Design a PC/Server for ROON and HQ Player

[dmormerod]

Why not just buy an Intel NUC Kit NUC6i5SYH? Add an SSD, some memory and your OS of choice and you're done!

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Outlaw]

For processing PCM to DSD is processor speed or the amount of cache more important ?

[MikeJazz]

But it also gives us the opportunity to improve the sound quality of the playback to levels we never dreamed was possible :-)

 

Yes, but it's a never ending story. Each year a now tweak. Great for the tweakers...

 

While I appreciate your search for perfection at the server/player, I am morei inclined to architecture where the server components are isolated from the rendering side, and therefore, the choices of, for instance, processor, does not impact the SQ. At least at a perceivable/material level.

 

For me, the NAA seems to be the sweet spot of good sound and piece of mind.

 

But I will follow your project and findings with a lot of interest.

[Miska]

For processing PCM to DSD is processor speed or the amount of cache more important ?

 

Both... And in addition also RAM bandwidth.

[sydlow]

Hi everyone - has anyone built a Roon/HQP player with a mobo that features "clean USB"?

Specifically, example boards like:

 

GIGABYTE USB DAC-UP

GIGABYTE - Motherboard - Socket 1151 - GA-Z170X-Gaming 5 (rev. 1.0)

MSI USB Audio Power Pro

https://us.msi.com/Motherboard/Z170I-GAMING-PRO-AC.html

Asus TrueVolt USB

http://www.asus.com/US/Motherboards/MAXIMUS-VIII-IMPACT/

[jumper]

Looking back at Miska's parts list I see one medium size SSD, is this for both the OS and the music library? Does HQ Player care if its on a smaller OS SSD pulling music from a separate internal music drive? Or should I save my money and buy a single large drive to hold everything?

[Miska]

Looking back at Miska's parts list I see one medium size SSD, is this for both the OS and the music library? Does HQ Player care if its on a smaller OS SSD pulling music from a separate internal music drive? Or should I save my money and buy a single large drive to hold everything?

 

It is just for the OS and software. Content is on a network share...

 

HQPlayer doesn't care about location of the files as long as the files are accessible as a filesystem. It can also show a combined view of content that is scattered over on different storages.

[jumper]

It is just for the OS and software. Content is on a network share...

 

HQPlayer doesn't care about location of the files as long as the files are accessible as a filesystem. It can also show a combined view of content that is scattered over on different storages.

 

Thanks Miska, so SSD for OS and HQPlayer with a separate internal large spinning HDD for content is fine? I'd rather not have to buy a large SSD for conent if I don't have to, prices are still high.

[Miska]

Thanks Miska, so SSD for OS and HQPlayer with a separate internal large spinning HDD for content is fine? I'd rather not have to buy a large SSD for conent if I don't have to, prices are still high.

 

Yes, that's fine. I have also added older 1 TB WD Green drive (I guess Blue is closest to that in their current lineup) on the machine where I hold some (non-music) files. When not in use it spins down. But anyway all the music content could be as well there.

 

For music storage, I would go with something like WD Red Pro or Seagate Enterprise NAS HDD (these two are equivalent products).

[jumper]

Yes, that's fine. I have also added older 1 TB WD Green drive (I guess Blue is closest to that in their current lineup) on the machine where I hold some (non-music) files. When not in use it spins down. But anyway all the music content could be as well there.

 

For music storage, I would go with something like WD Red Pro or Seagate Enterprise NAS HDD (these two are equivalent products).

 

Thanks, my older PC is still plenty sercvicable so perhaps I'll put the storage HDD in it instead and use it as a network share as you are. This would leave just an OS SSD to run HQ Player in the new PC.

[scottw]

Reposting from HQPlayer thread as suggested:

 

I am slowly piecing together a plan for a specific ROON / HQP machine. I don't want to have to do this too often, so I want to make the PC somewhat future-proof (for the next few years at least I'm hoping). I am aiming to ditch my old DEQX processor and replace it with a digital crossover plus room correction enabled in HQP. So I need power to convolve multichannel audio and resample (possibly to DSD) which will then be sent to a NAA. By my reading, a lot of firepower will be needed for such extensive processing - Miska's post over at the HQP thread suggested N*2+2 physical compute cores (N=number of channels), then max out clock speed. Cost isn't a big issue - as long as it doesn't end up costing more than the alternative, which is a new DEQX unit (~$6500 USD). Building the PC isn't too much trouble for me, but happy for any advice regarding this (being a Mac guy usually).

 

I was thinking of a dual Xeon CPU machine:

- motherboard something like the ASUS Z10PE-D8 WS. It is expensive but should do the job, although many features I probably will never use (should I look at other options?)

- for CPU's - I am unclear about whether to focus on physical core number or clock speed. The options would be

(a) Dual high speed 8 core CPUs like the E5-2667v3 (3.2GHz) - 135W TDP so heat might be an issue

(b) Dual slower 12 core CPUs like E5-2670v3 (2.3GHz) - 120W TDP. Similar processing power in total to (a) probably

© Dual E5-2650v3 10 core CPUs - 2.3GHz and 105W TDP. This option is probably the best performance/price option of all that I have costed out so far (still very expensive overall though), but probably a touch less processing power compared to (a) and (b).

- I haven't factored in a GPU for CUDA offload as yet, but happy to use as required

- probably a minimal OS on an m.2 card, plus other standard requirements- DDR4 ECC RAM, etc.

 

Any informed advice about which way to go would be appreciated!

Cheers

Scott

[ted_b]

I notice that the majority of ideas here (esp Jussi/Miska and Andew S's designs) include an internal psu rather than dealing with a dc-dc pico psu and an external linear power supply. Is this because the internals are so much better now, or maybe because when used with an NAA the HQP/Roon machine doesn't need the last drops of quiet? I ask cuz I have posted about my current music server dying (reboots itself every 30 minutes) and is WS2012 R2, an OS that dacs like NADAC (my next review subject) do not like. So as long as I'm moving to Win 10 pro, might as well build a machine.

[RootsRocker]

These are my current ingredients for Win10 machine:

[ATTACH=CONFIG]22971[/ATTACH]

 

Current CPU is i5-6600T, but I may later change it to i7-6700T or 6700K when it becomes reasonably available. RAM is 32 GB of Kingston DDR4-2133 Fury HyperX (CL14) (4x DIMMs). NVIDIA Quadro M4000 graphics card for offloading is coming later.

 

I am looking to build a computer for HQP and roon as well - would prefer to keep it fanless - not sure if the 65W i7 6700 would be the best or the 6700T but the T's speed is less and its runs cooler.

I use three PCI express cards - Asus Xonar Essence STX audio card, PP usb 2 & and an old NVidia geforce 210 vid card. May add a fourth for a digital fiber network card for the drobo server- not finding fanless cases that accommodate 4 cards, maybe i need to look harder

I like the ASUS Tuf boards with the 5 year warranty & low latency ram & SSD's is what I'm thinking about . This will also have a Micro rendu added as a NAA once its 4 sale- As I'm new to building, not sure what I'm missing in this equation.

[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.

[RootsRocker]

Thanks for the reply Solstice, smallest I could go on the MB would be micro ATX as the pci-e cards are currently needed, could remove the vid card and use onboard vid instead, I have a HD-Plex linear PSU w/ 250 internal power supply which I plan on using, don't know if the 6700K is worth the extra power for HQP number crunching, tradeoff is extra heat. Streamcon & HD Plex cases have one large ATX size each and are 3-4x the cost of a Silverstone GD10- how much noise do fans create when you set them up to run at 50%? Is fan noise a major contributor to inferior sound reproduction? Last but not least, the Sonore mRendu may make the HQP playing computer noise elimination process irrelevant according to some and having fans in the control PC may not be an issue at all, won't really know until the mRendu has been sold and users/reviewers start commenting

[Miska]

If one uses NAA and relocates HQPlayer machine outside of listening room and uses for example Roon as front-end, then fan noise is not an issue at all.

 

I referred to my hardware choices above, and in the blog post regarding GPU. In some cases depending on processing needs, GPU can help keeping fan noise low while increasing total available processing power.

 

Some of the algorithms benefit from GPU capabilities while some others benefit from CPU capabilities. Combining the two allows using strengths of both. Practically using GPU offload allows choosing CPU with fewer cores but higher clock speed.

 

But the specific preferences for one way or the other depends on a particular setup. GPU is especially useful for multichannel playback combined with room correction or digital cross-overs (lot of output channels).

[ted_b]

As I look at the power draw and heat provided by an i7 6700k, a Mellanox or Intel fiber card, and maybe a GPU card....I'm beginning to see the wisdom of Jussi's design, with larger (and cheaper) case and cooling fans. An NAA puts the HQP machine in the home office. But do I need multiple PCIe slots for fiber card and NVidia? I don't see any of these mobos (Jussi's or Andrew's) providing them, but maybe I'm looking at the wrong spec.

[Miska]

As I look at the power draw and heat provided by an i7 6700k, a Mellanox or Intel fiber card, and maybe a GPU card....I'm beginning to see the wisdom of Jussi's design, with larger (and cheaper) case and cooling fans. An NAA puts the HQP machine in the home office. But do I need multiple PCIe slots for fiber card and NVidia? I don't see any of these mobos (Jussi's or Andrew's) providing them, but maybe I'm looking at the wrong spec.

 

Yes, you'll need number of slots. This is the board I'm using:

GIGABYTE - Motherboard - Socket 1151 - GA-Z170X-UD5 TH (rev. 1.0)

 

It has one PCIe 16x, one PCIe 8x, one PCIe 4x and three PCIe 1x slots. So total six PCIe slots. Typical graphics card, like the GTX 980 I have, will consume two slots, so one PCIe 1x becomes unavailable due to that. HQPlayer doesn't yet support multiple GPUs in SLI configuration, but I may add that support later.

 

Plus if you want blazingly fast boot, it has M.2 SSD card slot. It also has USB-C 3.1 / Thunderbolt 3 connectors and all the other latest bells and whistles...

[ted_b]

Yes, you'll need number of slots. This is the board I'm using:

GIGABYTE - Motherboard - Socket 1151 - GA-Z170X-UD5 TH (rev. 1.0)

 

It has one PCIe 16x, one PCIe 8x, one PCIe 4x and three PCIe 1x slots. So total six PCIe slots. Typical graphics card, like the GTX 980 I have, will consume two slots, so one PCIe 1x becomes unavailable due to that. HQPlayer doesn't yet support multiple GPUs in SLI configuration, but I may add that support later.

 

Plus if you want blazingly fast boot, it has M.2 SSD card slot. It also has USB-C 3.1 / Thunderbolt 3 connectors and all the other latest bells and whistles...

 

Thanks Jussi. Did you think at all about including a dc-dc pico and linear external ps instead of a rather standard Seasonic internal ps? I ask even though my current server has died and it might have to do with the dc-dc pico, dunno. My mobo won't boot...oh well. Gonna build this new server and want the last details ironed out. Thx

[BobSherman]

Thanks Jussi. Did you think at all about including a dc-dc pico and linear external ps instead of a rather standard Seasonic internal ps? I ask even though my current server has died and it might have to do with the dc-dc pico, dunno. My mobo won't boot...oh well. Gonna build this new server and want the last details ironed out. Thx

Ted,

 

Unplug and look at the cable going from the pico PS to the CPU socket on the motherboard. I had one go bad.

[ted_b]

Ted,

 

Unplug and look at the cable going from the pico PS to the CPU socket on the motherboard. I had one go bad.

 

Will do...thx

[Embz72]

As I look at the power draw and heat provided by an i7 6700k, a Mellanox or Intel fiber card, and maybe a GPU card....I'm beginning to see the wisdom of Jussi's design, with larger (and cheaper) case and cooling fans. An NAA puts the HQP machine in the home office. But do I need multiple PCIe slots for fiber card and NVidia? I don't see any of these mobos (Jussi's or Andrew's) providing them, but maybe I'm looking at the wrong spec.

 

 

I just built a new computer, mainly for HQP and a couple of other non-audio related things, I keep Roon core on another machine. I guess both could be run on the new computer, but I don't want to mess with the Roon Database, did that once, don't want to do it again.

 

My new setup is:

 

Intel Xeon E3-1245 v5

SuperMicro MBD-X11-SAE-M

Crucial CT798395 16G Memory

GeoForce GTX-950

Apevia X-Qpack3-NW-BK Case

Thermaltake TOUGHPOWR 550W 80 PLUS GOLD

Be Quiet! Silent Wings PWM 140mm fan (to replace the stock Case fan)

Opensuse Leap 42.1

HQP running on a Debian VM

 

Initially I wanted a fanless setup as well, and I played around with an Core i3-4360 but the processor just ran too hot, even with a heat-sink. So I just went completely the other way, got a big case and just replaced the stock fan. I still need to get a silent fan for the processor. I do run an NAA and have this computer in my office.

 

Up-sampling to DSD256, the processors run between 25%-60% and Core Temp is about 65 degrees Celsius. Unfortunately in this setup I'm not taking advantage of the CUDA offload because I'm running HQP on a VM.

 

So far, it's working great, and I have no complaints. I'm happy I opted for more power over a silent setup.

[Miska]

Thanks Jussi. Did you think at all about including a dc-dc pico and linear external ps instead of a rather standard Seasonic internal ps? I ask even though my current server has died and it might have to do with the dc-dc pico, dunno. My mobo won't boot...oh well. Gonna build this new server and want the last details ironed out. Thx

 

No, I'm not convinced that it would have any benefits since DC-DC and SMPS are technically equivalent. The graphics card alone consumes peak 165W and takes power in using two 6-pin power cables. The Seasonic PSU can give out 20A current on +3.3V and +5V rails and 43A on +12V rail, comes with 7 years warranty and 150000 hour MTBF. For dual graphics card setup and bigger CPU, the machine would need bigger PSU than the 520W silent Seasonic, something like this:

X-1250 - Sea Sonic

[guiltyboxswapper]

Is HQPlayer still CPU bound whilst setting up for upsampling, i.e. a more powerful GPU wouldn't reduce cold startup times?

[ted_b]

No, I'm not convinced that it would have any benefits since DC-DC and SMPS are technically equivalent. The graphics card alone consumes peak 165W and takes power in using two 6-pin power cables. The Seasonic PSU can give out 20A current on +3.3V and +5V rails and 43A on +12V rail, comes with 7 years warranty and 150000 hour MTBF. For dual graphics card setup and bigger CPU, the machine would need bigger PSU than the 520W silent Seasonic, something like this:

X-1250 - Sea Sonic

 

That damn Quadro M4000 of yours is a $900 card! Yikes. What do you think is an inexpensive card that will help me when CUDA offloading multichannel? Also, I am going i7 6700k, a GPU card maybe like this https://pcpartpicker.com/part/evga-video-card-04gp41962kr

and a fiber card. You think 520w is still fine? PCpartspicker has me at 314W before the fiber card.