New HDPLEX 200W LPS

[elan120]

14 hours ago, rickca said:

I'm using the 19V fixed rail of an HDPLEX 200W LPS to power an HDPLEX 400W DC-ATX.

 

The 400W DC-ATX is powering both the 24-pin and the 8-pin EPS12V on my ATX motherboard as well as a SATA III hard drive with my music files.  Nothing special about the motherboard, it's a Gigabyte Z170X Ultra Gaming.

 

I used to power this Windows 10 i7-6700K machine with a Seasonic X650 Gold supply.  The Seasonic is now powering only the 8-pin power connector on my GTX 1060.

 

Wow!  This is the best sound I've ever heard on this Windows 10 machine.  It's actually inspired me to try AudioLinux or Windows Server 2019/AO 3.00 beta on it.  I'm pretty sure these OS will respond even better to good power input.  I didn't expect this.

 

Initially I just used the DC-ATX to power the 24-pin and used the Seasonic to power the EPS12V.  This certainly sounded better than powering the whole machine with the Seasonic.  But also powering the 8-pin EPS12V with the DC-ATX made things considerably better.  Much cleaner bass and more depth to the music.  Of course, the HDPLEX 200W LPS gets a bit toasty because I'm running with the Windows 10 High Performance power plan.

 

I use this machine standalone with local audio devices when I'm in my office.  It's also the server I use with my NUC7PJYH/AL endpoint on my main system.

 

I'll do a write up of my experience implementing the 200W LPS/400W DC-ATX when I have some time.  It was worth messing up the neat cable routing job I did when I built this machine.

Thank you for sharing this information.

 

How much improvement would you say when using NUC7PJYH/AL endpoint?  I been thinking about doing the same as well, but not sure how much impact this change can have when using NUC/AL.

[elan120]

11 minutes ago, rickca said:

I compared

 

NUC7PJYH/AL endpoint standalone running LMS/Squeezelite streaming Qobuz (powered by a Paul Hynes SR4)

to

NUC7PJYH/AL endpoint running Squeezelite fed by LMS streaming Qobuz on Windows 10 server 

 

Although the standalone endpoint sounded great, the latter configuration sounded better.  The server and endpoint are connected using 5GHz wifi.  

 

I also use my Windows 10 server standalone with local audio devices as a secondary system, so that was an additional motivation.  My music files are on the server on a SATA III hard drive powered by the DC-ATX.

Good to know server --> NUC7PJYH/AL endpoint also benefited from this power supply upgrade.  I am now wondering how much impact would this have when EtherRegen is released.

 

I am using wired configuration currently between my server and NUC/AL endpoint, and I will think more about making the power supply switch like yours when things are settled down a bit.

[elan120]

55 minutes ago, tboooe said:

dumb question...what is the purpose of a pre-regulator?  I was a bit confused by this option on the ordering page.

 

A pre-regulator is a circuit that performs preliminary voltage regulation before feeding its output to the final regulator.  This is used to improve the characteristics of the overall regulation circuitry.  This is relevant for both linear and switching pre-regulators.

 

Switching pre-regulators are often used to reduce the power dissipation of the following linear regulator, thus increasing the overall efficiency of the regulation circuitry while retaining the precision of the linear regulator.

 

Linear pre-regulators are often used to improve the regulation characteristics of the overall circuitry, since the following linear regulator has to regulate a voltage which has already been processed by the pre-regulator, so it will have lower ripple.  Linear pre-regulation can also be used to reduce the power dissipated in the final regulator, implementing a power sharing setup between regulator and pre-regulator in order to keep their temperature low.

 

 

 

[elan120]

Here is another picture from their website: