Building a DIY Music Server

[Topk]

30 minutes ago, StreamFidelity said:

 

Many Thanks. I'll just try it out now. 👍

Please do report, I’m interested to know what you and others find out:

- I would start on the long connector side. If the effect is too strong, just flip the card on the short side. If you like what you hear, just add more...

- There’s a burn in period

- I disable the LEDs on the card (switches), “just because”

- if you want to close the lid of the H5, you will need to cut off the connector side you don’t use since it sticks out

Stating the obvious: no affiliation whatsoever with EF or audiophonics or Jcat.

product description:

“The AXF-107 module from Elfidelity is a switch mode power supply filter for computers connected in PCI Express or PCI Express 16x and designed to provide cleaner power to all connected cards (sound card, interfaces, GPU...).

Developed by Elfidelity, this product provides a HiFi solution to the noise problem of switched-mode power supplies equipping the vast majority of computers. Its careful architecture includes muRata and TDK inductors to reduce EMI interference, Sanyo SVPF Polymer capacitors, AVX Tantalum capacitors, WIMA MKP-10 capacitors or EVOX MMK Metal capacitors. Two groups of RGB LEDs can be controlled independently, with 7 colors available. Moreover, its installation is very simple since no driver is required.”

[Blackmorec]

3 hours ago, MarcelNL said:

Thanks for that insight!

I'll make another EPS cable with the Mundorf and will burn that in separately, I did listen to the analog interlink I made with the Mundorf wire for 2 months

I can see how you arrive at saying it's 3D  and transparent, I found it very 'forward' in the beginning, it all became more homogenous after 4-6 weeks but in a final comparison after 2 months (constantly burning in) I found it too 'ringy'. Perhaps it fares better as power cable. 

Hi Marcel,

I’ve only used the Mundorf cable in DC applications. Having said that i’ve used it extensively for 6 DC cables and 4 fully wired LPSs.  I get exactly what you’re saying about the upper midrange emphasis,  because that’s exactly how it sounds during the mid to latter break-in period, but once fully broken in that translates into resolved space, which is what delivers the purity and holographic nature.  In my experience, whatever sounds the worst during break-in are where the majority of gains lie once the break-in process is complete. For example, beautifully deep and solid, richly timbered bass that you can feel often starts with quite some emphasis, like your room has a bass node.  Power cables do this all the time, which is why I usually break them in using fans and IEC adaptors.

[MarcelNL]

yeah breaking in does strange things, I am aware! This effect however resembled silver coated copper in teflon wire effect after a good 2 months too much to my liking, perhaps I cut the break in short (the described effect never goes away with silver teflon).

Same player shoots again...not looking forward to insulating 8 lengths of bare wire again, it's a bit of a nuisance...

[ASRMichael]

I’ve decided to keep Hyper Threading on. Was straight forward compare. Having dual bios chip helps to quickly switch back & forth. HT seems more free & airy to me. 
 

For some reason HT seems few db higher. Weird...

[mikicasellas]

Looking for a replacement:

 

I just putted an Intel i7-10700K + Asus Rog Strix Z490-E but the ASUS MoBo was damaged so i returned to AMAZON.

 

I have been looking at several MoBo from Gigabyte and ASUS with characteristics like number of power phases and PCIE slots & m.2 from CPU:

 

GIGABYTE AORUS Master Z490

GIGABYTE AORUS master Z590

GIGABYTE Vision G & D in both Z490 - Z590

to name some...

 

Has anyone experienced any of these with Intel 10th generation ? i wonder how do they stack against the ASUS ROG STRIX Z490-E

 

Great week everyone !!

[ASRMichael]

2 hours ago, mikicasellas said:

Looking for a replacement:

 

I just putted an Intel i7-10700K + Asus Rog Strix Z490-E but the ASUS MoBo was damaged so i returned to AMAZON.

 

I have been looking at several MoBo from Gigabyte and ASUS with characteristics like number of power phases and PCIE slots & m.2 from CPU:

 

GIGABYTE AORUS Master Z490

GIGABYTE AORUS master Z590

GIGABYTE Vision G & D in both Z490 - Z590

to name some...

 

Has anyone experienced any of these with Intel 10th generation ? i wonder how do they stack against the ASUS ROG STRIX Z490-E

 

Great week everyone !!

Based on a few posts above the Aorus is certainly an option. Read last few pages of this thread. 

[mikicasellas]

3 hours ago, ASRMichael said:

Based on a few posts above the Aorus is certainly an option. Read last few pages of this thread. 

Thanks

 

It seems AORUS has more to give to AMD processors

[kelvinwsy]

I hv the Aorus Ultra Z490 with the 10700k ! Overclockong is a breeze! You need to feed the MB VRMS with a ATX PSU of at least 850watt.. SQ with Hqplayer 4.13?? gives thumping bass, Soaring clean highs and very prominent Mids.. Great PRAT! Though wished i had paid more for tge Aorus Master with better VRMS! 

[mikicasellas]

2 hours ago, kelvinwsy said:

I hv the Aorus Ultra Z490 with the 10700k ! Overclockong is a breeze! You need to feed the MB VRMS with a ATX PSU of at least 850watt.. SQ with Hqplayer 4.13?? gives thumping bass, Soaring clean highs and very prominent Mids.. Great PRAT! Though wished i had paid more for tge Aorus Master with better VRMS! 

The Z590 Aorus Master & VISION D uses 2 PCIE  Express x8 from CPU & 1 - M.2 from CPU too, looks appealing it seems better than the Z490 that lacks of M.2 from CPU, Z590 it claims to be compatible with 10th GEN too, but not so sure if those characteristics are 100% for the 10th or only for 11Th generation:

 

 

 

 

[mikicasellas]

The Aorus Ultra Z590 over the Z490 has also the advantage of the M.2 from CPU too:

 

 

[kelvinwsy]

The problem that I have with the Aorus Ultra Z490 is that ONLY the lowest PCIe slot is compatible wiht 1x4 Audiophile USB PCIE plug in cards. I thought it was a driver issue or something similar. But with both of my SHAAR USB 3.0 and Matrix Elements  PCie cards, only the lowest slot will have the OS be able to identify the presence of the USB PCIE plug in card.

 

So for me it is not whether the PCIe card is linked to the CPU directly; first and foremost the USB PCIe card Must work. I have tried PCie riser cables, PCIe plug in extension cards etc etc... Only the lowest slot works. 

I tried it with the Ethernet plug in card TPLink Gigabit Pcie card - same result only works in the lowest slot. 

I see that the higher range ASUS ROG MB has a dedicated 1x4 PCIE slot. That will be what I would upgrade to for my next 11th Gen Intel PC. or a AMD 5900 PC...

 

 

[Ryelands]

On 4/5/2021 at 10:47 AM, MarcelNL said:

as far as I can tell the Elfidelity device is simply a bunch of capacitors stuck on a PCIe circuit board.

Essentially, it's just that except that it uses three different types of capacitor plus inductors, etc. It's a bit more than 'a bunch of capacitors' and IME (albeit in a slightly different context than here) very effective. Ditto BTW for Elfidelity's other products, all of which are passive devices.

 

On 4/5/2021 at 10:47 AM, MarcelNL said:

Using a clean PSU and a decent MB combined with as much externally powered add ons will probably be the best solution for the near future.

Hopefully, other folk will report back in due course. Meanwhile, I've compared 'a bunch of capacitors' (admittedly not of the best quality) with Elfidelity boards on a server using a Seasonic Prime Titanium ATX PSU. The Elfidelity thingies were significantly better. YMMV and all that . . .

 

Dave

[MarcelNL]

54 minutes ago, Ryelands said:

Essentially, it's just that except that it uses three different types of capacitor plus inductors, etc. It's a bit more than 'a bunch of capacitors' and IME (albeit in a slightly different context than here) very effective. Ditto BTW for Elfidelity's other products, all of which are passive devices.

 

Hopefully, other folk will report back in due course. Meanwhile, I've compared 'a bunch of capacitors' (admittedly not of the best quality) with Elfidelity boards on a server using a Seasonic Prime Titanium ATX PSU. The Elfidelity thingies were significantly better. YMMV and all that . . .

 

Dave

interesting, quick question; did you place your 'bunch of caps' in the PCIe slot or across the power wire loom and if so which one?

I found that replacing the EPS cable wire made much more of an impact than the dreaded 24pin cable.

 

I can imagine that we need to cover both the power loom AND the MB separately with 'a bunch of caps' as the MB contains more active components creating new noise. 

[Ryelands]

4 hours ago, MarcelNL said:

did you place your 'bunch of caps' in the PCIe slot or across the power wire loom and if so which one?

My hair-shirt server 'design' is so different to that being developed here that I'm not sure how helpful comparisons might be. That said, I've found that the P4 line on the various mobos I've used over the years is almost certainly the most fruitful place to start.

 

I first experimented with a separate linear PSU for it about ten years ago. I'm currently using one of those 10,000uF 'slit foil' caps meant for fancy amps and a DIY'd noise-cancelling cable based on (OK, plagiarised from) a Shunyata leaflet.  For the P24 socket, I made up some years back a paddle board with caps for each line but now use a Pico-PSU powered from one of the Seasonic's 12v outputs so the paddle-board is gathering dust. (I did it to save space but the resulting SQ improvement was very welcome.)

 

Whatever, my main point was that the Elfidelity boards are well designed, well made, reasonably priced and IME effective. I'm currently using their PCIe, RAM and USB filters. I also recently devised a Shunyata-style cable  for SATA power lines c/w in-line caps but, though it too is strikingly effective, connecting them to HDDs via Elfidelity filters gives a significant SQ pop.

 

HTH

 

Dave

 

[MarcelNL]

slit foil and sic safco, memories of the past (building a Le Monstre amp with 1.5F and 2 car batteries)

[mikicasellas]

17 hours ago, kelvinwsy said:

The problem that I have with the Aorus Ultra Z490 is that ONLY the lowest PCIe slot is compatible wiht 1x4 Audiophile USB PCIE plug in cards. I thought it was a driver issue or something similar. But with both of my SHAAR USB 3.0 and Matrix Elements  PCie cards, only the lowest slot will have the OS be able to identify the presence of the USB PCIE plug in card.

 

So for me it is not whether the PCIe card is linked to the CPU directly; first and foremost the USB PCIe card Must work. I have tried PCie riser cables, PCIe plug in extension cards etc etc... Only the lowest slot works. 

I tried it with the Ethernet plug in card TPLink Gigabit Pcie card - same result only works in the lowest slot. 

I see that the higher range ASUS ROG MB has a dedicated 1x4 PCIE slot. That will be what I would upgrade to for my next 11th Gen Intel PC. or a AMD 5900 PC...

 

 

So, what did GIGABYTE respond to this ?

[MarcelNL]

Gigabyte is probably not very good at responding, they were unable/unwilling to answer my question about memory channels....my MB (Aorus elite) does not boot with UDIMM's in the two spots laid out on the MB and manual. The response basically was a repetition of asking details (already provided).

[kelvinwsy]

The setting in the BIOS is supposed to give the user choice of backward compatibility with older PCE 1x4 and 1x8 devices. Tried the 3 options. None worked. Even bought a PCIE riser with extension card to try.. Only the lowest slot which is universal 1x4, 1x8 and 1x16 works with my PCIE usb cards/ethernet TPLink gigabit cards. So next MBO upgrade I go with ASUS.

 

[MarcelNL]

On my Aorus Elite all cards that fit work in the PCIe slots, goes for the Xilinx Solarflare and the Pink Faun I2S out card. Did you try disabling USB/Ethernet in BIOS? (Bios updated to latest stable version?) 

[kelvinwsy]

Ok maybe I try that . Don't see why that should matter. USB Controller should read all USB/USB Compatible devices. I thought it was just WinServer 2019 OS I was using. I tried the USB PCIE cards in my Lenovo 6700k older PC running plain Win 10 PRO and it is only the 1x4 slots that will work. And also only the lower one 1x4 slot will work. 

And if I disable my USB that all my wireless switchboard and mouse will all stop working. No not a long term solution. I do not use the HQPlayer Server 4.0 in headless mode. Just direct USB Connection which I find that if you handle all the power filtering of the ATX PSU, SSD's all on LT3045 power direct injected, isolate all cooling fans/AIO on a separate power source only taking the PWM signal for control than the Direct Mode is VERY VERY punchy, excellent PRAT will no high frequencies hardness. Smooth soaring highs all the way.

I will try it anyway this weekend and report back. Not much hope either way.

Thanks for the suggestion - Not very comfortable doing a BIOS update - dont want to brick the PC and then I have to do a CMOS hard BIOS reset - All my software settings will be affected. UGH.... Let me see what happens this weekend...

[MarcelNL]

on the Elite I can comfortably change settings and save them in a profile in Bios , also ; updating BIOS is really simple using a USB stick and the push of one button (no I don't work for GB ;-) )

It's just a suggestion to do troubleshooting, in the Elite Bios I can disable several USB groups just see if it helps.

 

If I read you correctly the USB CArd only works in the lower 4x slot in another computer (different MB?) too? Isn't that indicating it's the card rather than the MB?

 

[mikicasellas]

With the i7-10700K and having returned the Rog Strix Z490-E, im towards the Z590 which are compatible with my actual CPU and easier to upgrade to Gen 11th, so far these are the ones that im trying to decide.

 

- Asus Motherboard Intel Z590, ROG Maximus XIII Hero.....$499.99

- Gigabyte Z590 AORUS Master...........................................$409.00

- Asus Motherboard Intel Z590, ROG Strix Z590-E..............$379.00

- Gigabyte Z590 AORUS Ultra...............................................$319.00

 

Much of the differences that i have read is about more connectivity, internal audio, VRM and fans on the costlier ones, im willing to get any of these ($$) if they really have something to add in the final performance of the audio signal.

 

Any suggestions ?

 

Thanks !!

 

 

[MarcelNL]

forget the internal audio and blinking led's, try to go for NO fans. Knowing what I know now I would get the one at your budget that has the max number of memory channels, most proper (no doublers) VRMs, the amount of PCIe slots you need (or will need) to use stuff like a dedicated (i.e Xilinx Solarflare or Jcat etc) network card, a Graphics card, and a decent output card with separate PSU...(USB I2S SSPDIF, whichever rocks your boat) and perhaps a bit of PCIe SSD like Optane or Sabrent. Others may have different considerations for a wish list, so YMMV....

[Exocer]

1 hour ago, mikicasellas said:

Asus Motherboard Intel Z590, ROG Maximus XIII Hero.....$499.99

I am no VRM pro and may have missed some data points in the recent VRM dialogue in this thread, but, the VRM for the Maximus XIII Hero seems interesting:

 

"The ASUS ROG Maximus XIII Hero features a 8-phase VRM configuration using a parallel—or "Teamed"—power-stage design. Two Texas Instruments 95410 power stages run in parallel for each phase, which gives ASUS double the power-handling capability without using any doublers."

 

If I had to choose from the above listed board this would be my choice.

[lmitche]

18 hours ago, mikicasellas said:

With the i7-10700K and having returned the Rog Strix Z490-E, im towards the Z590 which are compatible with my actual CPU and easier to upgrade to Gen 11th, so far these are the ones that im trying to decide.

 

- Asus Motherboard Intel Z590, ROG Maximus XIII Hero.....$499.99

- Gigabyte Z590 AORUS Master...........................................$409.00

- Asus Motherboard Intel Z590, ROG Strix Z590-E..............$379.00

- Gigabyte Z590 AORUS Ultra...............................................$319.00

 

Much of the differences that i have read is about more connectivity, internal audio, VRM and fans on the costlier ones, im willing to get any of these ($$) if they really have something to add in the final performance of the audio signal.

 

Any suggestions ?

 

Thanks !!

 

 

Mike,

 

Which OS and music player are you running?