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DIY Project High Performance Audio PC with high quality wiring


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  • 2 months later...
  • 3 months later...
On 11/8/2020 at 3:37 PM, StreamFidelity said:

I became aware of Solarflare through these report:

Thanks a lot for this. At first there were unfortunately some failures. The Solarflaire Series 7000 could not be operated in the fanless audio PC. These cards just get too hot and then switch off. But what I had heard so far in terms of clarity and transparency left me with no rest. And so I ordered a brand new card from the 8000 series: XILINX Solarflare Flareon Ultra SFN8522 - network adapter - PCIe 3.1 - 10 Gigabit SFP +.

 

This card has an even larger heat sink and is generally very large.

 

 

39819351os.jpeg

 

 

The back is also well equipped.

 

 

39819349gq.jpeg

 

Ventilation

 

In the accompanying note it was pointed out that a fan with at least 200 rpm is required for cooling. That made me worry, of course, because there is no such thing in the fanless fis Audio PC. On the other hand, 200 rpm is very low. A 24h burn-in test has so far shown no abnormalities. Due to the principle of convection (chimney effect), warm air escapes upwards through the ventilation slots and draws cold air after it. That seems to be enough.

 

Installed it looks like this (the map on the right). The air supply is important. The left empty slot will be equipped with another card in due course. So there follows another report. 😉

 

 

39820211lm.jpeg

 

Specifications

 

All eight PCIe lanes are used for data connection to the CPU, so a slot with a direct connection to the CPU is recommended. The latency is reportedly in the very low range of less than 1μsec.

 

According to hearsay, Solartech network cards are also used for high-frequency trading on the stock exchange. 😁

 

The product letter can be downloaded from XILINX.
 

Drivers and manuals

 

The drivers are available here. The Windows Server drivers also work perfectly in Windows 10 Pro. The manual is extensive as usual with around 300 pages. There are even recommendations for low latencies.

 

Of course there was try & error

 

- PCI Express Lane Configuration
Ensure the adapter is in an x8 slot (PCIe Gen 2.0 or PCIe Gen 3.x) or x16 slot.
Bad trap. At the beginning I got a slot with x4. Of course it didn't work.

 

- Transceiver
My previous SF transceiver module 10GBASE-LR SFP + 1310nm 10km did not work. But the Startech 1000BASE-EX SFP -SM LC-40 KM transceiver. Those are the pitfalls with fiber optics.

 

- BIOS
The Solartech card enables some settings in the BIOS. I got this when my audio PC no longer booted after being switched off and went into Power Safe mode. That's always stupid, because then I can no longer work remotely, but instead had to connect a screen with a mouse and keyboard. Deactivating the UEFI boot via Ethernet solved the problem.

 

My setup

 

39820123zi.png

 

The picture shows the calm flow of data. No nervous fidgeting like with unconfigured onboard network adapters.

 

39819343oi.jpeg

 

Sound description

 

The sound is just addicting. A sensational speed. Flamenco or drums are a real delight. This clarity and exactness of the tones are for me the best so far that I have heard on my system. The separation of instruments is outstanding, combined with excellent spatiality. And the whole thing garnished with a beautiful flow of music without any sharpness. Despite the high resolution, voices have a nice melt and the bass is deep and precise.

Which card you saving a slot for? :-)  any comparisons against older cards, say net femto?

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  • 5 months later...
  • 1 year later...
2 hours ago, Gavin1977 said:

It would be good to compare this against 10980/10900 HEDT processors which a lot of people use but are difficult thermally

And DDR5 seems to have poorer latency compared to DDR4.  https://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/core_i9_12900k_ddr4_versus_ddr5_performance_review,16.html

 

The HEDT platforms have quad channel memory, Z790 only dual channel....

 

I think memory arcitecture differences will be interesting to evaluate.  Improved cache and latency on 13900k might negate differences?

 

The higher bandwidth of 13900k might remove the need for quad channel:

 

https://www.whatsbestforum.com/threads/best-music-software.25137/post-541299

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Good choice with 13900KF - always sounds better without onboard GPU.  I’m just wondering if some of the cores could be disabled to get within the power bracket of HDPlex chassis.

 

I’ll check out the g-skill.  60ns latency, I think the best DDR4 managed to get ~40ns?

 

Just a question of what is more important, latency or bandwidth?  Perhaps a slight loss in latency doesn’t really matter…

 

Good that it has on-die ECC!

 

 

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Thanks once again - Looks like DDR5 does do quad channel (two channels per DIMM), 10900 series was quad channel and provided an uptick in sound quality by all accounts.

 

I've been using APacer since 2020, DDR4:2666 and CL22 - this new G.Skill Trident Z5 NEO black DIMM Kit 32GB bests the APacer on latency. 10ns vs 16ns.  Things have moved on...

 

APacers new DDR5 AU16GHB48CTBBGH?  A bit slower then the G.Skill..... no wide temperature models anymore....

 

The motherboards aren't cheep though: ROG MAXIMUS Z690 APEX, ROG MAXIMUS Z690 EXTREME... probably very little benefit going to Z790 (such as ROG MAXIMUS Z790 EXTREME) for our application when the above can be purchased cheaper.

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 10/22/2022 at 11:13 AM, StreamFidelity said:

DDR5 indeed had to struggle with very bad latencies in the beginning. Meanwhile, the CAS latency CL is often at a low 10.00ns. E.g. G.Skill Trident Z5 NEO black DIMM Kit 32GB, DDR5-5600, CL28-34-34-89.

New out today:  https://www.gskill.com/specification/165/374/1665644656/F5-7200J3445G16GX2-TZ5RK-Specification

 

Also has latency <10ns.

 

A fair bit more than the Trident Z5 NEO black suggested above however.  But quite a large increase in bandwidth.

 

I don't think there are any other better options at this stage.

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