Building a DIY Music Server

[Peter Avgeris]

Just to add my two cents. I am a mechanical engineer with too much experience in metal works. The idea of having a copper base (Dynayron) and on top two copper bases is far from ideal. You should have made two new copper bases on the milling machine with mounting mechanism for 3647 square ILM socket. It is so simple. And glueing the top two copper plates does not make sense in the engineering language. All the rest seems to be really well executed. The final judge is the final result and it seems to be good. Congrats. 

[Peter Avgeris]

14 hours ago, Downtheline said:

you have a customer!!! I'll buy one you make to replace the DIY I am also trying. I think multiple people on this forum would be interested, and could help recoup development cost!!   

 

 

 

 

 

Designing and manufacturing such heat sinks made out from pure copper is nothing that difficult, if you have the right staff to cooperate with. I have this staff here in Athens, so they can make miracles. I have been designing parts like this for decades. Have been designing exotic HiFi amplifiers with much more 'extreme' chassis work than the ones from Taiko Audio. The chassis I now manufacture take years to collect the know how of how to do them properly, it is a combination of extreme machine work and even more extreme man work with one's own hands. But all this is still toyz for little boyz, compared to the craftsmanship, knowledge, design, manufacture and testing required to make parts for Rafale jets and particle accelerator machines (cyclotrons). I have been through these later projects, so guys, please trust me, all this metalwork presented here is nothing. Absolutely nothing. I have no intention to underestimate the work presented here, on the contrary if somebody wants to have the most extreme copper accessories for cooling 3647 sockets, I can surely assist him.

It's really nothing that difficult to accomplish.

[Peter Avgeris]

27 minutes ago, LTG2010 said:

I'm stuck here looking at 2 giant Noctua 14 inch fan coolers, so if you could provide us with a solution you'll have a  customer here.

The good thing about Nenons solution is that it used the hdplex coolers to raise the pipes above the heatsink (1 side) on the Asus c621 Sage motherboard. I'm not sure that Larry of HDPlex will sell the coolers seperately, meaning the need to buy another 3 cases.

Also you can adjust the heat pipes horizontally which make bending them easier, if you are a few mm out you can move the pipes to suit your case before clamping the top on.

The Taiko extreme cooler seems designed for that specific case.

Glad to receive your response. I will assist you as much as I can.

I have been using HDPlex chassis for years now. They might not be the absolute best in terms of aesthetics but IMHO they are the best overall by far, above all.

 

First of all, I really can't see any reason for building such monsters for music playback. Music always sounds better with lower power machines, provided the computational power is adequate. Exceptions? Of course: ROON playback software. During the years, it requires more and more power to work properly. More cores but this comes at an expense for sound quality. With an Euphony system, or even JPlay server, I really can't see any point for going that extreme. My Euphony systems never sounded better than what they do now, with only 2 Xeon cores for server and another 2 for the Endpoint (4-core machines, no hyperthreading, no turbo boost, 2 cores suspended from BIOS, no VGA, no SATA/SAS). 8GB of RAM per machine.

 

Roon is another story. But again, if you want that much computational power, you can go for it. Each side of HDplex chassis is more than enough for 1x Xeon 3647 CPU, so a chassis of this type is enough. Taiko audio uses bigger copper heat sink for 2x Xeons, so it might be OK for sure. I do not have in front of me any 2x Xeon 3647 Motherboard. Of course I would need this MoBo physically present into my hands because several other aspects are of paramount importance, eg the capacitors around, the RAM chips, the distance from the heat sinks, etc. If you live in Europe, it is a piece of cake to do all this stuff. If you are located in USA, I am afraid that I can't help you. I can provide you with any pieces you want, specially made for HDPlex chassis and Advanced Thermal Solutions 10mm copper heat pipes design, specially made for HDPlex chassis. If you have manufacturing facilities, then no need to make for you the copper covers, I can send you the drawings if you want.

 

But again, IMHO going that extreme does not really make sense. This is only a personal opinion, don't blame me for this 🙂

[Peter Avgeris]

This is my latest machine work for custom copper encasing boxes, with copper plates.

They are used inside my 'extreme' tubed phono preamplifier machines.

Guys, let's not hyper-emphasing things like these. These are really piece of cake.

There exist much more difficult things to make. E.g, the contour shape of the faceplate of my 211 power amplifiers can't be compared to this copper project.

You can have a look at the pics attached.

 

[Peter Avgeris]

4 minutes ago, ASRMichael said:

Peter, sounds like you'd be happy to make custom passive server cases for us? that caters for high heat CPU's?  

Yes and No.

Yes if you are located in Europe. No if you are in USA.

I don't want to be drawn into such a terrible trouble with all customs related issues for overseas shipments. For European affairs, yes, I can do it. It is a piece of cake, don't forget this!

[Peter Avgeris]

2 hours ago, Nenon said:

 

@Peter Avgeris It seems like you have no idea how much you are missing and how much better your digital source can be, but I don't have time or the desire to argue about this. If you are happy with your source that is all that matters. 

 

 

Some members here (including me) can definitely use your mechanical engineering skills and take you on this offer. I suggest we start a new thread to discuss the options. There are a couple of people in Europe that already have the Sage motherboard and are looking for a passive cooling solution. I will refer them to the new thread. Perhaps someone can send you a motherboard, you can do a prototype, and we can do a group buy from you. Thank you for offering this. It's really good that someone can do a more professional heatsink than my ugly mockup. For those of us in the US, I am sure our European friends will help us. You can ship to them, and they can handle the rest (distribute to the US).

 

 

BTW, the Hdplex uses 6mm pipes. 

Really? I am losing so much! WoW! This is very interesting. I am all ears. I do not consider myself a digital guru. I admit that I know quite a lot of things for designing tube amplifiers with exotic transformers, all designed, wound and manufactured in-house, but I am mostly easy going with digital. I tried to use high power streamers but they never gave me that extra magical hint. Whatever I listen through any sources, specially digital, is more or less the same to my ears, as I have been used to the rather extreme differences between power amplifiers and crazy, out-of-this-world field coil loudspeakers, with exotic heat treating procedures for the poles. If you could assist me on this, I would be more than happy 🙂

 

Go ahead, start a new thread and invite me there. My big problems dealing with US is the very strict and very troublesome customs controls. Whatever is imported undergoes taxation no matter if it is a free gift or experimental, or even if it will be sent back. On the other hand, dealing with EU citizens is so easy and fast.

 

I do not know of a friend here that has this MoBo available. I have a friend in Germany, Heidelberg area, he has this board with dual Xeons, dunno if he could send it to me. No need to thank me, this is a bit easy for me to accomplish. So, go ahead start a new thread and if you could send me any hints regarding up-lifting sound quality with digital streamers, I am all yours 🙂

 

All the best from Athens

Peter

[Peter Avgeris]

2 hours ago, Downtheline said:

Peter do you think you could do the drawings for this general case set up as well?

 

 

I have already done drawings for nozzles of proton accelerators and complete mass spectroscopy machines with radioactive strontimum-90 at http://www.inp.demokritos.gr/

Several years ago.

I guess that this won't be any more difficult...

 

[Peter Avgeris]

28 minutes ago, Nenon said:

 

Well, completely offtopic, but since you opened up the subject, here is what I have been working on while waiting for my custom Apacer memory. 

 

 

This is an Extreme, cost no object, version of the Audio Mirror Reflection 45W Set monoblocks with custom transformers, Mundorf Mtube and Mlytic capacitors in the power supply, Z-foil resistors all over, Duelund CAST PIO tinned copper capacitors, exotic wiring, WBT Nextgen connectors, Furutech NCF inlet, etc. The list goes on. I use four of these to bi-amp my high efficient speakers, which have 18'' woofers. I tried Jeff Rowland 625 S2 amps for the woofers thinking that might be the ultimate bass amplification. But those SET monoblocks outperformed the Jeff Rowland by a huge margin in the bass section. It's unbelievable how much more detailed and vibrant bass I got with those. That was one of those shocking and completely unexpected moments. I was so biased towards the Jeff Rowland that it took me quite some time to believe it. But it sounds like this is a small toy compared the stuff you are talking about :). 

 

Digital, on the other hand, is completely different. You really have to tune your listening differently to identify the small differences in the digital domain. Needless to say, the power supply is the most important component in the digital source. And the power supplies that do miracles for analog gear don't necessarily work that good for digital. A high powered server with not so optimal power supply can sound pretty bad. But once you nail down the power, the magic starts. 

 

The Asus ROG Crosshair VII Hero build mentioned earlier in this thread with the upgraded motherboard ultraOCXO clock sounds amazing. This dual Xeon Asus SAGE will surpass the Asus ROG build but it takes a lot more effort. One is running Euphony, the other one is running Windows 10 Enterprise LTSC. They are tuned completely different. One sounds better playing music from a NAS. The other does not sound good from NAS and needs local storage. It also takes quite a bit of effort to tweak your network. But when it all clicks, it's magical. 

 

Perhaps one of the people who are interested here can take case of this? If there is no volunteer, I can do it later this week.

 

If this is Dirk, that's one of the people I had in mind as well. Haven't talked to him lately, but I believe he would be willing to send you the motherboard. 

 

 

Very nice project. So you're a SET guy! At least it seems that we speak the same language 🙂

It seems you became a SET guy after your comparison with JF designs... Hehe, I am a bit older than you 🙂

It seems we're going to be communicating here a bit more frequently...

I know that PS is probably the 80% of sound qualities everywhere. I'm going to build my supplies but now I'm into other things so I have left this project for the future.

Yes, it's Dirk. You know him? Amazing! Send him a message and ask him about me. I don't like talking about myself. You'll have some info...

 

All the best,

Peter

 

[Peter Avgeris]

I have started a new thread, as any guys here would be interested in this.

You can visit this thread at

 

[Peter Avgeris]

11 hours ago, MarcelNL said:

many (most?) mobo's will not boot without GPU, the MSI card referred a couple of posts higher is probably the lowest spec/TDP card around. You can always stick the GPU card on a PCIe 1x riser and power that via a regular switching PSU using one of the PCIe cables.

(mine is connected that way)

When I needed a gpu just to power up the machine, I got probably the best of all! 

 

https://www.ebay.com/itm/184695102850

 

I got this because the motherboard I was using did not boot without a GPU. I compared it against 5-6 modem graphics adapters and it was clearly better most likely due to the simplicity of the design. It had virtually nothing on it and the power consumption was negligible. When I changed the motherboard to a server motherboard, that was able to boot, this card became useless. 

[Peter Avgeris]

1 hour ago, Nenon said:

 

 

I would highly recommend to avoid those ultra expensive Furutech connectors/plugs/sockets. All Furutech products have been cryogenically treated and unfortunately they impose a very bad sonic signature compared to the non-cryo versions. I used to purchase Wattgate & Furutech products many years ago, before this cryo treating policy was applied to the whole array of their products. Nowadays, cryo treatment has become a standard and this is really bad for good sound.

 

In addition, I have never ever listened to any Vcap capacitor that sounds really good. On the contrary, they are sterile and thin sounding.

 

Last, bypassing electrolytes does not make things better. A good measuring electrolyte like Siemens or Nichicon with its characteristic angle as close to -90 as possible (at 100 Hz) has way better behavior than the one of the Mundorfs, which have been found to be unreasonably expensive.

Putting all these down, leads to cost cutting well below 40%.

[Peter Avgeris]

Hi there!

I see that a lot of discussion still goes on, regarding the sound of the P/S chokes.

What I would like to state is that chokes DO have a major influence on sound, besides of course the electrical characteristics.

It is not possible for the end user to judge whether a choke has been properly designed or not.

Contrary to what everybody here thinks, the influence has little to do with the current/amperage requirements/capabilities. Vast majority of its contribution relates to a myriad of parameters that are taken into consideration at an early stage, when the choke is designed.

You cannot infer anything by just plugging and measuring.

E.g. the behavior in the frequency domain is so critical, the behavior under different loading conditions, the excitation of the ferromagnetic material, the composition of the ferromagnetic material itself, the tempering of the alloy... I have been designing and manufacturing chokes (and amps in general) for the most demanding audio aficionados and know very well what I'm writing here. Try not to spend a fortune on chokes like this, as they are mostly badly designed/executed. Just plain 'n cheap solutions is the safest all-around way to go.

Just my two cents...

 

[Peter Avgeris]

Without any intention to conflict your statements, it would be good to know that the choke input solution for designing power supplies is the most simple path you can follow on order to absolutely ruin the sound of your active stage. It may take you one minute, hour, day, year or whatever in order to realize that choke input design is your warranty to sound devastation. 

[Peter Avgeris]

Thanks for the invitation.

I wrote you, it may take between a moment and a lifetime to realize how bad is choke input for sound quality. I do not want to conflict with you.

The differences I am talking about are relative. Switching between L input and C input, all else being same and equal, leads to straightforward results. I do not want to pressurize you, you do not need to do so.

With kind regards

Peter Avgeris

 

PS: the web site is under construction, as photoshooting has not been completed yet.