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Building a DIY Music Server


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On 5/18/2020 at 6:04 AM, OAudio said:

These costs and the price of this server make me smile. I say this with real insight in the area, I have been developing a C621 Intel scalable processor system >3 years now (actually 7 years if you include the research on other audio servers that lead up to this c621 development).

 

can you provide more details on what c621 board are you using and what cpu, chassis, cooling, power supply, etc ?

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2 hours ago, lmitche said:

Here is a two year old article discussing the difference between the Intel and AMD clock implementations.

 

https://www.anandtech.com/show/12678/a-timely-discovery-examining-amd-2nd-gen-ryzen-results

 

It is clear that the OS and BIOS configs have a big role in determining which clock is used. It looks like the industry is moving to TSC clocks onboard the processor chip.

 

My AMD motherboard running Audiolinux shows the TSC clock is used, which is a clock onboard the Ryzen 7 2700 processor chip, so the PCH is not used. In my case the PCH is disabled.

 

#cat /sys/devices/system/clocksource/clocksource0/current_clocksource
tsc

 

 

 

 

I'm reading up in the background to try to come up to speed a bit with the AMD stuff :-)

 

HPET discussed in the the linked article and TSC are event timers (circa 1ms upwards) that are referenced to a physical oscillator (either PCH attached for Intel or internal to the CPU for AMD). So I get that this is CPU attached in your system.

 

If I understand, I guess your saying that in your system PCIe attached devices (USB and Network) are direct channels to the CPU, you have no storage attached via PCH Sata as well and the TSC timer is integrated onto the processor. Very neat :-)

 

Is there a mode that can explicitly shut down the PCH on this type of AMD system ? I'm just thinking that the PCH will still be live and there will be some traffic between it and the CPU, just not much in the case of you set up.

 

 

 

   

OAudio Ltd.

OAudio Supreme - music server.

OAudio RealStream - digital audio components.

 

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2 hours ago, lmitche said:

https://www.anandtech.com/show/12678/a-timely-discovery-examining-amd-2nd-gen-ryzen-results

 

It is clear that the OS and BIOS configs have a big role in determining which clock is used. It looks like the industry is moving to TSC clocks onboard the processor chip.

 

This was a really interesting read. In particular, I was struck by the description that HPET forced on in the OS for intel based systems increased latency but reduced errors. Is it wrong for me to extrapolate that, in the context of audio processing, that forcing HPET on in the OS would result in higher latency but less variation in latency given fewer errors? This seems to be true for both AMD and Intel (see below).

 

table.thumb.png.c8aa28c2c86b0d0e77e37511df353953.png

 

If so, this would correlate with @ray-dude's findings that he presented in part two of his SGM Extreme review. Lastly, if true, this reasoning would indicate you would want HPET on. @lmitche, what am i missing here? I have an old AMD system running AL. I'll mess around tonight with my settings and see if I can spot any differences. 

 

 

 

 

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1 hour ago, OAudio said:

Is there a mode that can explicitly shut down the PCH on this type of AMD system ? I'm just thinking that the PCH will still be live and there will be some traffic between it and the CPU, just not much in the case of you set up.

Yes, some AMD motherboards have a entry in the BIOS to disable the PCH.

Pareto Audio aka nuckleheadaudio

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1 hour ago, taipan254 said:

 

This was a really interesting read. In particular, I was struck by the description that HPET forced on in the OS for intel based systems increased latency but reduced errors. Is it wrong for me to extrapolate that, in the context of audio processing, that forcing HPET on in the OS would result in higher latency but less variation in latency given fewer errors? This seems to be true for both AMD and Intel (see below).

 

table.thumb.png.c8aa28c2c86b0d0e77e37511df353953.png

 

If so, this would correlate with @ray-dude's findings that he presented in part two of his SGM Extreme review. Lastly, if true, this reasoning would indicate you would want HPET on. @lmitche, what am i missing here? I have an old AMD system running AL. I'll mess around tonight with my settings and see if I can spot any differences. 

 

 

 

 

You are not missing a thing. Please let us know how your experiment with clocksource goes.

 

Larry

Pareto Audio aka nuckleheadaudio

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3 hours ago, Dev said:

 

can you provide more details on what c621 board are you using and what cpu, chassis, cooling, power supply, etc ?

 

I may start a separate thread.

Neons build is following a different and interesting route so I think it would get confusing and unfair to get into detail here.

OAudio Ltd.

OAudio Supreme - music server.

OAudio RealStream - digital audio components.

 

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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. 

Design & Manufacture of High Fidelity Audio Equipment
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@Nenon what is your base clock freq the Xeons are running at ? What TDP ? I would say you got a pretty good core temp with DIY - it's not easy feet. My 8 core Xeon hovers in their higher 40's in H5.

 

The HDPlex (and Streacom) side panels _only_ acts like a heat sink. Not the whole chassis unlike Extreme and other professional servers. I got a H5 last week and to my surprise the core temp runs couple of degrees (higher 40's) higher than the Streacom FC9 (lower 40's) I was using earlier, though I have a bigger ATX motherboard but the processor is the same in both case and the same applications running Euphony/Roon. The FC9 has only 4 heat pipes, the H5 has 8 of them.

 

Yes, the 3647 mounts directly on the socket, unlike the 115x but it should not be harder for HDplex (and others) to make the 3647 compatible mount. I forwarded the reference thermal design guide to Lary couple of days earlier and he will be looking into it.

 

https://www.intel.com/content/dam/www/public/us/en/documents/guides/xeon-scalable-thermal-guide.pdf

 

Also most of the 3647 boards are bigger than ATX (as you have also noted). Even though some will fit the H5, there is no space for a 400w or 800w DC-DC ATX. So there is a need for bigger chassis as well - more surface area, better cooling, etc. 

 

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On 4/15/2020 at 8:56 AM, Nenon said:

 

My new build is:

- ASUS ROG Crosshair VII Hero full size ATX motherboard 

- AMD Ryzen 7 3700X CPU

- Apacer ECC RAM

- Upgraded motherboard clock with PinkFaun ultraOCXO clock

- The new JCAT XE USB card

- JCAT NET Femto card

- PinkFaun I2S Bridge with ultraOCXO clock

- Optane card for the OS

- HDPlex H5 Case

- HDPlex 800W DC to DC ATX Convertor

- Gaia feet

- Mundorf Silver Gold DC wire all around

- Euphony OS

 

 

Hi @Nenon, thx for this great thread. It made me stop buying a Innuos server and after reading all 17 pages of this thread yesterday night, I'd like to clone this setup of yours excluding the OCXO clock. I am not experienced with soldering, so this will be a bad idea. I have a couple of questions before I dare to try it out myself:

 

-I understand the other soldering you did was to be able to power the clock/CPU and the 800W from the DC3 unit you have. Are the cables you use also available on the market pre build? If not: are you willing to build and sell me a similar setup (without the one for the clock? It looks awesome and again I don't dare to start soldering on this server myself.

(The only option I see w/o soldering is the HDplex 400W ATW LPS, I see a separate connector for the CPU, but I don't know if that means it's powered separately. If your answer to the last question is: no can do, what would you advise me as a power supply for the board/CPU/JcatUSBcard)

 

-Could you tell us the specs on the DC3 unit that makes it ready for this setup? Or should I just contact Custom Hifi Cables as soon as I know what is in my server?

 

-Why didn't you use a fibre PCI card instead of the Jcat Ethernet to eliminate noise from ethernet cables? I will only stream from tidal/roon/EuphonicOS, i'm wondering also how much it matters making the internet input clean.

 

-Why do you use only 8gb or RAM? When booting Euphony from RAM, is this enough? (it says on the Euphony forum, but just checking.

 

 

Thanks again for all the heavy lifting for us. It would be so cool to build my first ever PC and also a kick-ass one!

 

Greetz,

 

Brian.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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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.

Design & Manufacture of High Fidelity Audio Equipment
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13 minutes ago, Peter Avgeris said:

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.

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.

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3 hours ago, Brianfromspace said:

It made me stop buying a Innuos server and after reading all 17 pages of this thread yesterday night,

Innuos is a great option if you are not into DIY. 

 

2 hours ago, Brianfromspace said:

-I understand the other soldering you did was to be able to power the clock/CPU and the 800W from the DC3 unit you have. Are the cables you use also available on the market pre build? If not: are you willing to build and sell me a similar setup (without the one for the clock? It looks awesome and again I don't dare to start soldering on this server myself.

(The only option I see w/o soldering is the HDplex 400W ATW LPS, I see a separate connector for the CPU, but I don't know if that means it's powered separately. If your answer to the last question is: no can do, what would you advise me as a power supply for the board/CPU/JcatUSBcard)

Ping me on PM on that. I occasionally do some DC cables for members here but don't always have the time.

 

2 hours ago, Brianfromspace said:

-Could you tell us the specs on the DC3 unit that makes it ready for this setup?

21V - 5A for the HDPlex 800W DC to DC ATX

12V - 10A for the CPU / EPS

5V - 3A for the JCAT USB XE

5V - 3A for the JCAT Net Femto

5V - 3A for PinkFaun ultra OCXO clock

 

2 hours ago, Brianfromspace said:

Why didn't you use a fibre PCI card instead of the Jcat Ethernet to eliminate noise from ethernet cables? I will only stream from tidal/roon/EuphonicOS, i'm wondering also how much it matters making the internet input clean.

I prefer the JCAT Net Femto in this build. If has better clock and external power. 

Fiber NICs, such as the Startech PEX1000SFP2 card draw power from the PCIe slot, which generates more electrical noise than an externally powered JCAT NICs. I have found that tweaking my network and adding fiber elsewhere is a better approach and works better for me. Tweaking the network is a whole other topic.

 

2 hours ago, Brianfromspace said:

-Why do you use only 8gb or RAM? When booting Euphony from RAM, is this enough?

Yes, it's more than enough in my case. Even 4GB works, but you are too close to the edge.

Industry disclosure:
https://chicagohifi.com

Dealer for: Taiko Audio, Conrad Johnson, Audio Mirror, and Sean Jacobs

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53 minutes ago, Peter Avgeris said:

 

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

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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!

Design & Manufacture of High Fidelity Audio Equipment
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32 minutes ago, Peter Avgeris said:

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. 

 

 

@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. 

 

 

9 minutes ago, Peter Avgeris said:

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!

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).

 

 

32 minutes ago, Peter Avgeris said:

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.

BTW, the Hdplex uses 6mm pipes. 

Industry disclosure:
https://chicagohifi.com

Dealer for: Taiko Audio, Conrad Johnson, Audio Mirror, and Sean Jacobs

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