Article: CAPS Twenty | Part Two

[Account Closed]

Chris,

 

What a build! I thought you would wind up going with liquid cooling. You would not have been able to get the performance any other way without a lot of noise and there really isn't a passive cooling option above 95 Watts on the CPU and even then they run hot, hot, hot.

 

Now if you could find a PC build company to make both builds available to those of us who can't handle a project like this more people will be able to enjoy the fruits of your labor.

 

Thanks,

 

Bob

[Account Closed]

Hi Chris, Suggestion:

 

Put another 256 SSD in the open second slot and use it for dual boot capability so you can test some of the things you mentioned (like HQP OS or other Linux options for example) against your Win 10 primary OS. ASUS UEFI/BIOS has pretty easy boot order options and you would not disturb your main OS. Great fodder for future articles.

[Account Closed]

19 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

No need so far but I will if necessary. 

You probably will end up overclocking. Also, running Roon and HQP together on the same machine can lead to problems. PM me if you want to know how I solved it on my machine.

[Account Closed]

59 minutes ago, jrobbins50 said:

I’ve been running RoonServer and HQP on my i7 server and so long as I don’t upscale past DSD128, it has been fine. I want to build Chris’s server to go up from there, but what incompatibility on the same server have you encountered?

 

Also, given the shortage of the specified GPU card, I will advise that if anyone is in the Minneapolis metro area and is planning to build, Microcenter in St. Louis Park has one remaining of the specified GPU available only for pickup and not online purchase. I got mine there earlier today. JCR 

A server with this amount of computing power probably won't have any problem running Roon and HQP together. I do not have a GPU and am running an i5 8400 passively cooled so resources are tighter. I found that I would get a short pause at the beginning of many tracks streaming from Tidal or Qobuz. This would only happen when running  ASDM7EC @ DSD 256 and especially with the more demanding filters even if they were the 2s variant (the 2s filters are all I can run without pushing the core temps too high).  When I analyzed what was happening it coincided with Roon downloading the track. What I had to do to solve this is not really an appropriate discussion here in this article. I will say that it involved several UEFI/BIOS changes and some core and priority tuning and load lightening in Win 10. I can now run poly-sinc mp 2s/ASDM7EC @ DSD 256 from Roon streaming (I don't have any local files anymore) without any issue and core temps are in the 65-75 degree range which for passive cooling is pretty good. The two modulator cores are of course the highest as they are running at 100% all the time. I realize that I am pushing it and many think it shouldn't work at all but the i5 8400 overclocks well to a point and for me that point just happens to be far enough.

[Account Closed]

Chris mentioned that getting Roon and HQP to run together on the same machine was a major consideration and doing that with Linux OS variants might be a lot more difficult. Using Win 10 does give a lot of flexibility but it comes at the cost of added complexity. I have been using some form of Windows based system for almost 10 years now and have probably tried and used nearly every Windows enhancer out there and sadly they all make a noticeable improvement. This is likely due to the fact that Windows has so much extraneous crap running that it does detract from music performance. Win 10/64 Home has 160 processes running when idle. I have my machine down to 120 and it has made a noticeable improvement in the sound quality.

[Account Closed]

2 hours ago, 4est said:

Do you use HQPlayer with an NAA?

Yes