Best CPU for hqplayer

[Zauurx]

I am looking for a simple, light and economic upgrade of my I5 which cannot manage the DSD under HQP.
I do not understand that I can send some DSD live on my RME, from Roon (dop).
But through HQPlayer (Direct DSD) it is buggy with drops out every 3 sec (HQP and Roon on the same nuc - bios reset to zero ..). (>> NAA on USBridge Sig, 1go eth network)
Roon / HQP communication problem (buffer?).

I found a refurbished HP ProDesk 600 G1 (mini-pc): Intel Core i7-4765T 2.00 GHz / 8Go RAM / SSD 120Go (430 $), win10pro.
Interesting (instead of my i5-3470T / 12go / SSD) ??

[shahed99]

Using Ryzen 3950X, I'm able to upsample to DSD 48x256, ASDM7EC without breaking a sweat. It works smoothly for 24/192 PCM.

[Miska]

Deleted...response to too old message...

[Zauurx]

I found a DELL PRECISION T5810 :
Intel Xeon E5-1650 V3 3,50GHz (6 core/ 12T) / 32Go RAM DDR4 ECC / 500Go SSD / NVIDIA Quadro K4200 / Gigabit Ethernet / DVDRW / Win 10.

 

Any advice? .. It should be able to rotate the EC filters .. with the help of the Nvidia Quadro?
Used at 1100$.
But no audiophile power supply and a server to put at the other end of the network (noise)..

 

Or a DELL T5610
Intel Xeon E5-2650 V2 2,60GHz (8C/16T) / 16Go RAM DDR3 ECC / 2 x 256Go SSD / NVIDIA Quadro K2000

670$... good enough ?

[StreamFidelity]

1 hour ago, Zauurx said:

Any advice? .. It should be able to rotate the EC filters

 

For the EC modulators you need processors with a high clock frequency (at least 4GHz on two cores with stereo). Xeon processors are generally not suitable for this.

[Zauurx]

3 hours ago, StreamFidelity said:

 

For the EC modulators you need processors with a high clock frequency (at least 4GHz on two cores with stereo). Xeon processors are generally not suitable for this.

Thank you for the reasoned response.
Could a 3.50GHz Xeon E5-1650 V3 + Nvidia K4200 (CUDA) version be able to do this ... without warranty ?
Wouldn't it be better than an i9 without Nvidia ?

[StreamFidelity]

37 minutes ago, Zauurx said:

Wouldn't it be better than an i9 without Nvidia ?

 

No! Outsourcing to a GPU works very well for the filters, but not for the EC modulators.

[4est]

5 hours ago, Zauurx said:

Thank you for the reasoned response.
Could a 3.50GHz Xeon E5-1650 V3 + Nvidia K4200 (CUDA) version be able to do this ... without warranty ?
Wouldn't it be better than an i9 without Nvidia ?

Not a chance in hell unless it can be overclocked a lot. My old i7 3770k worked amazingly well because I won that silicon lottery and it overclocked like a champ.

[Miska]

I just finished building upgraded Windows 10 music server for the listening room to replace aging i7-6950X.

 

New one is built into Fractal Design Define R6 case, with Seasonic Prime Titanium fanless PSU. Motherboard is Gigabyte Z490 VISION D that has DAC-UP2 USB ports. CPU is Intel Core i9 10900K and RAM is four modules of Kingston HyperX Fury DDR 3200 CL16. CPU cooler is Noctua NH-D15S.

 

On the mother BIOS, all fan speed profiles are set to "Silent". This provides very quiet operation with the Noctua's cooler.

 

And performance is also nice to the T+A DAC8 DSD:

 

[Account Closed]

4 hours ago, Miska said:

I just finished building upgraded Windows 10 music server for the listening room to replace aging i7-6950X.

 

New one is built into Fractal Design Define R6 case, with Seasonic Prime Titanium fanless PSU. Motherboard is Gigabyte Z490 VISION D that has DAC-UP2 USB ports. CPU is Intel Core i9 10900K and RAM is four modules of Kingston HyperX Fury DDR 3200 CL16. CPU cooler is Noctua NH-D15S.

 

On the mother BIOS, all fan speed profiles are set to "Silent". This provides very quiet operation with the Noctua's cooler.

 

And performance is also nice to the T+A DAC8 DSD:

 

I thought you would go with the i9-9900KS because of the multi-core turbo frequency. The 10900K appears to have a higher turbo boost frequency but it also appears to be limited to a single core. Also, with the 10900K do you still need a GPU? I don't see one listed.

 

Just curious.

[dean70]

9 hours ago, Miska said:

I just finished building upgraded Windows 10 music server for the listening room to replace aging i7-6950X.

 

New one is built into Fractal Design Define R6 case, with Seasonic Prime Titanium fanless PSU. Motherboard is Gigabyte Z490 VISION D that has DAC-UP2 USB ports. CPU is Intel Core i9 10900K and RAM is four modules of Kingston HyperX Fury DDR 3200 CL16. CPU cooler is Noctua NH-D15S.

 

On the mother BIOS, all fan speed profiles are set to "Silent". This provides very quiet operation with the Noctua's cooler.

 

And performance is also nice to the T+A DAC8 DSD:

 

 

Have you managed to get a bootable Linux partition with this board? I had no luck getting Ubuntu LTS booting with UEFI enabled.

[Miska]

7 hours ago, bobflood said:

I thought you would go with the i9-9900KS because of the multi-core turbo frequency. The 10900K appears to have a higher turbo boost frequency but it also appears to be limited to a single core. Also, with the 10900K do you still need a GPU? I don't see one listed.

 

Yeah, I did 9900KS for that reason, with RTX2080Ti. It is also my Windows development machine.

 

10900K can do 5.3 GHz, but not all core full turbo. This machine was to replace my listening room Windows server (i7-6950X + GTX1080) with a new one. So wanted to go with the 10th gen CPU. The old one wasn't able to do ASDM7EC to DSD256, which was the reason for the change.

 

No external GPU on this one yet, maybe I will add one when Nvidia comes with 3000-series. I already have two RTX20x0 on other machines. If I add one, I will need to switch to a bigger PSU too, the current one is just 520W, but fanless.

 

Good this is that I managed to keep this one quiet too, also when running with more demanding loads. These big Noctua coolers are great! The 9900KS with beQuiet Dark Rock is not as quiet although that is also almost as huge cooler.

[Miska]

3 hours ago, dean70 said:

Have you managed to get a bootable Linux partition with this board? I had no luck getting Ubuntu LTS booting with UEFI enabled.

 

I only tried Windows to M.2. But also with Windows it doesn't work if you boot from ISO image. Only if you boot from EFI USB stick (created with the Windows media creation tool). It could be similar with Ubuntu as well, so the boot needs to happen through EFI.

 

Was it Ubuntu 20.04 LTS? I would expect that to work, maybe 18.04 not. If that doesn't work, you could also try with Debian Buster and Fedora 32. With some embedded boards that have eMMC, I've needed to use Debian because they include the MMC drivers in default kernel.

 

[Miska]

12 hours ago, Miska said:

I just finished building upgraded Windows 10 music server for the listening room to replace aging i7-6950X.

 

New one is built into Fractal Design Define R6 case, with Seasonic Prime Titanium fanless PSU. Motherboard is Gigabyte Z490 VISION D that has DAC-UP2 USB ports. CPU is Intel Core i9 10900K and RAM is four modules of Kingston HyperX Fury DDR 3200 CL16. CPU cooler is Noctua NH-D15S.

 

On the mother BIOS, all fan speed profiles are set to "Silent". This provides very quiet operation with the Noctua's cooler.

 

And performance is also nice to the T+A DAC8 DSD:

 

 

Forgot to mention that OS is installed on Samsung 970 EVO Plus M.2 SSD.

 

[dean70]

2 hours ago, Miska said:

 

I only tried Windows to M.2. But also with Windows it doesn't work if you boot from ISO image. Only if you boot from EFI USB stick (created with the Windows media creation tool). It could be similar with Ubuntu as well, so the boot needs to happen through EFI.

 

Was it Ubuntu 20.04 LTS? I would expect that to work, maybe 18.04 not. If that doesn't work, you could also try with Debian Buster and Fedora 32. With some embedded boards that have eMMC, I've needed to use Debian because they include the MMC drivers in default kernel.

 

 

It was Ubuntu 20.04 LTS on 960 Pro SSD (2nd physical drive). Got the GRUB bootloader to work by importing the keys, but the OS hangs on grey screen on boot regardless of which boot option is selected. Enabling the CSM option in this bios prevents the system from booting & requires a CMOS jumper reset to get working agaom.

 

[Miska]

5 hours ago, dean70 said:

It was Ubuntu 20.04 LTS on 960 Pro SSD (2nd physical drive). Got the GRUB bootloader to work by importing the keys, but the OS hangs on grey screen on boot regardless of which boot option is selected. Enabling the CSM option in this bios prevents the system from booting & requires a CMOS jumper reset to get working agaom.

 

Ubuntu should work with secure boot too, but I have secure boot turned off. If you want to install with secure boot, you may need to set BIOS to provisioning state to allow OS installer to upload key chains.

 

[Gavin1977]

On 7/8/2020 at 8:56 AM, Miska said:

 

Yeah, I did 9900KS for that reason, with RTX2080Ti. It is also my Windows development machine.

 

10900K can do 5.3 GHz, but not all core full turbo. This machine was to replace my listening room Windows server (i7-6950X + GTX1080) with a new one. So wanted to go with the 10th gen CPU. The old one wasn't able to do ASDM7EC to DSD256, which was the reason for the change.

 

No external GPU on this one yet, maybe I will add one when Nvidia comes with 3000-series. I already have two RTX20x0 on other machines. If I add one, I will need to switch to a bigger PSU too, the current one is just 520W, but fanless.

 

Good this is that I managed to keep this one quiet too, also when running with more demanding loads. These big Noctua coolers are great! The 9900KS with beQuiet Dark Rock is not as quiet although that is also almost as huge cooler.

Any feedback on what the 10900K can manage extra compared to one of your older 8086k machines?

 

I presently have 8086k, I like the sinc-M filter, works great at DSD256, but at DSD512 it stutters.  Is it worth the upgrade, or should I look at adding in a Nvidia card to offload? Ideally I'd like to run Sinc-L, ASDM7EC at DSD512... to my DAC 8 DSD.  Advice would be welcome.

[Miska]

1 hour ago, Gavin1977 said:

Any feedback on what the 10900K can manage extra compared to one of your older 8086k machines?

 

I presently have 8086k, I like the sinc-M filter, works great at DSD256, but at DSD512 it stutters.  Is it worth the upgrade, or should I look at adding in a Nvidia card to offload? Ideally I'd like to run Sinc-L, ASDM7EC at DSD512... to my DAC 8 DSD.  Advice would be welcome.

 

It has more cores (10 instead of 6) at roughly same clocks. So it can do heavier filters better. For modulators it doesn't make much difference.

 

CUDA offload allows heavier filters when there are only few cores (like quad-core 7700K), or higher turbo clocks for modulators by offloading filters.

 

I think ASDM7EC at DSD512 is not gonna happen near term, unless some CPU manages it with full multi-core enabled (has low enough core communication overhead).

 

[Gavin1977]

Thanks for the prompt response.

 

Is it the modulators which require lots of CPU resource, or the filters?  I couldn't find any guidance on how best to use / balance the available CPU resources.

 

Is it worth me investing in CUDA (would say, Sinc-m with DSD7 modulator, work better at DSD512 for example), or do I just need to wait till processors have the performance to do this natively? 

[Miska]

35 minutes ago, Gavin1977 said:

Is it the modulators which require lots of CPU resource, or the filters?  I couldn't find any guidance on how best to use / balance the available CPU resources.

 

Both, but in a different way. Put in an oversimplified way; modulators require lots of single-core performance, while filters require lots of multi-core performance.

 

37 minutes ago, Gavin1977 said:

Is it worth me investing in CUDA (would say, Sinc-m with DSD7 modulator, work better at DSD512 for example), or do I just need to wait till processors have the performance to do this natively?

 

Nvidia is soon going to launch 3000-series GPUs, so I would wait for those and then maybe go for CUDA.

 

[Gavin1977]

Will do - cheers

[firedog]

Well I just ordered this, which is about the fastest available to me locally with quiet case fans, quiet processor fan, quiet PSU, and sound proofing in the case. I don't have all the very latest components available, or at least not at anything approaching a reasonable price. Wanted an i9 10XXXK series, but couldn't get one. Decided to go for it anyway-the i7 10700k is about the same as the i9 9900K in performance, AFAIK. 

	·       Silent Base 601 midi case ·       - Asus PRIME B460M-A LGA1200 Micro-ATX Motherboard
	·       - 10th Gen Core i7 10700K 3.8GHz 8C/16T 125W 16MB Comet Lake CPU
	·       - Vengeance LPX 32GB (2x16GB) DDR4 2666MHz Memory
	·       - Kotetsu Mark II TUF Gaming Alliance CPU Cooler
	·       - AS5 3.5g, High-Density Polysynthetic Silver Thermal Compound
	·       - Straight Power 11 CM 550W Modular PSU, BN281
	·       - Samsung 970 EVO Plus 500GB M.2 NVMe SSD (3500/3200)
	·       - Samsung 970 EVO Plus 250GB M.2 NVMe SSD (3500/2300)
	·       - Seagate BarraCuda 8TB 3.5in Hard Disk Drive HDD
	·       - SupaGeek PCIe to 4x Type A and 1x Type C USB Card Windows 10 pro 64 bit

Supposedly I can overclock this to 5 or 5.1GHz. @miska or anyone else have a comment on doing that? Useful? Or bad idea?I've never done it before. This is going to be used for either Roon with DSP and RC or HQP to DSD 256 with DRC and a little other DSP.

Amusingly - and this had zero to do with me ordering it -  the MB marketing talks about what great audio it has, with analog isolated from digital, upgraded capacitors, etc. It will be interesting to see if the built in audio is better than any other PC or if it is just BS. 

[Account Closed]

55 minutes ago, firedog said:

Well I just ordered this, which is about the fastest available to me locally with quiet case fans, quiet processor fan, quiet PSU, and sound proofing in the case. I don't have all the very latest components available, or at least not at anything approaching a reasonable price. Wanted an i9 10XXXK series, but couldn't get one. Decided to go for it anyway-the i7 10700k is about the same as the i9 9900K in performance, AFAIK. 

	·       Silent Base 601 midi case ·       - Asus PRIME B460M-A LGA1200 Micro-ATX Motherboard
	·       - 10th Gen Core i7 10700K 3.8GHz 8C/16T 125W 16MB Comet Lake CPU
	·       - Vengeance LPX 32GB (2x16GB) DDR4 2666MHz Memory
	·       - Kotetsu Mark II TUF Gaming Alliance CPU Cooler
	·       - AS5 3.5g, High-Density Polysynthetic Silver Thermal Compound
	·       - Straight Power 11 CM 550W Modular PSU, BN281
	·       - Samsung 970 EVO Plus 500GB M.2 NVMe SSD (3500/3200)
	·       - Samsung 970 EVO Plus 250GB M.2 NVMe SSD (3500/2300)
	·       - Seagate BarraCuda 8TB 3.5in Hard Disk Drive HDD
	·       - SupaGeek PCIe to 4x Type A and 1x Type C USB Card Windows 10 pro 64 bit

Supposedly I can overclock this to 5 or 5.1GHz. @miska or anyone else have a comment on doing that? Useful? Or bad idea?I've never done it before. This is going to be used for either Roon with DSP and RC or HQP to DSD 256 with DRC and a little other DSP.

Amusingly - and this had zero to do with me ordering it -  the MB marketing talks about what great audio it has, with analog isolated from digital, upgraded capacitors, etc. It will be interesting to see if the built in audio is better than any other PC or if it is just BS. 

ASUS MBs are pretty easy to overclock via the UEFI/BIOS; just be careful and only go one step at at time until all works. Don't push beyond that. With a K series chip you should be able to get into the 4 Ghz range with air cooling but 5 Ghz might be a stretch. You may still need a GPU if you want to use HQP at DSD 256 with EC modulators and the most demanding filters but if you stick to the 2s filters you should be OK without the GPU.

[dean70]

3 hours ago, firedog said:

Well I just ordered this, which is about the fastest available to me locally with quiet case fans, quiet processor fan, quiet PSU, and sound proofing in the case. I don't have all the very latest components available, or at least not at anything approaching a reasonable price. Wanted an i9 10XXXK series, but couldn't get one. Decided to go for it anyway-the i7 10700k is about the same as the i9 9900K in performance, AFAIK. 

	·       Silent Base 601 midi case ·       - Asus PRIME B460M-A LGA1200 Micro-ATX Motherboard
	·       - 10th Gen Core i7 10700K 3.8GHz 8C/16T 125W 16MB Comet Lake CPU
	·       - Vengeance LPX 32GB (2x16GB) DDR4 2666MHz Memory
	·       - Kotetsu Mark II TUF Gaming Alliance CPU Cooler
	·       - AS5 3.5g, High-Density Polysynthetic Silver Thermal Compound
	·       - Straight Power 11 CM 550W Modular PSU, BN281
	·       - Samsung 970 EVO Plus 500GB M.2 NVMe SSD (3500/3200)
	·       - Samsung 970 EVO Plus 250GB M.2 NVMe SSD (3500/2300)
	·       - Seagate BarraCuda 8TB 3.5in Hard Disk Drive HDD
	·       - SupaGeek PCIe to 4x Type A and 1x Type C USB Card Windows 10 pro 64 bit

Supposedly I can overclock this to 5 or 5.1GHz. @miska or anyone else have a comment on doing that? Useful? Or bad idea?I've never done it before. This is going to be used for either Roon with DSP and RC or HQP to DSD 256 with DRC and a little other DSP.

Amusingly - and this had zero to do with me ordering it -  the MB marketing talks about what great audio it has, with analog isolated from digital, upgraded capacitors, etc. It will be interesting to see if the built in audio is better than any other PC or if it is just BS. 

 

Running 10700k with Gigabyte Vision D m/b. I often see 5.1 all cores in HWinfo64 running latest bios revision and haven't needed to change any settings for overclock. Most boards appear to run above Intel stock spec out of the box.

 

[kelvinwsy]

6 hours ago, firedog said:

Well I just ordered this, which is about the fastest available to me locally with quiet case fans, quiet processor fan, quiet PSU, and sound proofing in the case. I don't have all the very latest components available, or at least not at anything approaching a reasonable price. Wanted an i9 10XXXK series, but couldn't get one. Decided to go for it anyway-the i7 10700k is about the same as the i9 9900K in performance, AFAIK. 

	·       Silent Base 601 midi case ·       - Asus PRIME B460M-A LGA1200 Micro-ATX Motherboard
	·       - 10th Gen Core i7 10700K 3.8GHz 8C/16T 125W 16MB Comet Lake CPU
	·       - Vengeance LPX 32GB (2x16GB) DDR4 2666MHz Memory
	·       - Kotetsu Mark II TUF Gaming Alliance CPU Cooler
	·       - AS5 3.5g, High-Density Polysynthetic Silver Thermal Compound
	·       - Straight Power 11 CM 550W Modular PSU, BN281
	·       - Samsung 970 EVO Plus 500GB M.2 NVMe SSD (3500/3200)
	·       - Samsung 970 EVO Plus 250GB M.2 NVMe SSD (3500/2300)
	·       - Seagate BarraCuda 8TB 3.5in Hard Disk Drive HDD
	·       - SupaGeek PCIe to 4x Type A and 1x Type C USB Card Windows 10 pro 64 bit

Supposedly I can overclock this to 5 or 5.1GHz. @miska or anyone else have a comment on doing that? Useful? Or bad idea?I've never done it before. This is going to be used for either Roon with DSP and RC or HQP to DSD 256 with DRC and a little other DSP.

Amusingly - and this had zero to do with me ordering it -  the MB marketing talks about what great audio it has, with analog isolated from digital, upgraded capacitors, etc. It will be interesting to see if the built in audio is better than any other PC or if it is just BS. 

I just completed DIY PC:

1.10700k server -

2. Gigabyte Aorus Ultra MB -

3. Corsair Hypex 3200gb RAM

4. Cooler Master ML360R All in One Cooler with 3 x 12 cm fans and Radiator

5. 3 x 12cm Cooler Master Sickleflow inlet fans +

6. 2 x 14cm Noctua A14 fans exhaust fans.

7. The case is the beautiful tempered glass Lian Li O11 Dynamic case.

8. I salvaged my 1xSamsung SSD and 1 x Sandisk SSD from my 6700k server. all on Elfidelity SSD filters and 5V DC from LPSUs

9. Corsair HX850 ATX PSU

9. Installed the Elfidelity DDR4 RAM filters,

10. PCIe x 1 (2 nos) MB power filter and 

11. TPlink 334 V2 gigabit Ethernet Card

12. USB C to Ethernet gigabit Adapter 

The Intel 2.5gbe LAN Chip on the Gigabyte series of MB is defective firmware. Could not get it to recognize the link up with HQPlayer and my SOTM Ultra Neo NAA. While sorting this out, re-used my TPlink and a new USB C to Ethernet Adapter in Bridging Mode SOLVED the problem.

 

13. all fans on Elfidelity filters.

14. Installed a stand alone NZXT Sentry 3 fan controller with a Corsair RM550x PSU driving all the inlet and exhaust fans. Only the AIO pump and 3 radiator fans are on the MB fan connectors, But these are also filtered using the Elfidelity Fan Filters. (PWM signal is bypassing the fan filter and goes direct from MB connection to the Radiator fans for PWM control) Need to do some DIY wiring here.

 

15. Went into Gigabyte bios, Advanced settings and Overclocked the 1st 4 cores to 5.1ghz, increase VCORE voltage from1.2 default to 1.3. Set memory overclock XMP profile to 3200mhz and save and reboot - The machine was ready. 

 

My Server can do ASDMEC7 + polysinc xtr mp/lp (no -2s) full filters Without any GPU. The radiator fans spin up and can be heard - I used sound proofing sheets to cover the server and noise level is reduced way down. On polysinc short filters, the radiator fans dont even spin up at all. 

 

Very happy with my ist DIY PC build. It is neat, beautiful and quiet. Works wonderfully and is stable. No stuttering, no overtemps (VRU monitor with temp probe on the NZXT Sentry 3 is at 38 deg C  CPU monitored using Intel Xtreme Tuning is at 58-60deg C running polysinc xtr mp/lp! On polysinc Short, it CPU temp is around 53deg C!

 

FANTASTIC result