 GB, although it would probably be just fine with 8 (as long as it doesn't use swap). SSD is 256 GB split into two 128 GB partitions, one fro 64-bit Win10 Pro and another partition for Linux.

[Miska]

RAM is the max 16 GB, although it would probably be just fine with 8 (as long as it doesn't use swap). SSD is 256 GB split into two 128 GB partitions, one fro 64-bit Win10 Pro and another partition for Linux.

 

Oh, and I took it without any wireless options, on purpose. I use only the gigabit ethernet and wanted to avoid any possibly RFI from wireless.

[craighartley]

Oh, and I took it without any wireless options, on purpose. I use only the gigabit ethernet and wanted to avoid any possibly RFI from wireless.

 

Thanks. I'd had my eye on this for use as Windows 10 Pro NAA.

[MikeJazz]

Now there's a blog post about my most recent server build:

Building a new server for multichannel processing - Blogs - Computer Audiophile

 

Thank you for the care put on that article. Looks a great choice.

In your opinion, is it overkill for hq players's most demanding stereo upsampling?

And is it too noise to be kept near the hifi system, when being driven hard?

 

Thanks once more! You rock!

[Miska]

In your opinion, is it overkill for hq players's most demanding stereo upsampling?

 

Yes, I'd say it's an overkill for stereo to two channel output cases. If extra power is needed for such cases, CUDA offload may be better approach, for example with GTX 1060.

 

Even for stereo source content, one could still want to use this kind of machine to output multichannel with digital cross-over filters or something similar. Or alternatively perform something like stereo mix-down of multichannel DSD256. But there are also those 6 and 8 core versions in the Broadwell-E series (such as 6850K and 6900K).

 

And is it too noise to be kept near the hifi system, when being driven hard?

 

I have not yet really pushed the machine to the edge. I have ordered bunch of quiet Noctua fans I will replace to the case and also connect one of the 12 cm fans to be controlled by the GPU instead of motherboard. So some fine tuning still to happen.

 

Now it's not bad if placed properly.

[Miska]

I have a GeForce 1080 Founders Edition card in my new build. Ever since, I've not been able to use Roon b/c I get OpenGl 3.0 isn't installed. But I have the latest driver from nVidia.

Has anyone had similar problems...solutions?

 

The latest drivers from nVidia should work fine, up to OpenGL 4.5. I don't think the drivers make difference between 1080 Founders Edition and the other versions, since the GPU itself is same. Possibly some driver installation issue? You could try to uninstall all nVidia items through Windows Control Panel, reboot and then reinstall the driver package.

 

I didn't play with Roon yet on the new machine, but at least HQPlayer's use of OpenGL is functional (splash-screen at startup and touch/fullscreen mode). Sometimes OpenGL can be tricky, so there could be sometimes some compatibility issues when certain OpenGL extensions are used by the application.

[Miska]

What is the CPU usage like with no CUDA off loading same music "5.1 channel 48/16 DVD-rip, upsampled to 12.3 MHz DSD256 using full poly-sinc-short-mp and ASDM7"?

 

[ted_b]

Is CUDA offloading operational in the latest 3.14 production? I built my machine to your specs back in March

http://www.computeraudiophile.com/f11-software/design-pc-server-roon-and-hq-player-25796/index6.html#post536775

and hope my GPU card

(Asus GeForce GTX 960 Overclocked 4GB GDDR5 PCI-E Video Card)

is not obsolete after a few months now.