DIY Project High Performance Audio PC with high quality wiring

[deanorthk]

I was going to do the exact base setup. I have found the Asus formula, but no 9900K, they are overpriced I think, so I am aiming at a 9700K, it's not as good but I hope that I can achieve something good with HQ player despite 8 core less.

[StreamFidelity]

16 hours ago, deanorthk said:

I have found the Asus formula, but no 9900K

Why not go straight to the latest 12th processor generation? These CPUs and Z690 motherboards are much more powerful. 

[ASRMichael]

9 minutes ago, StreamFidelity said:

Why not go straight to the latest 12th processor generation? These CPUs and Z690 motherboards are much more powerful. 

Hi any idea on sound quality difference with new Z690? Compared to Z490 & Z590? 

[StreamFidelity]

1 hour ago, ASRMichael said:

Hi any idea on sound quality difference with new Z690?

 

The difference between the 9th, 10th and 11th generation is not very big. The 11th generation was pretty big crap in terms of energy efficiency. 

 

Only with the 12th generation did some technical innovations have a very positive effect. There are P-cores and E-cores, which allow a better distribution of the workload. 

 

Intel 11th generation CPUs only used one IMC (Integrated Memory Controller). The 12th generation has two IMCs. This enables a higher data throughput due to parallel data processing. Even with DDR4 RAMs.

 

Source: https://www.igorslab.de/ddr5-deep-di...-der-praxis/2/

 

I now use a Motherboard MSI MPG-Z690-EDGE-WIFI-DDR4 with Z690 chip and direct 75W phase design. The BIOS is performant and the MB is very stable. 

 

Maybe not so important for low power systems. For high power systems, for example for the HQPlayer with DSD1024, a blessing. It sounds so organic and airy.

 

[deanorthk]

On 4/2/2022 at 2:58 PM, StreamFidelity said:

Why not go straight to the latest 12th processor generation? These CPUs and Z690 motherboards are much more powerful. 

It's purely a cost question, I did have the money, but just bought an old XVIIIish century farm in France, and I have kinda other priority:) 

And the 9900K/Z390 is not a bad combo, as is my I9 7900X for my gaming rig:)

[StreamFidelity]

8 minutes ago, deanorthk said:

but just bought an old XVIIIish century farm in France, and I have kinda other priority:) 

No Audio PC in the world can compete with a farm in France. Enjoy it. 👍

[deanorthk]

On 4/3/2022 at 6:25 PM, StreamFidelity said:

No Audio PC in the world can compete with a farm in France. Enjoy it. 👍

Just imagine if I have bought a medieval castle ^^

[Patatorz]

On 12/4/2021 at 6:26 PM, Nenon said:

 

Let us know how these perform. It will be good to have more alternatives.

Tell them that super low output impedance is a key. Even sub mOhm improvements are audible from my experience with this. 

 

Hello @Nenon, quick follow up on this topic. I’m waiting in the coming weeks an ULPS from Pachanko who finally designed one. Still looking for final specifications but it should be close to your V2 or V3 specification and a voltage output of 36V.

 

Good to see that more options would be available after Sean Jabobc, SoulAnalog, DIY etc…

[StreamFidelity]

For all those who are a bit annoyed by the subscription model of Euphony or Roon, there is a free alternative: HQPlayer OS. Of course, a valid HQPlayer Embedded license must be present. But it can be tested free of charge before (every 30min. a restart is required).

 

I wrote something about it here: Use HQPlayer as operating system and as standalone player.

[cpasmoi]

 

Hello

I want to share my experience also on a custom made plexiglass cover that made me save more than 10 degrees on the CPU

the holes were machined in strategic places by a small french company

cordially

cpasmoi

 

[The Computer Audiophile]

19 minutes ago, cpasmoi said:

 

Hello

I want to share my experience also on a custom made plexiglass cover that made me save more than 10 degrees on the CPU

the holes were machined in strategic places by a small french company

cordially

cpasmoi

 

Genius!

[davide256]

On 7/21/2022 at 4:55 AM, StreamFidelity said:

For all those who are a bit annoyed by the subscription model of Euphony or Roon, there is a free alternative: HQPlayer OS. Of course, a valid HQPlayer Embedded license must be present. But it can be tested free of charge before (every 30min. a restart is required).

 

I wrote something about it here: Use HQPlayer as operating system and as standalone player.

Thanks!  Already upgraded to v4 but should be easy enough to burn HQPe to a different USB attached M.2 drive and play around with it. While HQPe runs under Euphony,

Euphony was controlling drive access paths in v3 which was a PITA if you wanted to add/scan a library

[StreamFidelity]

Just in time for the sales launch on October 20, 2022, there are now a lot of reviews. Since I look to high computing performance, the flagship

 

Intel® Core™ i9-13900K(F) processor

 

is of increased interest for me.

 

Test results

 

My three german favorite sites have published interesting tests also and especially in comparison to the new Ryzen-7000 series and of course to the older Intel generations.

 

igorsLAB: Intel Core i9-13900K and Core i5-13600K in test - showdown of the 13th generation and a 3/4 crown for the last monolith

Quote

Now everyone will probably ask how the three-quarter crown in the title is actually meant. From a purely statistical point of view, it is a clear victory of the Core i9-13900K against the Ryzen 9 7950X in gaming, although life doesn't only consist of pure gaming. The Core i9-13900K often wins in the workstation and creation field, but not always. And even if it is even a bit more efficient than AMD's opponent Ryzen 9 7950X during gaming, it is still the favorite of every power supplier under full load during compute or rendering. Yes, it has truly earned the gaming crown, although the lead of up to 4 percentage points is not so huge that you could call it a landslide.

HardwareLUXX: The Intel dinosaur is not yet extinct - Core i9-13900K and Core i5-13600K in review

Quote

Positive aspects of the Intel Core i9-13900K:
- high single and multi-threaded performance
- fastest gaming processor
- good TDP scaling with power saving potential
Negative aspects of the Intel Core i9-13900K:
- high power consumption under full load
- high temperatures under full load

 

ComputerBase: Intel Raptor Lake in review: Core i9-13900K, i7-13700K & i5-13600K chase Ryzen 7000

Quote

AMD had presented with Ryzen 7000 (review) and delivered strong performance with four processors, but Intel's reaction is no less strong this year. In multi-core applications, AMD can just about save the plus at the upper performance end with the strong Zen 4 cores, but the Ryzen 5 7600X doesn't have enough of it compared to the Core i5-13600K. In terms of efficiency, AMD presents itself better positioned in applications with Ryzen 7000 both ex-factory and after manual adjustment, but in the lower price segment with Ryzen 7 and Ryzen 5, this duel is also close. On an extremely high performance level, Ryzen 7000 has "no chance" against Raptor Lake in games. No wonder that AMD is rumored to follow up with the Ryzen 7000X3D as early as in spring 2023.

 

The tests try to come to a meaningful result via synthetic benchmarks and application scenarios. And so IgorsLAB awards Intel a 3/4 crown. Thus, Intel scores very well in the majority of cases. However, if AMD performs better than Intel in the application scenarios required by the user, then even a 3/4 crown is of no use. For example, AMD can predominantly score with a better computing performance (3D rendering) under full multi-core utilization and with a better energy efficiency under full load.

I therefore like to take a particularly close look at the test sections that are interesting for me.

 

Energy efficiency 

 

For a fanless passively cooled audio PC with high computing power, energy efficiency is of outstanding importance. High power consumption is always accompanied by high temperature development. Here, the 13th Intel Core generation has a slight advantage with a TJUNCTION of 100°C compared to 95°C for Ryzen 7. Of course, nobody wants to see the maximum temperature, but a higher stress resistance is always good.

 

As already written above, AMD basically performs better than Intel under full load, but that is not my use case. My typical playback of a CD at 44.1kHz involves upsampling to DSD512 using the best modulator currently available, ASDM7ECv2 from HQPlayer. As can be seen in the narrow frame at the bottom of the picture, there is just a load of 15% across all cores. An Intel® Core™ i9-12900K processor is used. Hyper-Threading is enabled, so the P-cores double to 16. Heavily loaded are two cores (no. 1 and 9) that go to 4.4GHz clock frequency. These are the cores for the performance-hungry modulators. There are 8 E-cores, but only 2 are activated, because more are not needed in this application. The power consumption is around 60W, which is much less than the stated TDP of >125W.

 

 

The exciting question for me is whether there is the efficiency leap with low consumption announced by Intel? According to Intel, the single-thread performance should increase by up to 15 percent and the multi-core performance by up to 41 percent. This value refers to a power consumption of 253 watts, too much for our fanless system. But at a power consumption of 65 watts, the i9-13900K is supposed to be as performant as the i9-12900K at 241 watts!

 

Source: https://www.pcwelt.de/news/Core-i9-13900K-Intel-stellt-schnellste-Desktop-CPU-der-Welt-vor-11301464.html

 

Of course, that would be sensational, since the 65W is exactly in the range of my use case. And ComputerBase has worked that out nicely. The i9-12900K is used as a reference at 241W with 100% power.  The approximately same performance with 96% can be accessed with the i9-13900K with only 65W power consumption.
 

Core	65 Watt	88 Watt	125 Watt	241 Watt	253 Watt	no Limit
Core i9-12900K (8+8)	71%	81%	93%	100%	-	103%
Core i9-13900K (8+16)	96%	111%	126%	-	151%	153%

 

 

Summary

 

Intel has not lied about energy efficiency. The range around 60W, which is important for the fis Audio PC, can be used with an i9-13900K with a significantly higher performance than before. Now, of course, our own tests have to follow. Keep at it. 

 

[Gavin1977]

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

[Gavin1977]

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

[StreamFidelity]

4 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

 

The Intel Cascade Lake-X (Core X 10000) HEDT (high-end desktop processors) was a continuation of the competition with AMD Threadripper 3000, which Intel had lost. Look here.

 

In a benchmark comparison, an Intel Core i9-10980XE performs worse than an Intel Core i9-13900KF with -48.3%. By the way, the K version is -11.2% worse than the KF version (without GPU) according to this comparison. That was not yet clear to me. I have ordered an Intel Core 9-13900KF. 👍

 

2 hours ago, Gavin1977 said:

And DDR5 seems to have poorer latency compared to DDR4.

 

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.

 

In addition, there is the on-die ECC (error correction).The bandwidth has always been better (about 3x faster). I only use DDR5 now.

[Gavin1977]

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!

 

 

[StreamFidelity]

2 hours ago, Gavin1977 said:

Just a question of what is more important, latency or bandwidth?

 

Here's the answer from someone who knows a lot more about it than I do. 😄

On 5/8/2022 at 9:37 PM, Miska said:

Both latency and bandwidth matters. Latency defines delay between memory access request and time before the data is delivered. And then bandwidth defines how fast the delivery is.

[StreamFidelity]

2 hours ago, Gavin1977 said:

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

 

The performance of the memory modules lies primarily in the "absolute" latency. The most important specification here is CAS (column access strobe) - latency (CL). Lower values mean higher memory performance. The absolute latency is calculated from the clock rate and the CL value.

 

Example G.Skill RipJaws V black DIMM Kit 16GB, DDR4-3200, CL14-14-14-34

 

1.000/3.200*14*2 = 8.75ns (nanoseconds)

 

Fortunately, the latencies of DDR5 have reduced in high-quality models.

 

Example G.Skill Trident Z5 black DIMM Kit 32GB, DDR5-5600, CL28-34-34-89, on-die ECC

 

1,000/5,600*28*2 = 10.00ns (nanoseconds)

 

If you don't want to calculate it yourself, you can use a calculator on the web: https://notkyon.moe/ram-latency2.htm

[Miska]

5 hours ago, Gavin1977 said:

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

 

Both, so just choose something with a bandwidth you want and then pick the lowest latency modules. Just remember that CL figure is in relation to the clock speed, so one needs to calculate the latency in ns for comparison.

 

One reason Apple's M1/M2 perform so well with HQPlayer is the high bandwidth unified memory system that scales nicely. When they add more cores they also keep doubling the memory bandwidth, so we can really keep the cores occupied with work, with less waiting for memory access.

 

Another aspect that is important is amount of cache, especially if the RAM is slower type.

 

[Gavin1977]

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.

[Triplefun]

all this talk on Intel. I have just completed an AMD 7700x build with 16GB 6000khz memory and gigabyte aorus b650m pro mobo and the results (using Daphile) are excellent. Superior to my earlier build using a 5800x and more analogue than my initial i5 9600. Use the BIOS to invoke ECO mode and you get a big reduction in temperature with minimal drop in performance. I also have an interesting case build with Thermaltake V21, noctua nh p1 passive cooler, replaced the thermaltake 10" fan with Noctua, added a 120mm NF-A12x25 LS-PWM Noctua fan to the cooler, elfidelity power buffers for 8tb ssd and fans, Teradak LPSU for the computer, and jcat XE USB (pcie-1 so direct interface with the cpu) with Plixir lpsu. The fans are silent and only operate during 'extreme' loads. I also rotated the cooler and raised the 10" fan so there is a direct natural wind tunnel front to back. Interesting observation was as soon as you hear the 'new' sound there is no going back - the improvement was instantaneous. 

[Miska]

1 hour ago, Gavin1977 said:

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...

 

CL22 for DDR4-2666 is pretty slow. I've been mostly using G.Skill DDR4-3600 CL16...

 

 

[StreamFidelity]

1 hour ago, Triplefun said:

The fans are silent and only operate during 'extreme' loads.

 

This thread is about a fanless Audio PC. Fans generate noise, fans generate vibration, fans generate electronic noise and fans generate dust. 😉

[Miska]

1 hour ago, StreamFidelity said:

This thread is about a fanless Audio PC. Fans generate noise, fans generate vibration, fans generate electronic noise and fans generate dust. 😉

 

Just place server in a machine room and use network to feed a NAA... 😉

No need to worry about fan sound, vibration, etc. Regarding dust, I just periodically vacuum server dust filters and once per year use pressure air to dust off what has got through the filters.

 

For electrical noise, there are many worse offenders.