Building a DIY Music Server

[baconbrain]

52 minutes ago, BOBO said:

i`ll teach you guys a trick. if you run windows, you can use software like (MSI Dragon Ball, Asus MemTweakIt) to modify each individual  timing in real time and hear the differences in sound that each setting offers. 
Also, the changes are not permanent, all the changes that you make will get reset when you restart the pc, so if you like a certain setting, you have to modify it in the bios to stay permanent.

 

Could one not risk trashing the installed OS with this approach?

[baconbrain]

1 hour ago, MarcelNL said:

IME vibration control has a positive effect on SQ, the Taiko chassis has a max TDP you likely exceed with 2*150W, you may have to design your own system with the heatsinks on the outside. Select heatsinks designed for passive cooling and make sure convection can happen.

 

Perhaps cooling one CPU per heatsink / side of the Taiko chassis?

[baconbrain]

On 5/30/2023 at 9:21 PM, JJSim said:

For their new SG10 Streacom partnered with Calyos, which has an interesting portfolio of products. Their "2-phase" cooling solutions are particularly intriguing for use in DIY servers, by using a refrigerant instead of water in a 100% passive system without the need for a pump to circulate the fluid.

 

https://www.calyos-tm.com/technologies/loop-heat-pipes

 

It doesn't appear they have any off the shelf products, so anything they offer would be custom made and probably very expensive.

 

 

 

 

Out of curiosity, I reached out to Calyos and inquired if they also do solutions for normal consumers but unfortunately they only do B2B. 

[baconbrain]

12 hours ago, MarcelNL said:

Question, does anyone know the TDP/Watt rating for th eheatsinks in their dual Xeon (85W TDP) build?

Are you referring to the Taiko DIY chassis?

[baconbrain]

6 minutes ago, Nenon said:

So while I am not not answering your question directly, the point is GO BIG and oversize your cooling. Get the best cooling system that you can. 

+1 Completely agree.

 

[baconbrain]

6 minutes ago, MarcelNL said:

Thanks for confirming what I was thinking..I'll skip trying one heatsink and will use both....will make for an interesting chassis when it gets to that as I expect it to be a tad larger than the Extreme itself ;-)

 

I noticed the same with my current builds, a lower core temperature makes for a better sound, weird as it may seem....

 

I have a bundle of heatpipes each capable of approx 100 watt lying around for the final build (here shorter is clearly better), just have to see if there are enough to fill two 8 slot heatsink adapters...I have good faith in the HDPlex heatpipe adapter block made out of copper, each weighs a kilo. Getting heat to the heatsink should work nicely, and a 300W heatsink per CPU ought to be oversizing things ;-)

 

 

Good idea.

 

IMO (and for my specific use case), the out of the box Taiko provided one sided cooling solution for their DIY chasiss is not optimal .  

[baconbrain]

10 hours ago, drjimwillie said:

What is delidded , please?

 

Do you use a NM torque wrench to tighten your CPUs?
 

in the Taiko DIY chassis, there was documentation that specified how to fasten the CPU. There was a bolt pattern to follow, and it gave a specific  torque. 
 

i’m trying to determine if I have to buy a very small, digital torque wrench.

 

I purchased a torque wrench specifically for the task, and by following the Taiko instructions, it worked like a charm. A small  investment but no headaches.

[baconbrain]

23 hours ago, littlej0e said:

 

• Cooling. The passive CPU cooling system included with the Taiko DIY chassis simply couldn't handle the heat from the higher core CPUs (especially under Windows tweaked with selective real-time kernel processing). I ended up trying all sorts of crazy alternatives; suspended fan arrays, heat absorbing gel pads, etc. until I arrived on a custom water-cooling solution. It works beautifully and offers more precise CPU temperature control, but a well-engineered passive cooling system is still definitely the way to go

 

Interesting, would you mind sharing a few details?

[baconbrain]

50 minutes ago, littlej0e said:

 

Absolutely, but keep in mind I do no recommend going this route. The water cooling system requires semi-regular maintenance and a passive cooling design is just better and safer. I'll send pictures in a couple of weeks when I return from my business trip.  

 

The problem with the vast majority of traditional all-in-one (AIO) water coolers is they are designed with the pump housing coupled directly to the CPU cooling block. This combined with active radiator fans transfers a lot of vibration to the chassis. After experimenting with some alternatives, the best solution I found was to use an external industrial-grade cooler that allowed for de-coupling of the pumps, fans and radiators from the chassis. This doesn't remove all vibration, but gets pretty darn close. The main benefits of this approach are:

• You can use any CPU you wish, up to the max voltage supported by the motherboard. I'm using two Platinum 8164 w/26C/150W each, but the Gold 6148s/20C/150W seem to be the sweet spot. 
• Offers more precise CPU temperature control. I haven't experimented with finding sonically optimal CPU temps yet, but it's on my to do list. 
• Allows for experimentation with CPU overclocking (though I discovered underclocking to the lowest achievable base clock tends to result in the best sound).
• Allows for integrated upsampling with HQPlayer. However, just because you can, doesn't mean you should! Upsampling generates a lot of noise and can substantially degrade audio performance at this level. The right way to implement upsampling in this scenario would be to use a separate upscalling machine all together (i.e. a bastardized, but much more powerful, DIY version of a Chord M-scaler).
• Allows for dual use of the server as a screaming fast PGGB 256 processing machine (hint: use separate BIOS and Process Lasso profiles for this as PGGB tends to consume all available resources during processing and will melt your server if you aren't careful!!!). 

Lastly, I must reiterate the drawbacks to water cooling are many. Go passive...it is much safer and sounds better. That said, the full inventory for my cooling system is below. These components were specifically chosen for durability and longevity: 

Subtotal

1,021.53

Wow, thanks for the very detailed response!

 

How loud is the orbiter?

[baconbrain]

12 hours ago, littlej0e said:

I hope Taiko will make their proprietary USB drivers available after releasing the TACD cards. I assume the USB card is largely plug-and-play, but without Windows driver optimizations it could significantly limit performance and therefore viability in the used market.

Unless there has been a recent change, I believe Taiko officially stated that their USB drivers will not be provided ... ☹️ 

 

 

[baconbrain]

20 minutes ago, Nenon said:

Just the clear up some confusion... The Taiko USB card does not need any drivers to run on Linux (assuming it does not have a super old kernel) or on any recent Windows version. 

 

The USB driver is for the DAC. Most DAC's use the XMOS2 USB interface (some use Amanero and there are a couple other odd ones). 

 

If you are using Linux, you don't need any drivers for the DAC either. That's kind of a disadvantage for Linux, though. 

If you are using Windows, you might be able to replace the default drivers with the Thesycon USB drivers that sound better. That's one big advantage of using Windows. Taiko has taken the Thesycon USB drivers to another lever. And that will probably stay Taiko propriate. 

 

While you may not have the full advantage a Taiko Extreme with XDMS and and the Taiko USB card still sounds better than anything else I have tested. 

My bad. What I was referring to was the USB Profiles which I believe will not be made available.

[baconbrain]

Perhaps I am missing something around Taiko’s Tacdda solution, but isn’t a DAC only as good as it’s analog output stage? If so, how will Taiko fit such on a PCiE card?

[baconbrain]

3 hours ago, MarcelNL said:

a lot of booting and swapping RDIMM sticks...voltage listed for all rdimm slots looks OK, but slots A B and C show 0 GB.

one EPS cable and ATX connected, should IMO be plenty....

I had the mb working using the standard fan coolers, with 4 sticks in the suggested slots, so either the 4 RAM sticks that arrived later (exactly the same) are duds or there is something else wrong.....

 

If you had it running with the 4 original sticks of RAM, then it shouldn’t be an issue related to an improperly seated CPU or Power. 

 

My guess is that your second batch of RAM has a problem…