Building a high performance compute server for HQPlayer

[jabbr]

18 minutes ago, Miska said:

P.S. I just checked that equivalent new HP workstation (Z4) to my current one, with W-2245 costs about 3200€ here (32 GB RAM, 1 TB SSD).

Ah yes ... the HP was quite more than the Dell! Dell is having a "30% off" sale ATM... and servers are like McDonald's here, they make their $$$ not on the burger but on the fries and soda, in this case RAM and SSD upgrades 😆

 

...and yes closed-form-16m doesn't affect the speed at all!

 

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5 hours ago, TubeLover said:

Even considering the current Dell sale, I specced out a workstation matching the one he JABBER just purchased, added in the cost of the his additional RAM, the pricey NIC card, and the most reasonably priced 2080 that I could find and it was over $3k. I was considering this as a possible path to allow me to run Roon and HQ Player in conjunction, at DSD256, and with filters in hopes of seeing the very significant sonic upgrade Chris mentioned in his RAAL SR1a discussion. This is, however, a pretty costly endeavor. And how long would a server pc build like that be viable to able to run HQ Player optimally as described above? Much less at DSD512.

 

JC 

Start with the cheapest Precision 5820 and then upgrade the CPU, power supply etc. It comes with 8Gb RAM which is enough to get started— or add more. You don’t need an expensive NIC at all, get Mellanox ConnectX-3 on eBay for <$50 or an Intel x520 — seriously no need for something uber expensive. 
 

You don’t need to start with an RTX 2080 either so all in you should be <$2000

[jabbr]

To summarize some of the measurements I've found so far as I started with the base 5820 and measured after each upgrade:

 

1) 8 Gb ECC 2930 -> 32 Gb 3200 ... the memory is needed for certain applications but does not appreciably/dramatically affect the results of HQPe nor did it allow me to run a modulator or filter that I wouldn't have otherwise

 

2) NIC: HQPe is not limited by the speed at which a music file is pulled from the NAS: the disc i/o (cifs process) uses 5-10% of one core *a most* at 1Gbe, NIC offload benefits for *this application* will be met with most any fiberoptic NIC. There is something called "SMB Direct" which is enabled by NICs that support RDMA (remote direct memory access). This paper discusses benefits: https://www.chelsio.com/wp-content/uploads/resources/T5-SMBOverRDMA-vs-NIC.pdf ... again audio i/o rates do not need this.

The Connectx-5 I am using supports RDMA, and *not* generally needed or useful for home audio purposes. Although the 100Gbase NICs have extraordinarily low jitter -- far better than *any* copper Ethernet by a long shot, I cannot hear a difference beyond any pro grade 10Gbe NIC i.e. Intel x520, Mellanox Connectx-3 (RDMA), Solarflare 

 

Upgrading the NIC did not appreciably improve the performance of HQPe such that I was able to run a modulator or filter that I wouldn't have otherwise.

 

3) GPU ... the GPU helps 24_96/24_192 -> DSD conversion reducing about 50-60% of one core ... the GPU should enable multichannel room correction and digital  crossovers with DSD256, so there's a lot you can do, and many filters that can be used without GPU acceleration, that said, GPU/CUDA  acceleration is useful in certain circumstances.

 

dsd256/asdm7ec and any filter is doable on this workstation

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@luisma it would be great to run @Miska's test of looking at how long HQ Pro takes to encode ASDM7EC on a Ryzen because that looks to me to be the best overall test of the system performance.  Xeon W looks to be similar to 9900K overall for HQP but I suspect each would be better for different tasks ... Ryzen has its own tradeoffs so hard to say .. e.g. it doesn't have AVX512

 

Obviously many of the best results on Geekbench are overclocked and with active cooling! When running Pro, My workstation might work even better with better cooling 🤷‍♂️

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12 minutes ago, TubeLover said:

I would only be looking for  DSD256, running Roon and HQ Player, jointly, and the ability to the popular HQ Player filters. Wont need room correction. 

You are good without high powered GPU then. Perhaps get a 2060 or 1070 or even 1660

 

12 minutes ago, TubeLover said:

And thanks for mentioning the specific parts. I'm very familiar with everything you listed, from building my own pc's, which I've done for many years. I just thought that you needed specific components intended for music servers, low noise, etc. etc.

 

My approach is to isolate using fiberoptic ethernet, and a good fiber NIC is bulletproof isolation. What a good music server needs in this case is the ability to run the very best HQPlayer modulators and filters.

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1 hour ago, firedog said:

Okay, not interested in getting too far into the technical weeds on this, but to fully exploit HQP at rates up to DSD 256, is a 9900K

necessary? Or is a 9900 (no letter) enough? I'm asking because it seems a 9900 would run quite a bit cooler than the K version. 

 

I posted temps using the

$ sensors

command, my active cores are at 67-68 degrees, the others 50-52

 

if you are trying to do fanless, then you need to design for that. It is a different server design. In my case, I go for all out performance in the workstation and use fiber to keep the server isolated in my office, both electrically and sonically. Fiber is very cheap and very effective. 

[jabbr]

also these days with quad channel memory, having multiple sticks to fill the channels provides a bandwidth increase for programs that can make use of it. 

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@John Dyson's da-avx dolbyA decoding software uses massive resources and is able to really stress this machine's AVX512!

 

jon@jon-w2245:~$ cat da-avx.txt
Processor:  0  Mhz:  3900.000
Processor:  1  Mhz:  3905.620
Processor:  2  Mhz:  3902.371
Processor:  3  Mhz:  3899.998
Processor:  4  Mhz:  3555.524
Processor:  5  Mhz:  3905.218
Processor:  6  Mhz:  3237.821
Processor:  7  Mhz:  2932.228
Processor:  8  Mhz:  3900.001
Processor:  9  Mhz:  3903.082
Processor:  10  Mhz:  3900.130
Processor:  11  Mhz:  3900.000
Processor:  12  Mhz:  3373.758
Processor:  13  Mhz:  3908.258
Processor:  14  Mhz:  3190.796
Processor:  15  Mhz:  2986.184
CPU model:  Intel(R) Xeon(R) W-2245 CPU @ 3.90GHz
1 CPU,  8 physical cores per CPU, total 16 logical CPU units

jon@jon-w2245:~$ sensors
coretemp-isa-0000
Adapter: ISA adapter
Package id 0:  +86.0°C  (high = +88.0°C, crit = +98.0°C)
Core 0:        +83.0°C  (high = +88.0°C, crit = +98.0°C)
Core 2:        +83.0°C  (high = +88.0°C, crit = +98.0°C)
Core 3:        +77.0°C  (high = +88.0°C, crit = +98.0°C)
Core 5:        +86.0°C  (high = +88.0°C, crit = +98.0°C)
Core 8:        +83.0°C  (high = +88.0°C, crit = +98.0°C)
Core 10:       +75.0°C  (high = +88.0°C, crit = +98.0°C)
Core 11:       +83.0°C  (high = +88.0°C, crit = +98.0°C)
Core 12:       +75.0°C  (high = +88.0°C, crit = +98.0°C)

dell_smm-virtual-0
Adapter: Virtual device
fan1:        1642 RPM
fan2:         722 RPM
fan3:         721 RPM

 

[jabbr]

At the moment, I am running this software, and HQPe ASDM7EC @ DSD128 which is sounding very nice and allowing me to listen to the results ...

 

Now in a perfect world there would be a pipe adapter for HQPe such that I could:

 

$ da-avx ... --input=xxx.wav | HQPipe 

[jabbr]

On 4/23/2020 at 8:25 AM, Miska said:

 

If you can hook it to service output as HTTP stream (FLAC for example) you can make HQPlayer play it straight.

 

Hmm ... yes so using the control interface you add a song to the playlist with an http: URI ... that is a very general solution!

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19 hours ago, luisma said:

HAs anyone used or looked into the Meshify C case for an air cooled PC for HQP? seems to be more compact, provide same cooling (by air), if you need a custom loop then the R5 / R6 seems to be a better option, but since @Miska prefers the R5 I might be missing something obvious.

 

 

I'm also a fan (sic) of fractal designs. You can get a 240mm radiator up top on the Meshify but 360 requires putting it in front. Tradeoffs for size that may not matter.