Building a DIY Music Server

[Mops911]

On 1/18/2021 at 1:55 AM, Nenon said:

If I was building a heavy duty upsampling computer, I would go with "The Beast" fanless chassis and pick one of the new AMD CPUs when they become available later this year. 

@Nenonwhy would you choose AMD over Intel? Is this based on your last builds documented in this thread?

[Mops911]

7 hours ago, MarcelNL said:

be minimized by switching off completely

Take it out and listen if you can hear a difference. if not, dont bother, if yes, only then this discussion becomes relevant...

[Mops911]

22 hours ago, Nenon said:

Emile has been "extreme"-ly busy with some new developments at Taiko. I will try to get an update from him next week and post where we are. I am curious myself as well. 

 

Hi @Nenon what about the unregulated power  supply. Any news about that. I wonder specifically about the parts list.

 

Thanks

T

[Mops911]

OMG, what a bunch of drama queens here (and yep, author of this line includes himself)

 

;-)

[Mops911]

1 minute ago, MarcelNL said:

import/export mess is sorted

mess deliberately created by the EU ;-)

[Mops911]

26 minutes ago, Gurkel said:

And after stumbling across these high power machines and the claims with the pure sound I started digging around.

 

Welcome Swiss compatriot....however, deserter here, living in NewMexico...;-)

 

NO settled science, while this thread argues for high power, another very prominent member, Miska, the author of HQPlayer, afaik argues for separating server and "head" which is a as low power machine as possible, while doing the heavy lifting and up-sampling on a powerful and potentially noisy machine. Search for HQP and you get another view. I did not say the right, just another view with many legit arguments. But then again, the author of this thread, Nenon, has a highpower machine and does NOT do real-time up-sampling but up-samples files offline.

 

No such thing as "settled science"....new findings every day ....

[Mops911]

18 minutes ago, Gurkel said:

completly indendenat of any analog influences

Some people also in other threads would disagree. Phase noise can have an influence. Read stuff in EtherRegen threads and especially what John, the developer wrote in a white paper.

 

Nobody really knows is it all here....in my very humble opinion, very few but very very smart AND educated professionals here (who obviously disagree ;-)) and then the vast majority of followers (guilty as charged) with their own more or less valid opinions ...haha.....(not saying the followers are not smart just MUCH more biased.....the curse of audiophiles....

[Mops911]

33 minutes ago, Gurkel said:

generate data out of thin air

As I understand and learned here, all(?) DAC upsample internally. I read that Chord Dave, a 10k DAC, uses less power if fed upsampled data. So as I understand, there is consnsus here for the reason that a powerful CPU can upsample much better than a feeble DAC. Better filers, noise shapers, more Taps, what have you

[Mops911]

5 minutes ago, Gurkel said:

But As I don't plan to generate data out of thin air, I don't require this.

If your server doesnt, your DAC will.

 

Dude, you only scratched the surface. Read on, people get obsessed with clocks and phase noise (frequency domain) or Jitter (time domain). You see Nenon soldering better clocks on this motherboard....

 

 

It is SO much more than brute power and nobody knows. But in the end, its your system, you can grind it and eat it :-D

 

 

 

[Mops911]

16 minutes ago, Gurkel said:

Leva that aside. If you send data over the internet, each data package has it's own CRC code attached, and if the packet fails the check it is transitted again (if you use TCP). No switch alters data, there is no data clenaisng of whatsoever analog side effects here. Pretty obvious but people buy it.

ok @Gurkel you are a hard nut lol...very Swiss...haha

 

Yeah, everybody here understands IP packages, believe me. Nobody says that they are altered by a switch or anything. BUT

 

at some point, yeah in the DAC, this analog signal of logical ones and zeroes get translated into an analog voltage signal. And the analog signal of ones and zeroes might carry noise. Yes, NOISE!! Its all sine waves dude...even in a USB transmission. At that point of singal conversion, there is LOTS going on which nobody understand in detail but respected experts HEAR. You can dismiss it, but an effect is still observed!!

 

I was at exactly the point 2 months ago where you are now. I dismissed theoretically all this snake oil. Its all ones and zeroes. I was soooo smart and everybody incl the real experts were full of it....haha....I hate experts, until they are right....haha

[Mops911]

Powersupply with HDPlex products:

 

If one would use the 300w linear power supply from HDPlex why would you additionally use the DC-ATX? And not a second 300w LPS?

[Mops911]

5 hours ago, Cazzesman said:

Does 250gig give plenty of redundancy?

Once you install AO, you cant update anymore, at least not in "Ultimate" what I use. I use 80GB and it works just fine. 50GB free space...

[Mops911]

Hdplex 800w DC-ATX:

 

How do you guys power it?

Do you run a separate 12v LPS for EPS?

How did you mount it in a Streatcom FC10 or HDPlex H5?

Bonus ;-) If you run a separate NAA, how "concerned" are you about the power for the HQP server?

 

Cheers

Tom

[Mops911]

A short recap and lessons learned with my last build.

 

HDPlex H5, MSI z790 Edge ITX with i9-13900T (capped at 18w which is enough to upsample with HQP to DSD256 with my fav poly-sinc-short-mp) and planned v1 nenon PS (still running a seasonic for now...).

 

Bottom line, I have 3 SSDs (2x 990 and one 980) in it and they overheat ;-) so much that I need a fan ;-) One drive went up to 91c. I will power the fan externally and I am not to worried as I also run a NAA (based on a Asus j6412 board and powered by uptone JS-2) but never anticipated that the SSDs will overheat that much. I wanted a 4TB 990 but it was not coming ... while the H5 is living room "friendly", I would build a system now based on a ATX board with Noctua NH-P1 (which cools the i9-12000ks of my other system. The KS is also capped at 15w).

 

FWIW, cheers

 

[Mops911]

ok, my -dont call it Frankenstein ;-) - in its latest iteration:

 

- MSI Unify-X with 32GB gskill 5200 and i9-12900KS on 15w and Noctua passive cooler and i350 network card

- 3 x 2TB Samsung 990 and 980 pro

- HDPlex 800w

- Toroidy 250VA with Saligny super and a Cornell 56000uF cap

- Fractal Define 5 case

 

HQP to DSD256 with 7EC-super and pooly-sinc-shrt-mp (into a 4.5w J6412 celeron NAA on a Uptone JS-2)

 

On the other end is a Mytek Manhattan II, Crimson 640IV and Tocaro 40. Yes, I hear real music.... :-) REAL Music :-)

 

 

 

[Mops911]

1 hour ago, Nenon said:

Does it get hot? 

slightly warm, but FAR from hot. 

Sec is 24V and under load I measure ~36V at Cap

 

Again, the i9 runs on 15w (capped in Bios), the 3 SSDs dont take much and the network i350 is also "cheap"...not much to consume there. Also, I measured draw with kill-a-watt at outlet before ordering and I was at 110w/150VA peak (with a seasonic 1300w PSU)

 

But yeah, my first venture into power supplies. Yes, I have a Swiss Engineering degree, but I still hope NOT to burn down my house ;-) since I started it yesterday, I do NOT leave it unattended and measure temps religiously ;-) 
wish me LUCK :-)

The first build, not knowing how much power I need for HQP DSD256, I bought the i9-12900KS with a Fractal 360 AIO and a RTX A5000. Ha, then I realized I can run all on 15watts...looking still for a taker of the A5000 and AIO lol

(ah, yes, I mined $100 in ehter on the GPU before this went down ...lol)

 

[Mops911]

10 hours ago, AngeloVRA said:

so its only a modest 2C improvement

 

I considered it too but "projected" that the improvement will be nominal as I run the CPU on a very reduced diet (15w max). But I still like what you did because "we can" ;-)

 

On 9/15/2023 at 1:41 PM, Nenon said:

that's a pretty small transformer for this build.

I checked again with kill-a-watt and see 116VA max during operations and one second burst to 192VA during boot (typically 100-120VA during boot) and I measured the temp the outside of the trafo and its less than 40c (EtherRegen is much hotter...)
 

[Mops911]

On 9/18/2023 at 10:00 AM, drjimwillie said:

I wonder what the results would have been if you had installed liquid metal below the lid

 

Me too... that is why I am going to order the RockItCool kit too for both my CPUs i9-12900KS and i9-13900T and will relid them with the copper lid. There is a direct die EKWB cooling solution, but looks like to much hassle to rework to passive cooling ... if I get 1-2c, I guess I am already happy ;-) current temp ~48c

[Mops911]

On 10/19/2023 at 5:22 AM, ciccio1112 said:

The motherboard features the ASMedia 3142 3.1 USB controller, which is the same as the one installed on the JCAT XE.

@Marcin_gps any way to upgrade your xe usb card? ASUS has upgrade tool…

[Mops911]

3 hours ago, Marcin_gps said:

Here is the guide how to upgrade the firmware:

thanks much @Marcin_gps do you think it’s worthwhile?

[Mops911]

Server turns off. Advice requested.

 

I have my HQPplayer server based on a unregulated power supply, HDDPlex 800w atx and an MSI Unify-x motherboard.

 

Since yesterday, it just shuts down. I have another unregulated power supply and it does the same, so its either the board (or one of its components) or the HDDPlex 800w. How to figure out now which it is? Any idea?

 

Cheers

Tom

[Mops911]

21 minutes ago, Exocer said:

during playback?

 

after an hour of playback or so...

 

[Mops911]

13 hours ago, Exocer said:

Have you been doing anything more cpu-intensive than usual?

 

4 hours ago, MarcelNL said:

CPU temp verified? Ran a memory check?

 

Thanks much guys.

 

this is VERY embarrassing...simply, win2019 license expired and as Audiophile optimizer replaced the shell to basically nothing, the note on the desktop was not visible.... bad bad me ;-)

Cheers

Tom

[Mops911]

Next project, I had a MSI z790i but with 3 980/990 SSDs it got to hot in summer. So I bought the new z790 Apex encore.

 

And delided the i9-13900T. I will relid with a copper lid and put it in a frame. The Toroidy comes into a small separate case. The. wifi 7 is also removed ... 

 

The MSI is for selling now...pm me if interested ;-)

 

 

[Mops911]

6 hours ago, VaG said:

Do you have any plan

This is basically a Nenon v1 with a 250va Toroidy, a Saligny Power rectifier and a 57k uF Cornell cap going into a HDPlex 800w ATX