A crowd funded motherboard(s) for audiophiles - Part 2

[lmitche]

52 minutes ago, lateboomer said:

Thank you for the explanation. I think it is ok to wait for at least 6 months as you said because thing is so flux now. But i also tempted to try out this p10s-m to compare with supermicro.

You could put a low power 34 watt dual core i3 or 25 watt quad core Celeron Skylake processor <$100 in this motherboard for a low watt solution.  That would be closest to the Supermicro product with a MicroATX FF and 3 direct to CPU slots. You couldn't do hqplayer upsampling, but you don't want that anyway. Dual power will work as well. Two Stammheim 12 volt 3 amp lt3045s lpsu powering this would be sweet.

[lmitche]

1 hour ago, marce said:

Design by committee is where everybody want their own requirements for the job,  so you end up with many requirements that often can't be met withing the requirements and constraints of the design.

As to motherboards, for myself they are all as bad or all as good when looking at the basic stuff you can buy, none tend to be really far out designs because they have to sell for a certain price, I have done basic (to cost) and high end motherboards in the past, the high end boards often cost the same for a bare board as for a fully populated cheapo board. The problem is a lot of the top end boards are not for general sale, as they would cost to much, but for bespoke projects.

Yes, I know, a camel is a horse designed by committee . . . .

 

Nevertheless the truth is most projects benefit from a collaborative approach, where the key is to be open to others ideas with a willingness to find compromises that make sense.

 

It would be great if you can suggest one or two board houses for a bespoke design.

[lmitche]

49 minutes ago, rickca said:

Here is the latest news re Intel fixes.

 

The new chips that Intel is promising will address both security and performance considerations with silicon rather than software, and will be available this year. For the data center, this is the Cascade Lake server processor, and for the consumer and business markets this is known as Cannon Lake. Both will include what Intel is calling “virtual fences” between user and operating system privilege levels and will create a significant additional obstacle for potential vulnerabilities.

 

The chips will also lay the ground work and foundation for future security improvement, providing a method to more easily update the security of the processors through patching.

Yes, yet another reason to wait. Things are screwy, including the reporting of similar issues with AMD products that may have been fake news.

[lmitche]

1 hour ago, lateboomer said:

I use multiple ext lps with separate rails and transformers for 5v, 3.3v and 12v.

Hi lateboomer, 

 

Where did you find the wiring harness to the 24 pin connector for this?

 

Thanks,

 

Larry

[lmitche]

5 hours ago, lateboomer said:

 

Thank you for the info, I am referring to this card:

https://www.amazon.com/Startech-Com-PEXUSB312A-10Gbps-Green-Stainless/dp/B013HT6K3Q

 

The Supermicro mobo has one pcie x2 (in x8) slot so at least it can accommodate this card. I am thinking if I can shift both SATA and LAN to the usb card, it will cut down the electronics activities on the mobo to minimum which is ideal. Lmitche thinks all ssd have some sort of glare in sounding and more noisy, so he prefers HDD. So may be I could test out the usb HDD or usb SSD with this card to minimize noise passes to mobo. 

For two ports, this is the one you want: https://www.startech.com/Cards-Adapters/USB-3.0/Cards/2-port-usb-3-1-card~PEXUSB312A2

 

There is a 4 port model as well that is twice the two port model on one card. 

 

You can power both externally. I use a lps-1 at 7 volts followed by two 1 amp lt3045s at 6 and 5 volts. The USB NIC, HDD and DAC are all connected to this card.

 

Make sure to load the Startech (Asmedia) driver.

[lmitche]

Yesterday the polls ended on Part 1 and 2 of this exercise.  Here is my interpretation of the results. No doubt others will have a different interpretation.

 

69* people voted in Part 1
52* people voted in Part 2

 

* the forum poll shows more votes, but summing up the member names yields 69 and 52 distinct names

 

In Part 1 43% of people would like a project to build a low power custom motherboard,  followed by 39% for medium power and 17% for high power.

 

In Part 2 60% of people would like a project to build a MATX custom motherboard, followed by 35% for ITX and 6% for ATX.

 

Curiously only 35 people voted in part 1 and 2, and of these the majority 46% voted for a medium power MATX custom motherboard.

 

Here are the counts and percentages for ALL respondents and those that responded in BOTH parts.

 

           LOW     MED     HIGH    BOTH    ALL
ITX         7          1             2          10        18
MATX    6        16             1          23        31
ATX        0          0             2            2           3
BOTH   13       17             5          35         52
ALL       30       27           12         69

 

            LOW    MED     HIGH    BOTH    ALL
ITX        20%      3%        6%        29%     35%
MATX   17%    46%        3%        66%     60%
ATX         0%      0%        6%           6%       6%
BOTH    37%    49%     14%      100%    100%
ALL        43%    39%     17%      100%

 

There are clearly three camps, with the majority in the Low power camp, split 1:2 between ITX and MATX boards.
Close behind is the Medium power, MATX camp, which was the winning camp of those that responded to both polls.
Lastly the High power camp is split across all three form factors.

 

Personally, I am not surprised with these results.

 

Going forward the poll suggests that there are two efforts:

1) a custom Low power SOC motherboard
2) a custom Medium, and potentially High power camp
Both using MATX motherboards, even though despite the poll, I suspect mini-ITX is the practical choice for SOC motherboards.

My hope is that we will see a mainstream 90 watt processor with enough power for polysinc-xtr in this next round of releases.  We are very close today.

 

If someone wants to volunteer and start a new thread for the low power camp, go for it.  I am not interested and will not be participating.

 

I am happy to lead the medium and high power effort, but only when the smoke settles on the new round of processor releases that address the known security vulnerabilities,  and competitive responses from Intel and AMD have settled.

 

Best,

Larry

[lmitche]

27 minutes ago, lateboomer said:

Since Supermicro can only do pcie x2 gen2.0 at max 5Gb/s, then 4-port card is not much use and then for 2-port card I could only either shift dac or Lan connection from mobo to this card?

 

If I stick with Daphile Linux player, I don't think the Asmedia driver is needed, am I right?

I don't know.  The Startech site says the following:

 

"The maximum throughput of this card is limited by the bus interface. PCI Express Gen 1.0 max throughput is 2.5Gbps. PCI Express Gen 2.0 max throughput is 5Gbps. PCI Express Gen 3.0 max throughput is 10Gbps.

 

The available bandwidth (10Gbps) is shared equally between the two ports."

 

So it should work, but not at full capacity.  Results of running Linux is unknown to me.

[lmitche]

5 minutes ago, lateboomer said:

If I want to convert Samsung 850 EVO ssd to usb ssd, does anyone get good sound quality with this usb ssd/hdd dock which can be supplied with lps?

https://www.amazon.com/StarTech-com-10Gbps-Dual-Bay-Dock-SATA/dp/B00XLAZ9KC/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1521481421&sr=8-6&keywords=startech+usb+sata+ssd

 

Or should I go simpler approach with this adapter?

https://www.amazon.com/StarTech-com-10Gbps-Adapter-Cable-Drives/dp/B00XLAZODE/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1521481421&sr=8-5&keywords=startech+usb+sata+ssd

You could do one of these at 2.5 or 3.5 inch as well:

 

https://www.startech.com/HDD/Enclosures/?filter_NUMHARDDRIVE=1&filter_IOINTERFACE=USB+3.1+Gen+2&filter_HARDDRIVECOM=SATA

 

The double drive one is cool as it will duplicate drives offline.  I have one for making multiple backups, three onsite, one offsite.

 

The 3.5 drive enclosure is my daily driver, and the backups are done by the duplicator when I have a lot of new files.

[lmitche]

23 minutes ago, Lebouwsky said:

Would it be a good idea to start a thread about 1 box usb diy servers? This attempt to custoumize a mb was a spin-off from “a novel way”. The problem with that thread that it’s so wide and yet again at the front of streaming pioneering. It makes it not everyones cup of tea. It’s like bringing back to live the ‘good old’ caps v... threads, since a lot of people like to build their own, don’t wan’t a spaghetti chain and don’t want to go to infinity and beyond. We can collect proven techniques that fits the budget of mortel people like me.

 

Sure, why not? But I could argue that the "novel" thread has become just that. While it started as a two box thread, people have moved to simpler one box solutions like the Innuous over time.

 

Anyway, a new thread with more focus could be interesting.

[lmitche]

3 hours ago, lateboomer said:

I just received the Startech 4-port 10Gbps card, an usb adapter for ssd and an Ethernet usb nic. First, I tried to compare the difference between usb2.0 and usb3.0 ports on motherboard, which only one was enable and the rest disable and vice verse. In the end to our ears usb3.0 was sounding better then usb2.0 for Supermicro x10sba-l. Usb3.0 gave fuller and better transient sounding compared with usb2.0, you could feel that something was holding the music back when listened with usb2.0.

 

I taught this was the best sounding the Supermicro can achieved and was very hard to beat it until I tested the Startech usb card and moved Ethenet, SSD and usb audio output to the card and disable all the ports from the mobo. The SQ was so good that I taught I had reached my audio nirvana. I supplied separate clean 5v power supply to the sdd adapter through a modified usb3.0 A-male-to-A-female connector.

 

What is sweeter is my system is only very moderate system as such:

Speakers: Triangle Esprit Antal 

Cables : Oehlbach XLR rca and Supra Sword speaker cables.

Amp : Musical Fidelity M6 integrated

Dac : Mirand Dac with heavily modified lps for both digital and analog sections.

 

I would like to give a big shout out and thank you to lmitche to bring this card to our attention. As previously stated, I was not so trilled with my old tX-USBexp card but this Startech card really blows my mind away. I tried to supply very clean lps to the card.  I have recorded some music from my system's playback with Zoom H1 recorder in 24 bit 96 khz and decided to share it here. All my music is 44.1 khz ripped from cds and no upsampling applied in playback.

 

02_SupermStartech_20180402.WAV

 

 

 

Great to hear of your success.  Make sure to keep the DAC connection separate from the sdd and Ethernet nic. My DAC cable is plugged into the bottom port then one empty port and the nic and hdd in the top two ports.  The usb card is really two cards in one, so this separates the input and output sides.

 

 

[lmitche]

1 hour ago, lateboomer said:

I shut down all the SATA, usb and LAN ports on the mobo. The OS is Daphile player running in its own partition on the usb SSD, and the music storage on different partition on the usb SSD. And yes the usb audio to the dac is at the bottom port and different channel from the usb SSD and Ethernet nic. The Ethernet nic is running very light and almost none existence and only for control playback on the Daphile. Another huge contributor is I changed the usb cable to Phasure Lush usb cable and this brings the playback to much higher level. It is also not to forget the whole mobo is supplied with multiple rails of lps to its ATX power connector. 

 

With all these improvements it makes me think the great sound is coming from outsourcing all the usb and SATA activities to a very fast usb card and relieves the heavy lifting from the mobo.

 

So I wonder if I to get one Sparky Allo USBridge and supply it with lps powered usb SSD, would the SQ be as good as Supermicro with much simpler built and lower cost? Also could I achieve better SQ than Supermicro by getting one P10S-M mobo as suggested here which has more pcie slots connected with the CPU and can run multiple Startech cards to separate the OS, music storage input from the usb audio output to the dac? This would be very interesting.

The Startech board is actually two boards and so if you followed my instructions you have separated music storage and network from the DAC.

 

The card has two clocks and a clear line down the middle denoting the two sides. The PCie lanes are not shared, so it is like you have two boards today.

 

I don't know a thing about the Allo Sparky, so can't comment.

 

The thing about the Asus workstation board is that it is capable of dsd512 upsampling with the right processor.  That is a very different kettle of fish however.

 

 

[lmitche]

7 hours ago, seeteeyou said:

 

I realized that PEXUSB3S44V should be four cards in one but it's "limited" to 5Gbps

 

https://www.amazon.com/Express-SuperSpeed-Adapter-Dedicated-Channels/dp/B00HJZEA2S

https://www.startech.com/Cards-Adapters/USB-3.0/Cards/PCI-Express-USB-3-Card-4-Dedicated-Channels-4-Port~PEXUSB3S44V

 

It's still full duplex whether it's 5Gbps or 10Gbps, but whatever storage (i.e. SATA drives) and audio (i.e. USB 2.0 DAC) devices we're connecting should be half duplex anyways.

 

BTW, this M.2 drive is gonna be half duplex as well @ 10GB per GB but maybe it wouldn't be such a bad idea to give SLC NAND a try once we put that inside an enclosure

 

http://www.addonics.com/products/indm2.php

http://www.addonics.com/datasheets/files/datasheet - AFM2S3W16G-S.pdf

Seeteeyou, you have the wrong card, this is the one: PEXUSB314A2V

 

Why do you think USB 3 is half duplex?

 

Why SLC when Optane is cheap, quiet and faster then anything else?

[lmitche]

1 hour ago, seeteeyou said:

Many thanks for pointing out that I was "wrong" since all I did should be simply finding what else we could get from Startech. LOL

 

I was really comparing what OEM products were out there, they're pretty much the same deal as these "clones" below

 

https://www.amazon.com/Vantec-4-Port-Dedicated-5Gbps-UGT-PCE430-4C/dp/B00NVVSXIQ

http://www.vantecusa.com/products_detail.php?p_id=119

 

https://www.amazon.com/Vantec-4-Port-Dedicated-Controller-UGT-PCE470-2C/dp/B07579J6CD

http://www.vantecusa.com/products_detail.php?p_id=194

 

Maybe they're just rebranding whatever reference design they could get somewhere?

Seeteeyou, I mean no offense, I'm just trying to be precise about my listening experience. The four port Startech card uses an Asmedia 3.1 gen 2 chipset. I believe that is the reason SQ is good with this board. There may be other manufacturers besides Startech that use these chips, but I can't comment on the implementation without hearing it. 

 

Given that I am happy with the Startech, I don't expect to search further for USB cards. Thanks again to rickca who first recognized the possibility of superior SQ with this card.  He was right! Besides my self, I know of 5 people using this card, and all are happy to leave thier audiophile USB cards in a drawer.

[lmitche]

The AMD ryzen boards are said to support direct to CPU m.2 x4 nvme and two x8 lanes slots. Just perfect for our needs.

 

Nevertheless confirming this is tough as there is a lack of block diagrams in consumer motherboard manuals. Supermicro has block diagrams in every motherboard manual I have read. They set the standard here. The rest really suck at this.

 

 

[lmitche]

54 minutes ago, rickca said:

I still want to see what Asus board Antipodes is using in the CX.  An interesting comment from Antipodes

But high CPU clock rates above a certain level sound bad. So the CX uses a full desktop 4 Core i5 processor, run at a low clock rate, about half of its full speed capability

I share your curiousity, thanks for sharing.

 

This could mean several things. Many processors will let a single core run at a higher frequency then others. This always sounds bad and I disable this in my motherboards. In a recent post on the AMD threadripper running polysinc-xtr non 2s the poster suggested the same solution increased SQ.

 

Otherwise I have heard no evidence that for example a 2ghz processor sounds better than 4ghz processor.  That's sounds like Antipodes marketing to me.

 

Nevertheless it takes a lot of work to get a 4ghz machine to sound fantastic, but when done, it is breathtaking.

[lmitche]

4 hours ago, lateboomer said:

May I know how do you do this? Could I do It for Supermicro board?

It's in the bios for the processor. I can't recall what it is called,  but it's obvious. Take a look you'll find it.

[lmitche]

1 minute ago, rickca said:

If you're talking about turbo boost, it is not supported on the J1900 anyway so there's nothing to disable in BIOS.

That's right, this control may not be in an embedded processor machine.

 

I was thinking about z170 + machines.

[lmitche]

6 minutes ago, rickca said:

Lots of new processors announced by Intel today

https://www.anandtech.com/show/12607/intel-expands-8th-gen-core-core-i9-on-mobile-iris-plus-desktop-chipsets-and-vpro

Yes, lots of 6 core 12 thread 45 watt processors. Nothing interesting in the PCie lane count front.  Looks like AMD owns that space.

 

I'm looking forward to the AMD 2700 65 watt processor and x470 motherboard announcements in a couple weeks. With 8 cores and 24 pcie lanes, I expect to head that way. A mini-itx is feasible with m.2 and pcie 16 slots both direct to cpu.

[lmitche]

4 hours ago, Narcissus said:

@lmitche @lateboomer Just confirming, are you guys having the Sclk ex in your server alongwith the startech USB card?

I have no SOTM gear here.

[lmitche]

6 hours ago, lateboomer said:

Me too, I don't have Sotm gear and also don't have Iso Regen at my usb output.

Over here two lps-1s and an ISO Regen create a moat between the PC and DAC. Works and sounds great. SQ is diminished with the removal of either.

[lmitche]

2 minutes ago, lateboomer said:

Pardon me for asking. Why is It 2 lps-1s? How is the application?

Here you go!

https://uptoneaudio.com/products/ultracap-lps-1

The original lps-1 shown on the page above has been replaced with a newer model called the lps-1.2.

https://uptoneaudio.com/products/ultracap-lps-1-2

 

Both lps-1 models deliver low voltage DC power using a method that stops the noisy leakage currents that flow from one powered device to another.

 

Lps-1 DC isolation in combination with ISO Regen signal isolation produces a moat that stops these parasitic currents from flowing to an USB DAC and impacting SQ.

[lmitche]

3 minutes ago, jaynyc said:

A few weeks ago people here were talking about the Asus P10S-M.  I did some research and found this diagram in the manual appendix

 

Does this mean there is actually only 1 PCIe slot which is CPU direct?

We looked at an Asus P10S-M not a P10S-M WS. They are two different boards.

 

The P10S-M can do x16, x8x8, and x8x4x4.

[lmitche]

13 minutes ago, jaynyc said:

ah ok, thank you.  here's the P10S-M (not ws) 

 

due to the 'Quick Switch' I wonder if it's 1, 2 or 3 bonafide direct2cpu slots.

 

I read it as one, two or three.

[lmitche]

8 minutes ago, LTG2010 said:

There are 3 available, but slots 5 and 6 'share' bandwidth via the quickswitch- this is acting like a sort of 'router' and will re - direct data from one slot to the other depending on traffic to prevent overloading of CPU. Its not the greatest arrangement, but it really depends on what is placed in those slots.

I don't know if the "quick switch" is a one time switch at startup or active switch. Asus should be able to answer this question.

[lmitche]

2 hours ago, Johnseye said:

I just bought an ASRock Z270M-ITX/ac and found something hopeful.  One of the BIOS settings provides an option for a riser card and I wonder if there's some kind of trigger that allows for a different config of the PCIe lanes.  The setting is a drop down menu allowing for x16, x8x8 and x8x4x4.  The question is whether selecting this without an add on riser card the lanes can be changed.  The manual is thin on info.  If anyone can find more detail it would be appreciated.

 

http://asrock.pc.cdn.bitgravity.com/Manual/Z270M-ITXac.pdf

 

 

That setting probably enables something like this:

 

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA4M55V07220&ignorebbr=1&nm_mc=KNC-GoogleMKP-PC&cm_mmc=KNC-GoogleMKP-PC-_-pla-_-Add-On+Cards-_-9SIA4M55V07220&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIuvaNz7eu2gIVloSzCh27hgblEAYYASABEgJZUfD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds

 

How you make this secure in a case is unknown to me. Rickca knows more.