Building a DIY Music Server with custom made parts

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57 minutes ago, StreamFidelity said:

I don't see any problem at all. In my case, I would limit myself to one CPU, for example this:

 

Intel® Xeon® W-3235 processor
(3.30 GHz - 4.40 GHz, 12 cores)

 

Expensive but very good. This would make the EC modulators of the HQPlayer easy to run.

 

 

Actually this might not easily run EC modulators at DSD256 ... you are better off with the W-2245 which has a higher base clock (3.9 Ghz) or i9-9900k which has an even higher clock ... but not the AVX512 instructions so tradeoff.

 

More cores, and more expensive, is not necessarily better e.g. Xeon Scalable Platinum still doesn't have the best base CPU clock.

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3 hours ago, Peter Avgeris said:

Meanwhile I need to inform you that one motherboard ASUS C621e SAGE, along with two Intel Xeon 4210 CPUs are on their way to me. Probably by next week they will be into my hands.

The 621 platform is good because you have more PCIe lanes but that CPU has a very slow base frequency which is not ideal for audio processing which needs horsepower ... my W-2245 cores run at 1.2 Ghz when not loaded even though the base is 3.9 Ghz....

 

My prior dual E5 server has lots of cores (40) and I am using it for non-audio purposes ... for HQPlayer, for example, you want high clock rates.

 

I think your gorgeous metalwork would be best off in, for example, an i9-10900k, i9-9900ks and Xeon W-2200 series which can generate some real single core heat  

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1 hour ago, OAudio said:

It's the combined architecture of the Scalable CPUs and c621 PCH together that really matters. Intel have really delivered a hand up with this platform.

That’s your personal opinion however if you can’t run EC modulators in HQPlayer that’s a complete deal breaker for me. I place real math capabilities way over theoretical differences. 

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The newest architecture which bears looking into and which I am running is the Xeon W - LGA1200 / 422. These really are ideal, in terms of Xeons, for audio workstations because of:

 

1) high base clock rates

2) multiple PCIe lanes

3) ECC RAM / quad channel 

 

Now, I am not saying that this is better than the 470 series (non ECC) and ASUS makes both, but for example my 100 Gbe NIC as well as RTX 2080 GPU ... both now NVIDIA and both requiring PCIe x16 ... 

 

Arguably if one wants the very best clocking then wait for PCIe-4.0 motherboards — Intel is still at PCIex3.0 because the current boards can’t handle the right jitter requirements of PCIe 4.0

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27 minutes ago, OAudio said:

 

I didn't claim any experience running the EC modulators I don't know them (I think I mentioned them as DSPs in my post) so defiantly take your views on that.

 

I am a relatively new user of this forum so its understandable to assume that I may by putting forward baseless ideas or opinion about the 621 architecture for instance. I want to reassure you that the comments are not purely speculation and are in fact based on many, many years of research both practical and paper based into a number of Intel Architectures. For sure I would say I am not your typical server builder. Where I haven't had direct experience of something you will see that I have been calling this out in my posts and then may offer opinion or just leave the matter as I cannot add any value.

Hello OAudio, 

 

The 621 is a fine architecture and is well tested and I have one. My prior workstation. It simply wasn’t capable of doing the math necessary to run the best upsampling algorithms. My new 422 based workstation sounds better to me. 
 

That is my experience. There are different ways to do things so I don’t get tied to a specific version of Intel because they are always working on the next best greatest chip

 

But if Peter wants to design a cooling system for one board — I would pick the ASUS 470 (one if them) because the i9-10900k is going to be the chip that most people building new workstations are going to want to use (or ASUS WS 422 if Xeon desired) 

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11 minutes ago, Dev said:

 

The Xeon equivalent of 1200 is W480. 422 is still 2066.

I misstated that: the W-2200 series is 2066! The new i9-10900k is 1200.

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18 minutes ago, OAudio said:

 

If I have this right I don't think I use PCIe this way at all (must check again ) but it puts me more at the mercy of the motherboard implementation of the relevant ports for electrical signal integrity of the ports. Still the clocking is good for the reasons mentioned earlier.

I don’t think most people need to, but with NMVE storage, PCIe lanes are running out.

 

Yes, for example my NIC has extraordinarily good clocks, and there are USB cards that can be optimized for audio, etc ... again there are different ways to optimize things 

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1 minute ago, StreamFidelity said:

 

I thought that AVX512 was better than AVX2 and asked Miska about your advice. That is the answer:

 

There was my mistake in thinking. The EC modulators can use AVX512 but it leads to clock throttling. The performance is similar to the i9-9900K that I use. But with filters, AVX512 can give a better result.

 

With which CPU, which mainboard and which HQPlayer settings did you test 621 and what were the limits?

Yes, the AVX512 throttles the CPU which is why the base clock speeds are important. Jussi’s development machine and my workstation are essentially the same. 
 

It probably ends up being close to a toss up, the i9-9900k or new i9-10900k have a faster clock, but no AVX512 so end up equally fast. That’s why I think for most people stick with i9-10900k for new builds. I am not recommending that people get Mellanox ConnectX-5 100Gbe NICs but would point out that their clocks are only bettered by the ConnectX-6 series! In the same vein, new PCIe-4.0 capable motherboards are going to require extremely low jitter clocks/chips and overall design. I’m not sure this matters for audio but if you want to be “extreme” there is more than one way to do that  

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16 hours ago, StreamFidelity said:

 

With which CPU, which mainboard and which HQPlayer settings did you test 621 and what were the limits?

 

I modified a Dell T640 Poweredge server (hmm its C620 but no matter really), using dual Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2470 v2 @ 2.40GHz (10 cores each) and gobs of ECC RAM (96 Gb), RTX 2080 Ti GPU and a Mellanox ConnectX-4 100Gbe NIC --- the HQPlayer performance was awful! Its a great machine ... and crazy bargain ... which I use for other stuff...not audio. I'm not saying it has bad "SQ" rather that it doesn't have a high enough clock rate to do HQPLayer well.

 

Basically, HQPlayer is limited by the dual core CPU clock rate ... that's the bottom line, perhaps a tad, but really only a tad by RAM (I did that experiment on my W-2245 workstation) and negligible by NIC ... the Mellanox does RDRAM, offloads etc....

 

Bottom line is CPU clock.

 

AVX512: sure its great and I got the W-2245 so I would have that but unfortunately it clamps the clock rate to base -- I measured that personally (results on my thread) and at the end of the day, the reduced clock rate is offset by the improved processing capabilities. I selected the Xeon W-2245 (using @Miska's advice) specifically because it has a high base clock rate -- 3.9 Ghz -- even though it can burst to 4.7 Ghz ... I did hit a thermal limit using HQPlayer Pro and tuned my fans as a result.... now you can overclock an i9-10900k, and overclocking would give better performance than W-2245 but for my machine I wanted the PCIe lanes so tradeoff. I would have got a more expensive Xeon CPU with more cores but they *all* have lower base clock rates.

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10 minutes ago, StreamFidelity said:

and a very low temperature limit: 59 °C.

No it sings along at 60 C ... temp limit is 88

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11 minutes ago, StreamFidelity said:

Gold Processor 6250

 

Oh nice! though 8 cores so ... W-2245 is a comparative bargain and at that price I'd need to think really long and really hard about why not cluster my machines using a really fast interconnect, and not for audio but if I wanted to build an AVX512 HPC cluster ... and then there is always GPU so I'm interested in seeing what applications deploy this chip!

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2 hours ago, Peter Avgeris said:

Summing it up...

 

...

1. ASUS ProArt Z490-CREATOR 10G (https://www.asus.com/Motherboards/ProArt-Z490-CREATOR-10G/)
   This motherboard is loaded with the new LGA1200 socket for 10th gen i7/i5/i3 Intel processors. Coolers for LGA1200 are the same as in LGA115x stock copper bricks are compatible

 

I like this option a lot and recommend this for new builds which don't need lots of PCIe lanes ...

 

 

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1. ASUS Pro WS W480-ACE (https://www.asus.com/Motherboards/Pro-WS-W480-ACE/)
   This motherboard is also loaded with LGA1200 socket for the newest Xeon W-Series processors. No need for new parts

 

I think I confused the picture here. The LGA1200 socket is for the Xeon W 1200 series, not the W-2200 series which is LGA2066. I don't recommend Xeon W 1200 series, instead I'd consider the ASUS WS 422 (https://www.asus.com/us/Motherboards/WS-C422-PRO-SE/)

 

Sorry for the confusion on my part.

 

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1. ASUS Pro WS X570-ACE (https://www.asus.com/Motherboards/Pro-WS-X570-ACE/)
   This is AMD AM4 socket for newest AMD processors with support for PCIe 4

 

Yes but AMD does not support AVX512 nor the highest CPU clock rates so I'd personally stick with i9-10900k

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From all the above, only the 1st C621e MoBo is not compatible with the HDPlex H5 chassis. It is the one that I am expecting to receive pretty soon. It is so interesting that a few guys here have access to W480 motherboard. If I was to go from scratch, I would select this one, but with audio sometimes things get really crazy.

I will have the chance to evaluate this motherboard with only the basics so as to compare apples to apples. Without excessive HQPlayer processing, it would be nice to compare my best (so far) sounding Xeon system(s) to this motherboard. If anybody living in EU has a W480 along with its own Xeon (any type) and could part its beloved MoBo for around a month (including 2-way shipment), I would be thankful. I intend to compare everything I have access to, so as to know all of us which might be the next step in digital streaming. And of course X570 is of equal (if not higher) interest as well...

 

There are different ways to do things, I am offering my own experience and optimizations. Even though I don't personally have a Z490 that's what I would recommend in general and no doubt folks who have one will be very pleased, at least based on what I know