Paul Pang musicserver/pc my experiences

[paulpaul]

I just bought a music player from Paul Pang. It was delivered last week and the nightmare started then. Frankly, I bought a FC10 case, ASUS H170m-Plus, i7-6700t, PP 16G ram and OCOX clock modified. I purchase and install a Crucial M.2 250G SSD by myself and plan to install Windows 10 and HQPlayer. I power it up with a 12V 10A LPS.

 

I spent a few hours to make it boot-up the first time. I then installed Windows 10 and all the drivers needed, but it was about 20% chance to reboot my machine, not to mention the PC will reboot by itself.

 

Even sometimes it is working fine, I experienced frequent dropouts about 20-30 per minute during HQPlayer with Cubox-i NAA setup. I have been using Macbook Air i7 2013 for HQPlayer upsampling with any problems.

 

Anything I can try?

[paulpaul]

OCXO is powered by a USB slot.

[paulpaul]

I am using M.2 SSD, so no cable is required.

[paulpaul]

My initial thought is that you possibly have two separate issues. Your boot and reboot issue looks like being on the edge of your power supply. As if some part cant quite get enough juice, fails, and then triggers a reboot.

The streaming dropouts smell of a buffering problem.

 

I also worry about the LPS whether it is juicy enough for the system, but to me 10A is quite a lot, especially without any Graphics Card and SATA Hard Drive.

[paulpaul]

Yes, but that 10A is split over multiple rails. If I recall Paul's set up, then he takes the output of the LPSU and then changes the voltages using various solutions. It may be that the total of 120 W is fine, but if somewhere he does not divert enough current to a certain component, or one of the switch boards (or whatever they are called in English) malfunctions, then we have a problem.

 

You mention the SATA harddrive, which you do not have. But you do have a M2 drive, which gets its power not directly from the PSU (which I believe is what PPA's design assumes) but through the motherboard. I'm not saying this is the problem, but something is near the edge. And the reboots suggest the MoBo is not getting what it needs.

 

A possible way to debug is this by firing up the system using a standard ATX switching supply. If all then works and is stable, then you need to look at the power supply. If you have the same problem, the motherboard or CPU may be damaged.

 

PP has a PICO which supplies multi rails. in my case, I only use the one for the mobo. M.2 slot is a standard slot on H170 mobo for fast SSD. It is not PP's products.

[paulpaul]

In my server with many PP parts the ASUS H170m-Plus and its clock were problematic and the cause of all sorts of issues. I replaced them with a different brand of off-the-shelf board and many problems went away. Pang kept saying it was the BIOS, try this one or that one but I eventually gave up on the board.

 

Which mobo are you using? Are you still using his clock?

[paulpaul]

In my server with many PP parts the ASUS H170m-Plus and its clock were problematic and the cause of all sorts of issues. I replaced them with a different brand of off-the-shelf board and many problems went away. Pang kept saying it was the BIOS, try this one or that one but I eventually gave up on the board.

 

I ordered the same board and clock from PP.

[paulpaul]

The board is fine, powering the ocxo from it's 5V usb supply is not, you could try powering it from a separate stable fast(high bandwidth) 5V supply. Get something which can atleast supply 1A of current. Most OCXO's will draw up to 800mA for the first 5 minutes or so of operation. It is possible to get a reasonably stable running system with a ppa ocxo on your gigabyte board.

 

Edit: Also check the speed at which your memory is running. This model gigabyte is unstable at higher memory clockspeeds.

 

I got a Hyperjuice 10000wh with usb 5v 2.1A output. Is it good enough to power up the clock?

[paulpaul]

Ok then you can ignore the memory speed

 

I can't boot up the machine this evening. I powered up the clock with hyperjuice battery and it was warm then, but the PC could not boot up.

[paulpaul]

Really? That should really work quite well. Did you close the case again after installing the battery? The ppa is very sensitive, it can even reboot from just moving your hand within 3-4 inches of the clock.

 

I just have a chance to boot up once and listened a few songs with dropouts all the time, and then it rebooted again.

 

Did you use PPA Pico PSU?

[paulpaul]

No but afaik thats just a regular pico psu. Even the 6700K on an asus z170m-plus draws a maximum of 128watts during filter setup (100% cpu load), the 6700T should draw way less, maybe 5A @12V max. But about those dropouts, what are you trying to do with hqp?

 

I suspect this is not really related to loading. I tried play a DSD file and CPU loading dropped almost to 0%. Buffer was increased to 250ms. Dropouts still happened. I really don't have any ideas.

[paulpaul]

I suspect this is not really related to loading. I tried play a DSD file and CPU loading dropped almost to 0%. Buffer was increased to 250ms. Dropouts still happened. I really don't have any ideas.

 

I do plan to buy a new mobo. Cannot spend any more time on this PC.

[paulpaul]

Have you tried installing the driver for Win 10? That should work. I've used a usb3 to gigabit adapter as well with my Server machine. Both worked fine.

 

After spending 6 days of experimenting this PC, the causes are:

 

1. A loose contact of Clock jumper

2. My HDMI connection with Panasonic LED TV caused a lot or problems. I guess my TV HDMI is sort of not "very compatible" with the onboard graphics card.

3. Missing a media streaming driver caused the stuttering when playing HQPlayer

 

I would say PPA products are good in quality and the loose contact could be due to shipment.

[paulpaul]

Hurrah! Also fair of you to post back your comments :-)

 

My belief is that Paul Pang is a master in CAS but sometimes he could be too busy to take care all these nitty gritty stuff. I am sure this is piece of cake for him. Sorry, I am a naive and still have a long journey to go.

[paulpaul]

Congratulations, must be a relief!

 

The three issue hasn't sorted out yet.

 

I tried a few things regarding the dropouts.

 

Connect HQPlayer's PC Windows 10 to NAA v. 311 Cubox-i4Pro. A lot of dropouts.

Connect HQPlayer's PC Windows 10 to NAA v.32 MacBook Air. No dropouts

Install NAA v.321 for Cubox-i4Pro. HQPlayer cannot connect to NAA

 

Still a long way to go.