Building a DIY Music Server

[MarcelNL]

now to tackle one of the last hurdles; passive cooling of the Solarflare, already got the heatpipes and clasp, now to find the adapter plates and tinker the heatpipes to a suitable heatsink...

Think I'll just drill 4 holes and tap M3 thread to hold the clasp in place

 

 

 

[MarcelNL]

you are right IMO, we all need to spend more for the hobby ;-)

 

the good news is that one can DIY a case too (or do without)

[MarcelNL]

well, the new MB is a bit of a hassle.....turns out that using three PCIe cards and two NVME disks is a problem....that is on direct PCI lanes. SO I probably will have to put the second NVME disk in the M2 DIMM adapter.

 

Also, the Solarflare is not working yet, upon first startup it wanted to do a network boot and I got a setup message that I used to switch off PXE boot (that also was automatically set in BIOS) but now it does activate briefly but no network communication...probably will have to digup the solarflare setup tool and run that from a linux boot USB...

[MarcelNL]

Yeah I know how they solved it, I planned to do something similar, problem is the space to re-use those spring loaded clips is just not right..4 M3 bolts should work...for now I'm battling the MB Bios to get the Solarflare recognized....I may have to ditch the second NVME disc to get the PCIe16/8 slot to work properly....once that is done I'll pick up the passive cooling project

[MarcelNL]

the new MB has an interesting feature I'm trying to wrap my head around, but it sounds potentially interesting for dynamics:-)

 

"Voltage suspension' basically a.o. allows you to limit voltage drops under peaks, guess the screen will remain attached to the server for a while to come.

[MarcelNL]

based on what I'm hearing Core precision overboost is gonna stay :-)

[MarcelNL]

29 minutes ago, AudioDoctor said:

 

AMD Motherboard?

surely, it's only a few Asus motherboards that can do this trick as far as I know

 

Asus ROG Crosshair VIII Extreme

[MarcelNL]

24 minutes ago, AudioDoctor said:

 

I have the Asus X670e pro art, so I am going to go turn that on and see what happens.

looking forward to your experience!

[MarcelNL]

6 hours ago, JJSim said:

 

That's what I expected. I was reading an article that mentioned they have military contracts, so not surprising they don't cater to the consumer market.

 

And so, the search for passive cooling solutions continues...

what unmet need do you have? As in what TDP are you thinking of using?

[MarcelNL]

1 hour ago, RGBK said:

Is this in some way related to the "little brother" asus rog crosshair viii dark heros "precision boost overdrive"?

It is, from what I understand this version takes things a little further, but it does something like allow voltage swings to be larger than strictly allowed withing 'normal' parameters, making higher frequency peaks possible in a dynamic way looking a.o. core temp....or at least, that is how I undersrand it...  CPU voodoo I'll gladly accept if it works , and it seems so...we'll do some critical listening with more ears in the room than mine during Fridays mini audio meet...for me it's a winner.

 

One of the AMD techies explains it  here;

 

 

[MarcelNL]

guess it's this;

 

[MarcelNL]

I need a proper overclocking nerd audiophile...there are way too many options to tweak and not enough hours in a day to listen through it all....

[MarcelNL]

135W TDP is doable, I'm using a regular passive airflow heatsink rated at 300W and my temps are a rock solid 40'C

Biggest downside to regular heatsinks is that you have to route the grooves for the heatpipes in DIY, we used a regular router with a 3mm radius bit. Aluminum routes a bit choppy but it works.

 

If you plan on using 2 Intel CPUs you may need a heatsink for each or go for a larger one.

 

I have bought a heat pipe clasp from ebay, the shop will do custom designs when asked, heatpipes are available at pharmacy prices through mouser et al or at more reasonable prices at Ali (various lengths.

The clamp I'm using to keep the heat pipe adapter on the CPU is the regular backing plate with a piece of 1/2 inch thick copper plate with 4 hole drilled into it, M4 bolts and nuts.

[MarcelNL]

23 minutes ago, RGBK said:

How is the direct to CPU connections on that BIG MB?

Minimum need direct CPU-connectivity to M.2 Femto, PCIe Solarflare X2522 NIC, and the upcoming Taiko PCIe DAC card. But those 3 I absolutely want to be connected directly to CPU, with good bandwidth.

that is what I'm still battling with....there is a confusing sharing system but it should be possible

I have the I2S PF bridge in one PCIE slot direct to CPU, and a graphics card in the 1x slot and the Solarflare in the other PCIe slot but it does not function.... yet, and only the femto NVME currently works, not the M.2 -3 NVME slot..have to take the whole thing out of it's cat proof cage to tinker but with the internal intel NIC it sounds very good!

[MarcelNL]

28 minutes ago, RGBK said:

Sooo, the 570 generation EATX Extreme MB seems to have: 4 more power stages but same 90A rating, more poweful bios tweaking, but is weaker regarding two independent/full/good bandwidth PCIe connections straight to CPU (this is in comparison to Asus "second from the top" 570 Dark Hero ATX MB)?

I for sure will follow your hard work regarding the "independent" PCIe direct to CPU aspect :)

 

Many thanks for sharing Marcel

that may well be true, it's a true gamers MB so where I'd like all PCI lanes to go to the three slots they have connected some to SATA and USB3 slots...it should still all work, the PF HEA I2S bridge surely does not need 16x, I'm using a 1x16riser for the video card...now to get the storage NVME disk to work and the Solarflare NIC.

The Solarflare tried booting, somehow the MB automatically chose PXE mode, I switched that off but after that it's dead weigth...guess I have to dive into SFBOOT again to check.

 

The storage SSD can also be mounted on a DRAM adapter, since I always play from RAM that probably will not hurt anything,

 

Switching off SATA etc in BIOS does a lot for sound though!

Now playing with precision overboost and voltage limiter/current based dynamic OC...(need a resident OC nerd here to tell us what settings would be great for low latency and dynamic responses)

 

[MarcelNL]

14 hours ago, AudioDoctor said:

Apacer is the first I have seen to come out with DDR5 ECC UDIMM memory that runs faster than the base of 4800MHZ.

https://www.apacer.com/en/product/industrial-product/detail/industrial_dram/fully_lead_free_ddr5_ecc_udimm
 

HQPlayer likes fast RAM

 

edit: ASUS claims that ALL B650 and X670 boards support ECC UDIMM RAM as long as you're using an "X" series Ryzen CPU.

watch out for the latency, usually 'early' RAM lacks good latency, somehow...

[MarcelNL]

13 hours ago, Superdad said:

 

Maybe you and the HQP people need to move towards quantum computers.

 I have a friend that worked for Rigetti for a while. This:

 

 

 

 

 

[MarcelNL]

I find myself on a crossroad, and am contemplating building a dual Xeon server ....what I'm a bit hesitant about is the OS tinkering it may require and finding a cooling solution...(that is a non standard aluminium cooling solution, I do not want the HDPlex or Taiko case)

 

edit ;The HDPlex heatpipe system for HDPLex H5 looks NICE though...I'll shoot Larry an email if that can be bought separately...

 

Anyone with a link to a heatpipe adapter clasp? (I have 6mm heatpipes in stock and two AMD 4 type heatpipe clasps that might have enough surface area to work, but I'm not sure if the Sage MB has convenient holes are a CPU clamp I could repurpose...zoomed in pics of a build are appreciated (will search this monsterthread too)

[MarcelNL]

yeah, email sent!

 

I have an adequate heatsink with 3 grooves, but I'll likely need to do another run with the router with the spare heatsink (300W) but first I need a heat pipe adapter.

 

Nice copper plates to clamp them to the heatsink!

[MarcelNL]

4 minutes ago, SK8 said:

Something like this?

yep, spot on!

 

 

just found the dimensions for the XEON 4210 , 76mm by 56mm, only issue except this clas might be a tad small might be that I'm not clear how the XEOn is mounted in the MB and how a heat sink/het pipe adapter is mounted....it'll become clear....

 

 

[MarcelNL]

44 minutes ago, SK8 said:

You need 2 pieces of this type of copper heatsink for 1 CPU with the 6 grooves connecting with another 6 grooves side by side.

 

The mounting for the HDPlex heatsink is like this. Larry will give you one set of the mounting plates for each heatsink, but I made 2 stainless steel sets for my 4210s.

that means 12 heatpipes per CPU? I'm now using 6 for a 125W TDP CPU? Or do you mean we need the surface area of two of these clasps to cover the XEON surface, and use like 6-8 heatpipes to transfer heat?

 

I'm using a 1cm thick copper plate with holes drilled through it to mount the heatpipe clasp on the MB, seems a similar approach would work here too...guess I need to order the Sage MB to see it in detail...

 

edit; the Heatsink is the piece to which the heatpipes connect, the CPU to heatpipe connector is what I'm trying to figure out. I have a heatsink that should be good, if need be I have two.

 

 

[MarcelNL]

1 hour ago, Smackers said:

Hey gang just stumbled upon something interesting; Not all CPU’s use solder connections but the ones that does befinifit more from passive cooling. 

I can imagine that a solder connection, which essentially is a semi conductor as well as a conductor, benefits from less vibration. But where did you find that info?  

[MarcelNL]

8 minutes ago, Smackers said:

This info will affect what xeon cpu I’ll purchase seeing a 95c tdp do better in some cases to a 65c one

 

Also guys I’ve seen a lot of praise for the Intel i350 t2v2 card… Now I see that card on an auction site here in Sweden but It’s labeled ”Dell 424RR Intel I350 T2 2”… New to this but is it the same card or basically a copy? 🤔

often/always/most computer manufacturers buy OEM stuff, the tricky bit is to find out what firmware it's running and what options you have to change that or adapt the settings....you'll need an IT whizz for that.

 

 

I'm favoring fiber internet over UTP/STP for a while now.

F.e.; the SFP modules I'm using are also made for Cisco by Finisar , but those for Cisco are 'coded' so they only work on Cisco gear (and Cisco coded FSP modules likely will not work anywhere else)

Solarflare X2522 but I haven't done a head to head, I reckon there are differences, in the nuances. 

[MarcelNL]

On a whole different train of thought....is it possible to operate one CPU with one type of RAM and the other with something else on a dual CPU server MB using 2nd gen Xeon CPU or is memory managed simultaneously?

Can you use more RAM for one CPU than the other?

 

 

shoot, I'll have to start reading up on this stuff...

 

 

 

[MarcelNL]

POWER is King and Queen in digital!  (Both CPU power and the quality of what and how it's fed)