XXHighEnd

For the ones that are consulting this post let me tell you that, as we all know, computers and its parts become obsolete very soon, so it is important to understand that you should choose to build your music PC, as a general rule, the fastest possible processor¹, with as much as possible cores and with a motherboard appropriate for that processor. Consult on this regard the signatures of other members of the forum (mostly the ones with more posts and of course of Peter). It doesn´t mean that you must choose the latest processor in the market, but one of the previous ones that will be much cheaper and for sure with enough power to work well. E.g. I´m still using today (April/2013) the processor you can see below and be sure that if it wouldn´t work well I´d change it. Of course if I´d build my computer today I´d choose a faster processor but, as I say, not the last model, just to save some money (unless of course money is not a problem for you).
On the other components, and in general for all that follows, I think the comments and recommendations are still valid.

¹ About the processor speed Peter made an observation (April 24, 2013): "Generally it is not about the speed at all but how the processor can (quickly) deal with interrupts, memory and a lot more. For example, currently I run my i7/3930K machine at 350MHz per core (yep, that is 0.35GHz). No problem whatsoever with anything (also not track loading and FLAC conversions etc.). CPU usage during 32/705600 playback is still under 1%."



After more than one month and a half looking for parts, reading as much as possible, finding the best places to buy, connecting with the right person to put all the parts together and also learning how to do it myself, I´ve finished my new PC. Now I´d like to show it to you all in the easiest possible way and mentioning just the most important issues.
This is a "Why? and because" little guide about why I´ve chosen some parts and not others in order to build the PC. I hope it can help some of you interested in building a computer for XXHighEnd.
I´ve had in to consideration the advises that some of you gave me to start with it. They all were important because I came from the audiophile world but knew only the usual things about computers, so thanks to Gerard, Paphran, Telstar, Mani, Pedal …and of course to Peter.
As I said in other thread I´ve built this PC with the intention of being adapted as much as possible to the evolution of XXHighEnd and in my case to work also in combination with the Phasure NOS1 dac. Of course this PC is also valid for the use in combination to other dacs maybe with just some specific adaptation.
A few premises were important. One of them was that it had to be as silent as possible because it was going to be in my listening room. Silent yes, but not totally passive due to the possible limitations of a passive PC (Peter´s advise) and I didn´t wanted to take the route of water cooling.

Let´s start with the Operating System. Here it seems that the general opinion is favorable to Windows 7 Ultimate 64bits. The 64bits option has not limited the amount of memory to 4Gb and that is an advantage over the 32bits version, mostly if we´re talking about XXHigEnd that is played from the memory.

Update
(June 2013) Now I´m using Windows 8 Pro as OS. It sounds even better than W7

-Operating System: W8 Pro: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Microsoft-Windows-Professional-FQC-05955-English/dp/B009HI3WOC/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1370170301&sr=8-2&keywords=Windows+8+Pro (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Microsoft-Windows-Professional-FQC-05955-English/dp/B009HI3WOC/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1370170301&sr=8-2&keywords=Windows+8+Pro)
W7: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/products/compare (http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/products/compare)

UPDATE
(2016): I use W10 in the Audio Pc since Peter uses it in XXHighEnd (RAM OS). I also use W10 in the Music Server Pc (Music Pc).


The processor. Peter is moving toward the multi core processors, hyperthreading or even, who knows, overclocking, so I´ve had to chose between the two main options: Dual processors like Xeon or a single one with multi-core. At the end I took the route of the single one because 12 cores seem to be enough for the next XX development without the disadvantages of a Dual processor size and the problem to refrigerate two processors on the same motherboard. So once I´ve decided to get one single processor I´ve selected  the 1366 because  the Sandy Bridges processors, socket 1155, besides they have just 4 cores it seems to have had some problems with  SATA ports:  http://www.techradar.com/news/computing-components/motherboards/intel-sandy-bridge-problem-why-it-s-bad-news-925242 (http://www.techradar.com/news/computing-components/motherboards/intel-sandy-bridge-problem-why-it-s-bad-news-925242)
The 1156 could be also a good option mostly for the price but they also have just 4 cores. At the end I took the one with the best possible quality/price ratio: the i7-970 based on socket 1366 with 6 cores. For less than 500€ you get 6 cores and the possibility to 12 threats or 6 cores plus 6 "virtual" cores. It can be easily overclocked to get the 980X level , this last one priced at this time around 1.000€. So:

-Processor: Intel i7-970: http://ark.intel.com/Product.aspx?id=47933 (http://ark.intel.com/Product.aspx?id=47933)

 
The motherboard. I need a mb with a CPU suitable for the i7-970 with 1366 socket and at least one PCIe x1 slot to connect the Phasure NOS-1. Not all the modern mb has it. I also looked for a mb with good quality parts and stability, of course there are several good mbs around  but I´ve chosen the Asus Sabertooth X58 because it has some quality parts that I liked, like special capacitors, chokes and mosfets. It has enough SATA ports and can take as much as 24Gb DDR3 triple channel memory.

- Mother board: Asus Sabertooth X58:http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/Intel_Socket_1366/SABERTOOTH_X58/ (http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/Intel_Socket_1366/SABERTOOTH_X58/)

 
CPU Cooler. I looked for a way to cool it as silent as possible. As I said the use of water cooling made me kind of insecure so I got a good fan system: the Noctua NH-U12P SE2. Why this Noctua?, because it has good fans, it´s a quiet unit and it´s very versatile. It has two 12mm fans, one at each side of the heatsink, this way you can use one or two fans depending on your needs. This fan uses a way to control the speed that´s called Low-Noise Adaptor  (L.N.A) and Ultra-Low-Noise-Adaptor (U.L.N.A.), depending on the reduction of the fan speed. The adaptor reduce the voltage to a fixed value and that way the rpm. You could think that would be better to control the fan´s speed by the motherboard using PWM (Pulse-width modulation), the PWM makes the fan speed variable but also produces RFI interferences and that´s not good at all for sound. I use just one fan and the ULNA to get 900rpm and 12,6db. So again true silent and between 35ºC and 45ºC in the CPU, not bad at all!.

- CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-U12P SE2: http://www.noctua.at/main.php?show=productview&products_id=31&lng=en&set=2 (http://www.noctua.at/main.php?show=productview&products_id=31&lng=en&set=2)

UPDATE
(May 2016): I´ve changed the CPU fan, now I use a Noctua NF-S12A (600rpm/6.7db) ant it´s the only one fan in the Audio Pc.


The memory.  As “XXHighEnd is a so called memory player, which means that all is played directly from memory”(1) this is an important component. My motherboard accept a ma ximum of 24Gb of DDR3 triple channel of memory. That means that I could put 12Gb or 24Gb if I want to get the maximum benefits of it, at this moment I´m using 12Gb but probably I´ll upgrade very soon to 24Gb, this extra 12GB will cost around 130€ at this moment  but I think  that´s a good price for that amount of memory. In general  and talking about memory the more the better, it´s even more important the amount than the speed of the memory, so if you have to choose between more memory or  faster memory choose always more amount of memory. Corsair Vengeace is a good option and it also has aluminum heat spreaders to dissipate heat.

UPDATE
(Feb 2012): I´m using now 24Gb of memory and it works great!

- Memory:  Corsair Vengeance PC3-12800 DDR3 1600 24GB 6x4Gb:http://www.corsair.com/memory/vengeance/vengeance-12gb-triple-channel-ddr3-memory-kit-cmz12gx3m3a1600c9.html (http://www.corsair.com/memory/vengeance/vengeance-12gb-triple-channel-ddr3-memory-kit-cmz12gx3m3a1600c9.html)

 
HDDs. The OS and XXHighEnd must be in the same unit and the data in a different one, that way we need at least two hard drives. Of course you may need more HDDs depending on the amount of music you have. As discussed in the forum, the OS and XXHighEnd has been tested on different kinds of storage units like SSD or in RAMDisk but the latest tendencies seems to consider that the best sound comes from an HDD spinning disc and not using RAMDisk. Speed is important so I´ve chosen for the OS and XXHighEnd a 300GB WD VelociRaptor Sata 3Gb/s 16Mb of caché spinning at 10.000rpm. This HDD is quite silent in spite of its speed, think also that once the music is in the memory all the HDDs stops, if you use Unattended and Stop the Services in XXHighEnd.
For data I used a WD Caviar Green 2TB Sata 3Gb/s 64Mb. Cool and quiet. As a backup hdd I use an external WD 2Tb disk.

- HDD for OS and XXHighEndd:  WD VelociRaptor 300GB Sata 3Gb/s   http://www.wdc.com/wdproducts/library/SpecSheet/ENG/2879-701284.pdf (http://www.wdc.com/wdproducts/library/SpecSheet/ENG/2879-701284.pdf)
- HDD for Data: WD Green http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=780 (http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=780)
- SSD for Galleries or for OS and XXHighEnd: Crucial M4 128gb ssd sata3.  http://www.crucial.com/store/m4ProductFlyer.aspx (http://www.crucial.com/store/m4ProductFlyer.aspx)
- HDD for Playback Drive: I use now for Playback Drive a WD RE4 WD5003ABYX, 500Gb, 7200rpm, 64Mb cache, externally powered. That´s a fantastic hdd that makes a clear, detailed and very musical sound. I connect it directly to the TeckNet USB 3.0 PCI Express Card.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136697 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136697)

UPDATE
(October 2012): I put all my Galleries in a SSD drive which makes all the process much faster.

UPDATE
(December 2012): I added a new hdd for music storage, the WD20EFRX http://www.wdc.com/wdproducts/library/SpecSheet/ENG/2879-771442.pdf (http://www.wdc.com/wdproducts/library/SpecSheet/ENG/2879-771442.pdf)

UPDATE
(June 2013): Now I don´t use the Playback Drive in a hdd but in Ramdisk and I use the WD RE4 to put in a selection of my music and I placed this hdd in an external USB 3.0 box

UPDATE
(August 2013): Now I don´t use Galleries in W8 and I use the SSD to place in it the OS and XXHighEnd connected to an eSata port. I do not know yet if this will be final, I´m testing it.

UPDATE
(June 2016): Now I don´t use any hdd inside the Audio Pc. I use the RAM-Disk OS provided by Peter with the different Windows OS and XXHE versions and this is a great advance in confort and easy of use because I also have at the same time the best (Peter´s) settings.

Graphics Card. I wanted a passive Graphics Card if possible, I know that the graphics cards usually have little fans that at the end are noisy. Again I know that I don´t need a big monster but I didn´t want either a weak one.  I looked for the most powerful passive one and I´ve found the Radeon HD 5770 Passive. Of course 0 noise.

- Graphic Card:  Gigabyte Radeon GV-R577SL-1GD : http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=3584#ov (http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=3584#ov)
UPDATE
(May 2016): Since I´m using a Music Pc to serve the music to the Audio Pc and Remote Desktop I don´t use a Graphic Card in the Audio Pc.


PSU (Power Supply Unit): Peter says that  around 400W is more than enough for a PC just for music and he´s right but what about the future unknown upgrades? and most of all, the Corsair AX750 Modular PSU that I´ve chosen use a fan that only works when the power needed exceeds the 20% of its rated power. That means that only when we need more than 150W the fan is working. To tell you the truth I can´t say if it´s working or not because I can´t tell any movement of air coming out of the PSU nor hear anything. Besides it´s modular, that means that I only use the cables I need and that´s good because I have more free room without obstacles for ventilation. Finally it´s very efficient,  80 Plus Gold certified,  and has 7 years warranty. Great PSU!

- PSU:  Corsair AX750 750W Modular: www.corsair.com/power-supplies/modular-psus/professional-series-gold-2/ax750w.html (http://www.corsair.com/power-supplies/modular-psus/professional-series-gold-2/ax750w.html)

- PSU:  Seasonic SS-400FL fanless: www.seasonicusa.com/Platinum_Series_FL2.htm (http://www.seasonicusa.com/Platinum_Series_FL2.htm)

UPDATE
(August 2013): I have the fanless Seasonic SS-400FL2 installed now in my music pc. The first impression was of a more detailed sound than with the AX750, but after that first moments I realized that the differences, in my system, are minor if any. At the end what´s my opinion about these two ps?, well, if I´d have to buy a new ps I´ll buy the Seasonic, but if I´d have a Corsair AX-750 and it was working well (as was my case) I´ll keep the Corsair. Now that I have both ps I´ll keep using the Seasonic, it is not worse than the Corsair in any case and it seems to have better components. On the other hand the Corsair is enough powerful to don´t use the fan, in fact when I removed the Corsair from the case after more than two years of continue use the fan was absolutely clean, no dust at all, it means that the fan wasn´t used at all or seldom used. So if for some reason you want to have a more powerful ps than the fanless Seasonic I think the Corsair is still a good choice.


CD-Rom
UPDATE
(Feb.2012): I´m using now two CD-Rom: Plextor PX-230A and Plextor PX-L890SA. The first one is very fast and very good ripping cds with some problems (scratches) and the second one has FUA capability: Clear Read Cache with FUA (dBpoweramp Reference required) quickly remove the cached audio using a command called FUA. Important to avoid ripping errors.

UPDATE
(May 2013) When I´l listening music I disconnect the CD-ROMs for better SQ (Sound Quality), they are only connected if I want to rip a cd but usually I do it in another computer and copy the files to a pen-drive.



Accesories:

UPDATE
(October 2012): To avoid the vibrations in the Playback Drive I use a HDD Vibe-Fixer from Sharkoon, but I don´t use it with the bare hdd but with the hdd inside an aluminum case (you can see some pic. in other post in this same topic): http://www.amazon.de/Sharkoon-Hdd-Vibe-Fixer-Festplatten-Einbaurahmen-Entkopplung-Festplatten/dp/B000FLR8PE

(October 2012): To use the internal hard drives in an external way I place them in a TooQ TQE-3523G USB 3.0 case: http://www.tooq.es/product_detail.php?id=1463. In case you can´t find it in your country any other case with USB 3.0 will be fine. Eg: Akasa cases or some others:
http://www.akasa.com.tw/update.php?tpl=product/product.list.tpl&type=Enclosures&type_sub=3.5%20Enclosure (http://www.akasa.com.tw/update.php?tpl=product/product.list.tpl&type=Enclosures&type_sub=3.5%20Enclosure)
http://www.amazon.co.uk/IT735U3--SATA-External-Drive-Enclosure/dp/B004LO59MK/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1351620609&sr=8-1.
Important: Not all the external USB 3.0 cases work correctly, so buy one that you can return in case it fails.

Powered hub
[url=http://www.orico.com.cn/en/ProductInfo.aspx?typeid=62&id=541]http://www.orico.com.cn/en/ProductInfo.aspx?typeid=62&id=541] (http://[/url)http://www.orico.com.cn/en/ProductInfo.aspx?typeid=62&id=541 (http://www.orico.com.cn/en/ProductInfo.aspx?typeid=62&id=541)
Another interesting USB3.0 hub that also can power your iPad is this one: http://www.sednacomputer.com/products/se-usb3-hub-317i.html (http://www.sednacomputer.com/products/se-usb3-hub-317i.html). You can use it to connect your external hdds with music files.

 
Case: Here I wanted something that last forever (or almost) and with good possibilities of evolution. Of course I need a case with very good ventilation and room enough to accommodate easily the parts. I addressed several different objectives:

  -Possibility to keep all the cables out of the air path
  -Big fans to allow low rpm for less noise
  -The most favorable orientation of the parts to pick all the possible air flux in order to get the most of the ventilation
  -Again, as silent as possible fans that could be regulated without PWM (remember, RFI interferences)
  -Good dust maintenance
  -Nice looking, not the most important issue but better if you get it, isn´t it?

Well, there is one case that has it all: the SilverStone Fortress FT02 B/R Window.
It has 90-degree motherboard mounting design that makes a favorable effect for natural heat convection. The CPU fan is oriented in to the path of the coming air flow.
Features one 120mm exhaust top fan and three 180mm intake bottom fans for efficient ventilation and effective system cooling. All of them can be fixed at low rpm (900rpm), not PWM speed regulation here. Positive air pressure, that means that the flux of air is bigger in the intake than the outtake creating an air pressure inside the case that makes better cooling and avoid the dust from coming in.
Filters for dust in the intake fans, the 180mm ones, and in the intake for the PSU ventilation.
The temperature is practically constant at 39ºC for the CPU, 39ºC for the MB and 62ºC for the North Bridge. Reading some reviews, the noise is 19db with the mentioned fan´s speed. What I can say is that at two metter from the case I can´t hear any noise.
Five external 5.25" drive bays, five internal 3.5" drive bays and one 2.5’’ drive bay. Hot-swap connectors
Supports liquid cooling radiator mounting (just in case)
Motherboard back plate opening behind CPU area for quick cooler assembly
Foam padded interior for advanced noise absorption
Finally if it´s nice looking or not you can judge by yourself looking at the pictures.

- Case:  SilverStone Fortress FT02 B/R Window  http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/cases/2010/08/12/silverstone-ft02r-w-review/1  (http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/cases/2010/08/12/silverstone-ft02r-w-review/1)

UPDATE
(May 2016)I removed all the case fans. I only use a Noctua NF-S12A (600rpm/6.7db) for the CPU ant that´s the only fan in the whole Audio Pc.



FOR THE ONES WHO HAVE THE NOS1 dac

UPDATE
(April. 2012): Now I use an USB 3.0 cable with USB 2.0 adapter to connect the NOS1 dac to a TeckNet USB 3.0 PCI Express Card (Renesas USB 3.0 Driver 2.0.34.0) in the Music PC.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B004S0Y9FK/ref=oh_o02_s00_i00_details (http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B004S0Y9FK/ref=oh_o02_s00_i00_details)

UPDATE
(April 2013): To get cleaner power for the TeckNet USB 3.0 PCI Express Card I use now an ApeXi Power Filter Card which I find very effective http://www.ebay.es/itm/251232340488?ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1439.l2649#ht_754wt_906 (http://www.ebay.es/itm/251232340488?ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1439.l2649#ht_754wt_906). Take a look also to this topic: http://www.phasure.com/index.php?topic=2551.60 (http://www.phasure.com/index.php?topic=2551.60)

Update
(June 2013) I don´t use the Filter Card with Windows 8 as it seems to get better sound without it if using this OS

Update
(January 2014) I have changed the USB3.0 PCIe card and now I use the Silverstone EC04-P: http://www.silverstonetek.com/product.php?pid=364&area=en (http://www.silverstonetek.com/product.php?pid=364&area=en). This card must be isolated from the PC case. Please read this posts: http://www.phasure.com/index.php?topic=2838.0 (http://www.phasure.com/index.php?topic=2838.0)

USB cable: There are different opinions about if the USB cable that connects the NOS1 and the Music PC has some influence in the Sound Quality. I use a Mapleshade Clearlink cable and for me it works very well: http://shop.mapleshadestore.com/prodinfo.asp?number=USBLINK3P
I´m using also the USB 2.0 cable provided by Peter with the NOS1/NOS1a, this is a standard and very cheap cable that works very well, it has a very well balanced sound (http://shop.mapleshadestore.com/prodinfo.asp?number=USBLINK3P)

Update
(December 2014) I´ve upgraded the NOS1 to NOS1a and later to NOS1a 75B with Blaxius BNC interlinks
http://www.phasure.com/index.php?topic=3068.0 (http://www.phasure.com/index.php?topic=3068.0)

Update
(February 2016) Now I also use the USB Clairixa cable, the RAM-Disk, and another Pc as Music Server


To date (April 2016) this is the configuration of my system:


Music Server PC (W10) totally silent with OS (W10) in SSD and music inside in SSDs - RDC > Ethernet Gigabyte cable 3m > Audio Pc with the Ram-disk OS and XXHE in memory> USB Clairixa cable 0.20m> Intona (industrial v., no-flash mod.) > USB Clairixa cable 1.80m> PHASURE NOS1a-75B (Driver v1.0.4) > Blaxius BNC interconnects > Genelec 1037B 3-Way Active speakers with BNC inputs



Conclusion: this is just on how I´ve built my new PC, or better said, why I´ve chosen the different parts to build a PC to work with XXHighEnd but, being it a nice experience as it was, it´s not the best part of all. The best part of all is the sound I get from the whole front end:
The PC
The software inside it: XXHighEnd
The Dac: Phasure NOS1 that of course is the Jewell of the Crown.

About that sound I´ll let you know also my opinion once I get more time on the NOS1.

I hope all of this helps someone to get better sound and enjoy the music as much as possible.

I´ll be glad to help if anyone wants more information on any specific issue.



Note: (1) PeterSt: A Guide to Glitchless Playback (Forum: August 11, 2010).http://www.phasure.com/index.php?topic=1356.0 (http://www.phasure.com/index.php?topic=1356.0)
Please read and reread it carefully because there it is basically how everything works. Could be hard to understand totally but try it as much as possible.


Cheers,
juanpmar



I opened a new thread called Links an information to build a PC for XXHighEnd where you can find some web sites to get information: http://www.phasure.com/index.php?topic=1880.msg19201;topicseen#msg19201 (http://www.phasure.com/index.php?topic=1880.msg19201;topicseen#msg19201)

Juanpmar hi,

Great post, very interesting. I have a couple of questions if you don't mind.

Did the PC work first time with XX and the NOS1 ? (If so the component choices are interesting for me as I will need to upgrade some time soon).

What do you think the to sound quality compared to your old PC, have the extra speed, quality PSUs etc made many difference to sound ?

Thanks Nick.

Ps that's one nice looking system you have in the audio system pictures  :)

Hi Nick,

Yes, the PC worked since the first moment with XX and the NOS1. I tried to mimic the Peter´s settings at first to avoid any error and also I maintained  the PC as clean as possible. I mean no tweaks or changing anything on the W Ultimate. The sound is really great but I have no more than around 100 hours on the NOS1 yet. I have the NOS1 working 24/7 so in a week or so I´ll post about the sound again.

Before this PC I used my laptop and an USB connection, the sound was nice trought the EMM Labs dac but nothing that could be compared to the new set up. The sound now is even better than when I used my EMM Labs as the only front end reading cds.

Thanks for your kind words about my system.

I´ve been looking around for something to use as a remote without Wi-Fi and I´ve found this X-Keys devices: http://www.piengineering.com/xkeys.php

Not totally remote of course but kind of, the advantages are obvious over the standard keyboard: size, simplification, speed...

The most interesting models could be the XK-24 and the X-Desktop. Has anyone tried any of these "remotes" with the XXHighEnd HOT KEYS?

I´m still adding some hardware to the PC and the NOS1.

For the PC I´ve got a Cherry keyboard G84-4700 to use it for the macros as a pseudo remote control http://www.cherry.de/english/products/keypads_Keypad_G84-4700.htm (http://www.cherry.de/english/products/keypads_Keypad_G84-4700.htm)

For the NOS1, as you know the position of the power plug is a little strange and it´s not a good idea to get all the cables there in the back of the dac touching each other. To avoid touching the DVI cable with the power cable a good solution is an adapter in L shape. I bought one from Voodoo cables and although a little expensive is very well made and solves the problem. See the Horizontal Right-Angle 15 amp IEC Adapter http://www.voodoocable.net/VAPA.htm (http://www.voodoocable.net/VAPA.htm)

Why didnt you buy something like this? http://www.allekabels.nl/Apparaatsnoer/1245/3650/Netsnoer.html

That is a lot cheaper?

But good idear! 

 :)

Hi Gerard, I didn´t buy the cable you mention because with the Voodoo adapter I can plug my power cords that are way better than those standard ones. In general I have my doubts about pcs but only if we´re talking about a certain quality. For sure there´s a difference in between those stock cables and the Foundation Research I use, although mines are midle price cables.

Hi juanpmar, thanks so much for starting this thread. I have a friend who is interested in buying a NOS1 and has asked me to put a PC together for him. I can't replicate my own music PCs for him as the Zalman TNN cases I use are no longer made, and in any event, the mobos/components have moved on in the last 18 months or so. This thread will really help me to put a nice PC together for him.

Thanks.

Mani.

Thanks Mani, I´m glad to help, don´t hesitate to contact me if you need some more information

Hello Juan,

Just wanna to share you my thought about running the AC power cord parallel with interconnect or spk cable.

As a general rule to avoid any EMI to IC or Spk cable generated by AC power, attention must be paid to the layout of these cables. Digital equipments like DAC or CD player can be quite sensitive to the EMI. You wouldn't want the power cable to run along parallel with a spk or IC, and thereby pick up a bit of grunge that hadn't been present before. If you had to have it run parallel, you'd like them to be at least 12 inches apart. Otherwise, they have to run cross path. It is best to do it abruptly at a 90 degree angle.

I think Peter had given it a thorough thought before deciding on NOS1 connector layout at the back. You can run power cord at 90 degree crossing with IC. Please see the attached photo. I made my own power cable using JPS Labs bulk in-wall cord (with silver coated, very flexible, with noise rejecting quality) and Wattgate 350i cryogenically treated gold plated IEC plug. This red cable is flexible enough to squeez into the back of NOS1. As you can see, the power cable can run 90 degree with my Nordost Valhalla balanced ICs. However, the power cord is running almost parallel to the DVI cable, but based on my listening experience , there is no problem.

All in all, the above is just theory. You have to trust your ears. Make slight change one at a time and compare to your reference CD and sound to compare those changes.

My two cents again.
Praphan

Juanpmar,

Some positive feed back on your ATX supply suggestion.

I bought the Coasir AX750 PSU you have used a coupe of week ago after reading your build review. It’s defiantly a high quality item with what look like very good quality components internally and a high standard of overall finish. Fitting the supply produced a definite positive change in the sound quality compared to my old £50 ATX supply. The fan has so far not come on at all in my PC so it is running completely silently  and there is no electrical noise from the cooling fan. Great !

Thanks for the recomendation,

Nick.

Hello Praphan,

Thanks for the picture....but what is that battery doing there?  ;)

Bert

Birt,

The 9v batt is just sitting on the DVI connector to release strain from the thin lead.  I am not quite sure if your NOS1 came with two digitals volt meters sitting on the digital PSU. You should be able to see these volt meters through H and A die cut letters. The v meters are used to calibrate the differentail output offset. This 9 v batt is used to power these two v meters.

If you don't have one , please contact Peter.

Best
Praphan

Hi Praphan, good cables indeed!!.
Well, of course if you must cross the cables it´s better to do it at 90º but it´s better even if you don´t cross the pc at all with the other cables. With the adapter you can do that and avoid to run the pc parallel to the DVI cable. By the way, the idea of using an L adapter was not mine from the start, it was suggested by Peter when we were talking about the placement of the cables in the NOS1, and yes you´re right, Peter told me that if there´s a distance of more than 3 cmts in between the DVI and the PC he couldn´t measure any interference at all. But still I think that it´s better if you can avoid that proximity. Then I looked around and found the Voodoo adapters that works perfectly.
As the interconnect cables are really close to the DVI cable I use a wrist rests from Allsop that separates a little more those cables, I know this is a home made remedy, but it works.

Nick, thanks for your feedback, I´m glad that the Corsair ATX750 PSU works so nicely for you, I can´t hear the fan either.

Thanks and no, I do not have those digital voltmeters to adjust myself. Good to know that these are adjustable as my amplifier is DC coupled and more than 10mV is then not desired. Not a problem with my present speakers though (these have somewhere in the path a capacitor anyhow).

I thought the battery was needed for a tweak (making capacitors "active").

Bert

Sorry Peter for being off-topic here (it is of no real use to start a new topic about this)

Hi Juan,

If you mean like with attachments, see the "Additional Options" at the bottom-left during posting. That allows you to put in pictures as attachments.

Peter

All,
If you put the NOS1 DAC on small Cones, Spikes or what have you, it is much easier to keep a proper distance between Powercable, DVI cable and Line output cable.
In addition this could have a positive effect on the sound.

Cheers,
Eric

Thanks Peter, now I´ve put some more pictures in the previous post including one with spikes that I forgot before (thanks Eric, you´re right it gives more room for the cables)

I think that could be a good idea if I add some more information once in a while on the subjects covered by the "How I´ve build a PC for XXHighEnd..." post in the form of articles that I´ve found in the web or the new components that could be more up to date to maintain it helpful. I invite all of you to post here whatever you find interesting.

Today I´d like to post information about Memory because, as you know, it´s an important issue for XXHighEnd. It´s from Hardware Secrets and is titled "Understanding Ram timing" http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/Understanding-RAM-Timings/26 (http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/Understanding-RAM-Timings/26)

I hope it helps
:thankyou:
Juan

Another interesting article, this time about SSD used as a cache: Intel Smart Response Technology Explained

http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/Intel-Smart-Response-Technology-Explained/1292/1 (http://www.hardwaresecrets.com/article/Intel-Smart-Response-Technology-Explained/1292/1)

For those interested in learning about hardware and how to build a PC I'd recommend a couple of books that are probably very familiar to most of you, but just in case. These books, although easy to read and written even for the less experienced in this area among us, can give you enough knowledge to build your own PC:

- Upgrading and Repairing PCs, Scott Mueller http://www.quepublishing.com/imprint/series_detail.aspx?st=87406 (http://www.quepublishing.com/imprint/series_detail.aspx?st=87406)
This is a great book and has it all on the hardware. You can find versions in different languages and can be bought directly from the Scott´s Forum at a cheaper price. Amazon UK price is around 20GBP (19 Edition)


- Build it. Fix it. Own it: A Beginner's Guide to Building and Upgrading a PC, Paul McFedries http://www.amazon.co.uk/Build-Fix-Own-Beginners-Upgrading/dp/0789738279/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1307181878&sr=8-3 (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Build-Fix-Own-Beginners-Upgrading/dp/0789738279/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1307181878&sr=8-3)
Teaches you about the components and how to built different types of PCs.

Thank you for all your efforts on sharing this Juan.

Regards,
Peter

You're welcome!

Juan, I was just looking at your (Picasa) pictures once again, and I suddenly notice the maybe strange (??) position you put the PC case in. I didn't look up anything, but be careful about how the disks are spinning now. I mean, they can be flat or upside down, but not vertically mounted. So, the platters should move in the horizontal plane, not the vertical.

Look at the picture in this link (http://www.phasure.com/index.php?topic=352.msg2310#msg2310) (my former PC) for the *wrong* situation. This wears out the bearings in one direction (downwards) and in the end the spindle will be in too much space, and it will go up and down.
I have it like this (wrong) for years, but it really isn't the best (and quite careless :yes:).

Peter

Hi Peter, thanks for your advise on the disks placement. Do you think that the sound is affected by the disks position?, I´ve took a look at google to see what could I find on this issue and there´s a general concern about the heat problem in the vertical position but not if the disck could be affected in the way they work. If I understand you well the problem will arise after some years of work.
The case I use is designed to work with the disks in vertical position and the optimun ventilation is made in that position. Anyway now I´ve tried the other position and it works fine also, no differences in sound at first glance, for sure it´s not worse though. I´m checking the heat to see if they go up and so far I see the same temperatures except the motherboard that´s 3ºC or 4ºC higher.

No, I can't think of any SQ influence were it about the different positioning. Unless all falls apart of wear of course.

Please keep in mind, it's only theory. But let's say that the wheels of a car wear under the same conditions. Ok, maybe they won't make as many revs as a disk will do in its life. :)

At least *I* don't worry too much about it, or otherwise I had changed it myself (which I actuuall can't, the PC laying on its side in a cabinet). But I just thought to notify you. You did so well on it all, and maybe you didn't consider it.
But you did, so it's allright !

Regards,
Peter

Hi Juan. Thanks for doing this. I'm not looking to put togther any more music PCs right now, but if I were, this post/thread would be an absolutely invaluable resource.

I'm not sure if there's yet any definitive answer as to which sounds better: more CPU power or less CPU power? At some point, I'll do a comparison of the 3 dedicated music PCs I have here. The CPUs are:
1) i7 on Gigabyte mobo
2) E8600 on Gigabyte mobo
3) Dual-core Atom on Jetway mobo

I only wish I had the means to objectively measure any differences, as opposed to subjectively listen out for them - I find hearing differences quite easy, but deciding which ones actually sound better, I find sometimes very difficult.

Mani.

Thanks to you, Mani. We all need that kind of tests and take advantage of it.

On the issue of if a faster or slower cpu with more or less cores has an influence on the sound or the way the DAC receives the data (if there are different ways to receive digital data) I have no experience because I only have one music pc. Maybe Peter can help. I suppose, however, that if XXHighEnd is a memory player perhaps a faster CPU can help to put the data faster in the memory, convert flac files faster, etc.

I wonder what would you do, or anyone else, if  a cpu configuration measures better than other one but sounds worse, or just different, and you like more the one that measures worst. I personally would choose the one I like more no matter how it measures.

Juan

OK, I've done a fairly detailed comparison this morning between the i7 and the Atom.

Firstly, the Atom powered by a linear PS sounds very different to the i7 powered by a 'highend fanless' Seasonic SMPS. I wanted to eliminate the two different types of PS from the equation so that I could focus just on CPU power. So what I did was compare the Atom powered with a linear PS vs. the same Atom powered by a 'brick' SMPS. Hmmm... With the SMPS, the Atom sounded surprisingly similar to the i7 with its SMPS. Neither is obviously better than the other, and the best way I can think of to describe the difference is something like this: the linear PS is like taking a photo in natural light, the SMPS is like taking the same photo with artificial light. Now if used cleverly, artificial light can actually enhance a photo - make the colours more vibrant and make the scene look more 'alive'. But this artificial light will never be as easy on your eyes as natural light.

BUT what I found next really surprised me. I powered the Atom with the linear PS. I then booted up the i7 (sitting about 1m away) with its SMPS. With the i7 switched on (i.e. a SMPS switched on somwhere in the mains circuit), even when the i7 was connected to nothing else, the sound of the Atom changed! It sounded very similar to how it sounded powered by the brick SMPS!!!

It seems to me that having any SMPS on in my system changes the sound. I will do more testing but right now, I'm seriously inclined to eliminate absolutely all SMPSs from my system.

Mani.

Thank you for your review. I can remember a similar influence on the sound by two mobile charger I had plugged into the wall outlet near to my hifi system. It is good to know that an atom based playback system can sound as goog as an i7. What kind of linear power supply did you use? Do you have recomondations or a link to some good informations about that topic?
Greetings
Adrian

My Atom PC is based on the 'CAPS' computer: http://www.computeraudiophile.com/content/Computer-Audiophile-Pocket-Server-CAPS-v20

However, I would NOT recommend this PC for use with XX. The maximum SFS that I can set is around 150 (I have it set to 100). Even with this SFS setting, I cannot get gapless playback - the system simply isn't powerful enough. Now for me, sacfricing gapless playback for a smoother, less edgy sound is worth the price. But there's no guarantee that this will be the case for anyone else.

My recommendation would be to wait until ultra-low wattage/TDP designs become as powerful as today's i5/i7 designs - it surely can't be too far away. The other alternative would be to look into a linear supply for a current i5/i7, but I think this would be too crazy... even for us Phasure posters!

Apart from not coping with gapless playback, my Atom works quite nicely with XX, especially in Unattended with OS minimised. It's quite a lot slower than my i7 when playing with the XX GUI, but not painfully so.

Mani.

Hi Juan, just wondering what differences you experienced between 12 and 24 gigs of memory? Thanks for your updates!

Hi,

Almost from the start of building my computer I have 24Gb of memory although I haven´t updated the post until today, so I can´t tell you what´s the difference in between 12Gb or 24Gb, most of the people have 12Gb or less memory and are very happy. What I can say is that my computer is lightning fast and that I have not time enough to read the window that appears when Minimize OS that says "Wait for Service..." I have not time enough to read any other word. If this kind of things depends on the amount of memory I´m not sure, all I can say is that the computer works fantastically well.

Best regards,
Juan

A short while ago, Nick asked me about the specific component list of 'Le Monster'. I thought other people might be interested also, so here it is. Most of these components are readily available from Amazon, apart from the case.

HTH. But please feel free to ask any questions.

Mani.

• Caselabs W8

• Seasonic P-1000 ATX 12V 1000W Platinum Series Power Supply Unit

• 6x Noctua NF-P12 PWM 120mm Cooling Fan

• Asus P9X79 Workstation Series Motherboard

• Intel Core i7-3960X Processor - 3.3GHz, 15MB Cache, Sandy Bridge, Socket 2011, Intel Turbo Boost Technology

• Noctua D14-2011 Dual Radiator PWM CPU Cooler : NH-D14-2011

• (2x still on pre-order) G Skill Ripjaws Z 4x8GB DDR3 PC17000 2133MHz Kit for Intel X79 Quad Channel Platforms (currently using G Skill Ripjaws Z 16GB DDR3 PC17000 2133MHz Kit instead)

• Dell WD3000BLFS Western Digital 2.5 inch 300GB 15K SATA Raptor Drive with Sharkoon HDD Mounting Frame, 2.5-inch and 3.5-inchHDD Vibe Fixer Pro

• 4x Seagate Barracuda 3.5 inch 2TB 7200 RPM 64MB 6GB/S Internal SATA Drive

• Perixx PERIBOARD-515, Wired Professional Touchpad PS2 Keyboard - 370*138*20mm - 2.0m Long Cable - US Layout

• TeckNet USB 3.0 PCI Express Interface USB 3.0 Dual Expansion Card (Molex Splitter NOT included)

• USB 3.0 Ultra High Speed Cable - 5 Metres - Blue - Male A Plug to A Plug 5m - Indigo Banana Media

• USB A Female to B Male Adapter

Mani hi,

Many thanks for the details of "le monster", that is some build and worthy of the name IMHO.

My "demi monster"  :) is up and installing W7 just now. We have a lot of components in common the main being the Asus X79 WS motherboard which looks superb. I am still using my existing HDD and see you have sourced some very high performance drives so I may give these a try.

I will post more on the config when I get music playing ok. It may be a few days because the rest of my system is stored away safely whilst the decorators finish the hall  :(

Out of interest what graphics card did you go for ?

Thanks again,

Nick

None I bet. :grazy:

I really want to make a remark about those PSUs you guys tend to dunk in;

Why in heaven's sake so large ? Do you really think it is needed ? The only reason for needing a larger than 300-350W PSU is when you have a 300W graphics card in there (which coincidentally could use its power). But do we ?

Remember, my system consists of 9 internal HDDs, a low consumprion graphics card and by now a bunch of USB (hdd) connections. And a 350W PSU (couldn't get a 300W one).
But I anticipate there is no way I could be accessing all those HDDs at the same time. Oh, I could, but it won't happen. Normally only one or two will be spinning; often none.

Peter

Hi Peter,

I have in my computer a Corsair AX750 power supply and it has some important advantages mostly about running in a silent mode. In this case the size is important because that means that using below the 20% of the load the fan in the power supply is 0 rpm and below 50% of the load the fan is running in quiet mode producing just 16db or less. That means that using 375W this power supply is almost inaudible and it was an important part when I built my pc.
Of course also if for any reason or at any time you need more power you get it but again the most important reason to choose my ps was the almost negligible noise at normal use. There are also some fan-less ps but I don´t trust them as much as a ps with a built in variable speed fan.

Please see the Hybrid Silent Fan Control graphics in Tech Specs : http://www.corsair.com/professional-series-gold-ax750-80-plus-gold-certified-fully-modular-power-supply.html (http://www.corsair.com/professional-series-gold-ax750-80-plus-gold-certified-fully-modular-power-supply.html)

Best regards,
Juan

Well I couldn’t wait for the decorating to be finished. I set the system back up this morning, it will have to be moved out again in time for Monday but I’m  so glad I had listen.

I found something out about the old, and not so trusty as it turns out, motherboard in my last PC.
 
I have held off doing a PC upgrade for years and kept using an ASRock G43 chipset mother board. Throughout this time improvements in the system (XXHE releases, using a HiFace, gainclones,  iterations of the NOS1 and USB3) have removed layer after layer of distortion. BUT, still at higher up-sample rates (> 88khz) a veil came over the music making it slightly confused and no matter what I did it just would NOT go away. In addition to this veil there were also strange high frequency overtones present when I tested the system with sweep frequency tracks. Still a superb sound overall to listen to, but bl**dy frustrating  :grazy:

This morning with the new motherboard (I doubt the problem above was down to the old Quad core CPU) the problems have gone ! Peter will know how desperate I have been to banish this problem and has helped so much with suggestions. Many, many thanks Peter, you were right  :veryhappy:
 
The point I wanted to share is that motherboards CAN and DO cause distortion, in my case it has been easly masked with other forms of distortion in systems for years but it was there all the time. It makes this thread very important IMO,  information on good PC builds is clearly so important to sound quality. My PC has components selected from both Juanpmar and Mani’s builds so a BIG thanks guys for posting the details or your builds.

The sound of this new PC Build is quite epic compared to the old, the things that stand out are the substance in the music, the timber of voices / instruments and the smooooothness. And this without much tunning yet of the system and with Z09-7 on the way. I am late to using a really hi spec PC compared to many on the forum so I others will know all about this but I am really pleased the upgrade.

Nick.

Ps Spec details of my build to follow.

Pps the old PC is now going to do punishment as an internet toaster for my daughter, it has no place in a music system
 :stop:

NICK, but THAT is good news !!

But no matter I can have been right on something, it is a total mystery to me how this distortion of you can have happened.
For others : Nick (and I too via a recording Nick made) could hear (distorted) music through his system via the NOS1 with only USB connected and the remainder of the DAC being totally out of power. So, something D/A'd there, but whatever we tried we could not find what in heaven's name could do this.

Very glad this is solved Nick !
Peter

Ah well, in my case this was a mistake. I first tried the 460W fanless PS from my previous totally-silent PC in Le Monster. Although the LEDs on the X79 mobo all lit up, the PC would not boot up. So I tried another 460W PS from my other totally-silent PC. And again, Le Monster just wouldn’t boot up. Whenever I’ve had boot-up problems in the past (mainly using linear PSs in Atom PCs with SOtM modules installed) the culprit has always been a too-low-powered PS. So I naturally assumed this was the culprit here and so went ahead and ordered a 1000W PS. And once installed in Le Monster… it still wouldn’t boot up! And you want to know what the issue was? It was the bloody power cord I was using!!! It was rated at 5A, so should have been fine, but it just wasn’t. I replaced the power cord with a 13A one, et voila, everything worked fine. I haven’t reverted back to one of the 460W PSs yet, but am sure they’d work fine. Actually, the CaseLabs W8 allows installation of two PSs – at some point I might try powering the mobo with one PS and all peripherals with another.


Yeah, that was the idea. But I can’t figure out how to go ‘headless’ and also use XX in ‘Minimise OS’ and ‘Unattended’ mode. I’m hoping 0.9z-7 might provide a solution… For now, I’m using a cheapo Asus GeForce GTX 560 Ti.


My pleasure Nick. If you come up with any particular tweaks for the mobo let me know.

Mani.

Oh that is interesting , because in my new pc , I am experiencing the same thing and I do not have the video card .
Did some mail excange with Peter , and I did think it was some driver problem , did some restore .  But after a while it wont go to minimized os properly : the wasapi services remains on , the lan services also , and the minimized desktop doesn't work .

s

Haha, it seems that we are mixing up a few things here;

What I meant with my "none I bet" is that the processor should be able to provide the graphics. If only the MoBo supports it ...

So, nothing about "no video at all", which (I bet ??) wouldn't even allow for some remote thing like RDC etc.

Peter

lol , I change signature by now .

Anyway , can't go to minimized OS properly and can't figure out why for now .
But the system plays music fantastically well , smooth and detailed .

Thanks!

Mani hi,

You asked if I could mention tweeks for the Asus X79 WS mother board. I think I have a package of settings that is REALLY worth taking the time to setup. I am so impressed with the potential of this board, I wish I had upgraded ages ago. Almost all of this is stuff that we all know about but as a package of changes the sound produced it is quite beautiful to listen to. The thing I would stress is that the tweeks seem to work as a PACKAGE, individually you can hear them but put them together and wow  8)

The set of tweeks defiantly work on the Asus board that Mani and I have but others may find that they work on other boards with fast multi core PCs, I just cannot say that the sound quality is going to be what the Asus X79 WS provides.

Summary of tweeks.

1)   Eliminate ALL fans (CPU fan case fans etc)
2)   Take power off ALL drives but one (OS XX and Music on the single HDD)
3)   Power the one HDD from a linear power supply
4)   Remove power connections from DVD and Floppy Drives etc
5)   Turn off hyper threading
6)   Over Clock the CPU
7)   Disable CPU “Clock Spreading” 
8)   Turn off Intel Virtualisation
9)   Use PCIe USB 3 (NEC chipset)
10)   XX processor scheme 3, SFS around 350mb,
11)   Hygiene factor tweeks (Old hat stuff but for good measure)
a.   Disable Data Execution support (in Bios)
b.   Disable all Devices not needed for music (extra SATA controllers, USB ports etc etc in Device Manager)
c.   Disable all devices not used for Music in  Bios (Mobo
USB, Sound card, COM ports etc)
(Points 1 to 10 all have an effect individually, but together they really move music to the next level.


Notes


1)   Fans. At first I had to set my new PC up with a CPU fan because the mounting clip to fit my Zalman Reserator water cooler was not available. When the clip arrived I was able to remove the CPU fan and fit water cooling to the CPU and Video card. The water pump is powered by a separate 240v supply. It really makes a difference.

2)   Only ONE Drive with power.
For years every time I have added ANY additional drive (SDD, DVD, FD even just having them powered up in the PC and not using them) it always affects SQ. With the tweeks I have one Sata II HDD powered up (SDD and DVD are fitted but powered down). This is really worth doing and its easy to test, just put the OS, XXHE and some music on the same HDD and pull the power off all the others then listen....

I just reconnect the power on DVDs and other drives if I need them.


3)   Linear Power supply for the single HDD. This is really important.
Most HDDs seem to get by on about 1.5amps on the +12v rail and 0.5amps on the 5v rail. The key is to make sure that the linear supply power rails are directly referenced to the PC’s SMPS earths directly and individually for both the 12v and 5v rails (I found that if you reference the linear supply earths only via the Sata Power connection to the drive the Bass and SQ do improve but not NEARLY as much as with the earth set up mentioned).  I am using a cheap Maplin bench supply and I can explain a little more about how I have the supplies setup if needed.

4)   Take Power off all drives except the one used for Music.
Already mentioned in 2) above

5)   Turn off HyperThreading. This was a funny one. In the past over I found over clocking has helped sound quality a little. With the 3930 CPU I was thinking the choice here is either 12 threads at half the clock speed or 6 threads at full clock speed and full cache for each core. 6 threads at max clock won easily.

6)   Over Clock the CPU. See 5). Use the “Asus Optimal Mode” button on the “EZ Bios” Page to get a stable 4.2Gb clock speed with good memory speeds. No other effort required.

7)   Disable CPU Clock Spreading. CPU clock jitter as far as music is concerned in the ASAS Bios this as called. Bios > Advanced > Ai Tweeker > Spread Spectrum > Disabled

8)   Turn off “Intel Virtualisation Technology”. Bios > Advanced > CPU Configuration > Intel Virtualisation Technology > Disabled.

9)   USB 3.0.  Well documented on the forum. I am finding a USB 3.0 cable with an adaptor best with these tweeks.

10)   XX processor scheme 3, SFS around 350mb. Not much to say but these give the detail of Scheme 1 together with a rich full presentation with presence and great timber.

Best Nick.

Thanks!

I have a different mobo but applied a lot if the same tweaks, though some are new to me. Setting number 5) did the same for me on the Atom d525 motherboard (current cpu has no HT), ht on may be speedier (slightly) but off sounded better.

Off course there is more. Do you use the disc on ide or ahci mode?

Just recently I switched over to a new casing since the huge Megahalems cooler (no fans here when going for ult sq) didn't fit in my old one. No surprise I had to change a few xx settings to get my sound back again.

Regards, Coen

Coen hi,

Good to hear.

I tried ahci quite a while ago but it had a negative effect on sound quality. Then I found there was no way of swoping back to IDE drivers without re installing the OS.  :(

The linear supply for the HDD is worth trying.

Best,
Nick.

That was my finding too. Getting the same conclusions on quite different systems stems hopefull for a general PC setup guide.


I will take this tip seriously :)! I have kilos of transformers etc lying around waiting for such a little project.

regards, Coen

Nick, wow this must have taken you ages to work out. Anyway, thanks a lot for sharing the fruits of your efforts with all of us.

It's going to take me some time to try all of this out. And having bought a bunch of fans and HDDs, it's going to be a bit of a painful process stripping Le Monster down. (But hey, nothing compared to spending months sourcing a PMII and an expensive Weiss interface only to have the combo handily beaten by the original NOS1!)

Mani.

Mani hi,

I realise this would be quite a change for your build so I was giving some thought to how you could try this in an easily reversible way without screw driver work.

Perhaps you could try the following for the physical changes first;

1)   Pull all the fan headers for all the case fans off the mother board

2)   Pull the CPU fan header off the mother board and run it from a separate external 12v supply for now. Doing this will give a “CPU fan” Bios error, this can be fixed by setting the Bios (it needs to be done otherwise the CPU may be throttled down due to the lack of cooling status). I can point you in the direction of this Bios change if needed.

3)   Pull the power leads out of all of the RAID SDD DVDs etc and leave them where they are (SATA cables still connected should be ok).

4)   Use your supper fast HDD for OS, XXHE. Put some music on to this drive to try the config with before the RAID drives are powered down.

5)   The linear power to the single HDD is easy to setup if you have some old SATA power cables about and a suitable bench power supply. We can discuss this particularly the earth layout (it’s simple to set up). Is seems to be fine to power up the drive before the PC so I just switch the HDD PSU on at the wall socket that the whole system is connected to then boot the PC as usual with the drive already spinning.

6)   The Bios and OS tweaks are all reversible so these are easy to apply / dissapply.


Apart from the Linear supply on the HDD all of the above would then be easily reversible if the config does not give the SQ results but I think it should.

PM me when you get to step 5) and I will explain what I did (if you don’t have a supply to hand there is a Maplin one that works fine and is not too expensive to try).

Best regards,

Nick.

Hi Nick, congratulations for your new and fantastic music Pc. I wonder if you could upload some pictures to show us how it looks and if it is possible to explain how you built it up in an easy way for the people who are not so techies.

Best regards,
Juan

Hi all,



Here is the spec for my PC build. Thanks to Juan and Mani for their recommendations which helped to spec the build.

Juan, sorry no pics yet, see comments about the case below - its not pretty  :(

Processor

Intel Core i7-3930X Processor - 3.2GHz, Sandy Bridge, Socket 2011.

Processor provides physical 6 cores and up to 12 threads if hyper threading is used, I have it switched off. It will overclock to about 4.5Ghz with a good motherboard and supports quad channel memory access.

Motherboard

Asus P9X79WS Workstation Series Motherboard.

I think this board is a great spot by Mani, I was going to go for the Asus Sabertooth X79 board but the P9X79WS is a very nice if expensive board. The board’s Bios makes it easy to shut off none essential hardware for music and overclocking is very simple (The board and CPU achieve a 4.2Ghz CPU clock speed by clicking a single “auto tune” button).

Memory

G.Skill 16GB (4 x 4GB) DDR3 2133MHz DIMM CL11 Ripjaw Z.

I went for reasonably fast 2133Mhz clock speed as in the past faster memory has helped with sound quality. Also some benchmarks show lower density DIMMs achieving slightly higher memory read speeds. This amount of memory in the PC allows for SFS up to 470mb in XXHE (I have not tried any higher). If Peter swops to a 64bit version of XXHE that needs more memory the ASUS X79 WS mother board has another 4 DIMM slots so it would be easy to bring total memory up to 32mb.

The motherboard clocks this memory to its full speed.

Cooling

No case fans, CPU fans or video fans are used.

Zalman Resorator 2 Water Cooling (CPU and video card).

I really like this unit for providing fanless XXHE sound quality and silent operation. The water pump has its own separate mains connection and so doesn't  use the PC’s Power.

EDIT

the Resorator 2 needs a Zalman mounting clip kit to be ordered to fit the water block onto a socket 2011 motherboard. The kit is cheap but is not in the box with the standard water cooling system.

Storage

A single Seagate Barracuda 500mb SATAII drive.

This is the only drive used whilst playing music. The drive is powered by an linear power supply external to the PC. OS, XXHE and music are all on the same partition.

A Samsung SH-222BB SATTA DVD R/W. and OZ Vertex II SSD are fitted but power is always  disconnected whilst playing music. The DVD drive was selected only based on availability, I will have to see how it fairs when used to rip CDs.

Operating system

Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit sp1 installed directly from Microsoft DVD. No update's applied.     

Power supply

Corsair AX750, thanks for the recommendation Juan, a nice unit, silent operation in this PC (the fan never comes on) and good sound.

USB

PCIe USB 3 card with NEC chipset, USB 3.0 cable and adaptor to connect to NOS1 USB.

EDIT
Graphics

Radion HD5450

Its a passively cooled card as standard. I have watercooled it but really it doesn’t need this. It was selected as a low cost card which hopefully would not do too much damage (through hardware and driver behaviours) to music, it seems to work well in this respect.

Case

This is where it gets a bit embarrassing - A no-name pressed steel case (probably about £20 pounds or free from most house hold dumps :-) ). My excuse is that it doesn't help it sound quality so no money spent here.... yet.

Best,
Nick.

Thank you Nick, that´s a great work.

That cooling system is very interesting as it allows to turn off the fans, btw how do you turn on/off the hdd fans? just plugging and unplugging it?

What kind of power supply you use for this cooling system?
Could you put some links to the place where you bought it?

One more thing, how have you disabled totally the hyper threading?.

Sorry, too many questions at the same time.

Best regards,
Juan

Juan hi,

No problems re questions.

The Resorator 2 water cooling system comes as a kit with everything needed (except the mounting clip for a socket 2011 CPU this is ordered separately). The water pump is in the bottom of the radiator and has a 240v mains lead going directly to it. I plug the pump into the same socket block that the rest of the hifi is plugged into. This way as soon as the wall mains is switched on the pump is running before the pc can be booted.

http://www.quietpc.com/products/watercooling/reserator1-v2

http://www.quietpc.com/products/watercooling/zm-oc2011

The HDD does not have any fan at all. The disk itself is powered by an external linear power supply, this feeds +12v and +5 volts to the disk drive. Again the external linear supply is plugged into the same socket block at the rest of the system. When the wall power is switched on the linear supply starts and the disk spins up. Then I boot the pc when I am ready, the boot process does not mind that the disk is already spinning.

Hyper threading is usually something that can be enabled /disabled in the pc bios. This is where the Asus x79 motherboard turns it off.

Hope this helps,

Nick.

Guys,

As you know I'm always keen on first "anouncing" something, to only next start doing/making it. Usually it is about something which is not the most easy to accomplish, but by anouncing it in advance I sort of *have* to do it.

I was asked by something starting with 6 and ending with Moons to arrange for a nice - no, rather ultimate Win PC for XXHighEnd. Okay, so it had to be good ...

After days of searching for proper components I think I have it all together, ready to order all. But what was my challenge ?
Well, to squeeze a nice LGA 2011 based system with a 6 core processor into a slick looking "audio cabinet". I think I managed with something which is 14cm (5.5") tall (including feet).

Of course the main subject here is the processor cooling and getting rid of the heat in the cabinet, and, I settled for less than 20dB of (fan) noise (under full steam).

At this moment I could start laying out what I all will be using for it, but it is a kind of a moot thing because I don't know yet whether all is going to work as intended. The processor cooler might just not fit, or maybe I can't get rid of PWM regulation which all is based upon officially. If something doesn't work, I at least have a base to proceed upon and I can order new components with the physical stuff at hand.

Btw, of course I considered closed loop liquid cooling, but it comes with its own problems, like reliability and the physical mounting of the radiator/fan. So, it will be air cooled, and if something is a challenge in a 14cm tall cabinet and a 130W processor, it is just that. And remember, when the cooler fits into the height of the cabinet, it may not fit over the memory or other components, so even the choice of motherboard is important as is the height of the memory cards.


Another reason to now write about this, is because right after I finished selecting the components, Nick came up with the "whimpy" approach. Haha. I mean, besides all the very good stuff Nick came up with, nothing is more easy to clunk it all into infinite dimensions. So that came to me as "too easy" after my own hard work (well, that really is how it came to me). But ... after reading about Nick's setup, I really should incorporate a couple of linear power supplies for which (again) theoretically some space is left; The setup is based upon having USB3 external HDDs except for the OS disc and one other "special appliances" (0.9z-7) disc, while 4 3.5" HDDs can be in there. So there should be some space for a couple of transformers and sturdy PSUs.

If it all failed I'll let you know just the same ... :)
Peter

Hello,
Why not trying a Xeon E5-2620 ? It has a slower clock speed, but a wider cache, a faster system bus and only 95 Watts TDP.
http://ark.intel.com/compare/64594,63697

To be honest, I never saw that Xeon coming. What at least *is* nice is that it's using the same socket.
Furthermore the 95W will emerge from the lower clock speed, and in my opinion the 130W processor will consume about the same when not used at full throttle (which it will only do in brief spikes once per XX seconds, were it about XXHighEnd usage).
Lastly, I didn't see the price of it yet (didn't look further either) but it should be more expensive I think ...

Something to consider at least !
Thanks,
Peter

PS: But with this Xeon around, I'd rather start looking for a dual socket board .... :)

No, it's a hundred euros cheaper !
A pair of these could be nice on a Z9PE-D8 WS  8)

Hi Peter,

These fans could perhaps be useful for your project:

- http://www.noctua.at/main.php?show=productview&products_id=46&lng=en (http://www.noctua.at/main.php?show=productview&products_id=46&lng=en) (This one could have some difficulties refrigerating cpus with more than 95W)

- http://www.noctua.at/main.php?show=productview&products_id=35&lng=en= (http://www.noctua.at/main.php?show=productview&products_id=35&lng=en=) (Maybe a little bit taller than you want)

- http://www.scythe-usa.com/product/cpu/120/scbsk2000_index.html (http://www.scythe-usa.com/product/cpu/120/scbsk2000_index.html) (I´m using this one in my work pc and it is absolutely silent but I´m not sure if it could work without pwm)

Anyway, you must have your reasons to get a box with such a dimensions but if you could choose the box depending on the size of the main components, always thinking on reducing its size as much as possible, you could have an easier task.

Best regards,
Juan

Hi Nick,

I turned off the hyper threading so now only 6 cores are working. I´m not sure that it is faster with the flac tracks because it has to stop every 5 tracks. About if it sounds better without hyper threading I don´t know yet but it doesn´t seem something really evident.

Could you let me know if it is possible to buy a linear power supply to power the drive?, I think that here in the forum there are some posts about it, not sure though.

Best regards,
Juan

Yes Juan, those coolers are exactly on my list with all having a downside somewhere (but I have a couple more on my list). Btw, notice that the NH-L12 can also have the (or another) 120mm on the bottom side (this is not all that obvious, but it is official).

I dream about these things by now ... :yes:

Thanks,
Peter

PS: When you hunt for an "audio look" cabinet, its limits are the height. 14cm (13 without feet) IMO is the limit for that, or otherwise it starts to be a "PC". The WxD doesn't matter much and just as well can be "pro size" (something like 43cm width). But it really is a challenge, and I found exactly one cabinet that does my job. And notice that somewhat less tall could still work (12-13cm), but one of my "musts" are 120mm (low rev) cooling fans. This makes the selection small fast ...
Next, the major components are nowhere available from one supplier (that I can find), so it really is a matter of getting in a cabinet, a mobo, a cooler and low profile memory (which by itself is cooling-related) for the cooler I have in mind. And indeed, or the thing has separate voltage connections which must suffice at the lower revs regarding heat dissipation, or it needs PWM which as you know I don't like. It can only be done with trial and error. But here the dissipation of the cabinet itself plays a large role too (those fans needing to run at low revs as well). Still a matter of trial and error. But if it works it would be superb. Then there's the fastest system in about the smallest cabinet (and quiet) (not counting in dual Xeons of course).

Ok Peter, once you find the perfect combination of box size and outstanding performance/sound many of us will follow you (again)

 :thankyou:

Best regards,
Juan

My very personal opinion without really knowing (!!) ...

Nick explicitly talked about a "package", and of course he says that for a reason. But but but ...

... Again, personally, I can not believe that even within two months of time it is possible to judge this all because of the so many combinations. So, that it is all good theory (where is the theory ? <- I can imagine something of course) is 100% accepted. But whether it really makes a difference for SQ and whether -if so- it could not be attacked by other means (higher/lower the SFS, change whatever all of those other settings) ... who knows. And then to trade processor threads for always and ever two times more slow (FLAC) loading ? ... I don't know.

Of course we could say something like : when we shut off hyperthreading we got rid of the core parking virtual problem (to sort out). But that would be a strange solution.

Anyway, all the ideas are great, but before trading them for conveniency (mounting linear PSUs for HDDs amongst that) I would really look for other solutions to the same. For example (regarding the HDDs) : it looks theoretically good to remove all the not used HDDs from power (why not actually), but if the lot don't spin anyway, what for ?
... That it may require explicitly spin-down stuff from my side is something else, but it is on my list for ages anyway (and it can be done, as well as the annoying spin up when needed).
Also, what happens when everything is USB3 based as I told about ? So, one powered USB3 hub, and the PC sees one USB3 connection only (for supply).

No, I am not saying that I know better, but I will say that more ways may lead to Rome and they should be considered once conveniency is in order. That's all.

Peter

Yes, too many changes at the same time to judge it quickly, time will say but in some way Nick is a pioneer so we are lucky that he´s working hard to get better sound everyday,

some other people are working hard too, what a hell!,  ALL here are working hard to get better sound with XX. Meanwhile we are enjoying it, of course...  :NY01:

About the Noctua you mentioned, yes it has two fans, you can use one or two, in my music pc I have a Noctua NH-U12P SE2 and only use one fan and I can put it on one side or the other of the cpu cooler.

Best regards
Juan

Hi Nick,

I forgot to ask you, what´s your GPU?, I don´t understand well how it is refrigerated with the Reserator1.

Best regards,
Juan

Maybe not even in "some way" but in a most explicit (and good) way.
Sounds contradictionary to what I said in the earlier post ? Maybe. So, the "package" undoubtedly works out (because Nick says so).
Okay, I'm out of words and in a loop; I just wanted to let know that what Nick says can be trusted, but I guess I put a few things into context.

Peter

I just went out for some groceries and was composing a reply to Juan's kind words in my mind on the way but now I see that Peter has already made a comment which is also very kind. Thanks both.

What I wanted to say is that IMHO there is one pioneer who posts regularly on this site. This person is well known by us all for not just relying on subjective experiment to discover improvements but who always seeks to address fundamentally the theories in his own developments our others proposals. Were it not for Peter's approach I believe that computer music reproduction would not have moved on like it has in the last 5 years, at times it has been is dizzying listening to what has been achieved.

So Juan thanks for the kind words but I am just a slightly obsessive and compulsive type enjoying trying things out and sharing the results. Pioneer is a little strong in such towering company  :)

Kind regards,
Nick.

Juan hi,

I have updated the PC spec post I made earlier with the card details.

The Resorator comes as standard with two water cooling "blocks" one for the CPU and one for a graphics card. You don't have to use the Graphics cooling block but I did for fun. The standard heat sink on the card can easily be removed and replaced with the secong cooling block. The return water from the CPU cooling block is then routed into and out of the Graphics cooling block on its way back to the radiator.

Regards,

Nick.

Peter,


You have homed in on a key point, I did stress that the package seems to work well. Individually each tweek moves a slight shroud of distortion / noise from different aspects of the sound in different places. Taken together something slightly more seems to happen than the sum of the small changes. I am not sure why at the moment.


What I have done is to apply stuff that I have tried and trusted for a number of years to this new PC build. Its not an entirely   :)  random selection. It may be that there are some "dead wood" changes in the list but I am reasonably confident that most contribute.

The interesting thing is that going back a few years I could hear the differences that each of these tweaks made but there was just too much other noise and distortion coming from other factors in the reproduction chain to make them “important”. With the NOS1 USB, a decent mother board (doh that old mobo was such a problem !) USB3 etc etc things are generally now are so good that what was a "small and interesting" effect before now seems to be quite important.

On a couple of points

Having no fans we all know about the motor noise issues.

Taking power off DVD, SSD and HDDs I am confident that whilst the 12v supply to rotate drives do have an effect the 5v supply that powers control circuits + the additional instance of software drivers + the additional active hardware controllers also have a sonic effect. For this reason for the very best reproduction I have found for a long time its best to remove power to additional drives. As you say not very convenient if you need more flexibility to do other things with the PC.

I have been looking in to linear power for the rest of the Mobo eg main +12 +5 +3.3 and -12v rails. There are folks on the net claiming this is really good for replay but this is more for academic interest as it will not be a practical solution for many running 4 high current bench supplies.

It’s a real pain sometimes that the community is so spread across the world, wouln't it would be great to just be able to say come take a listen what do you think ? For all I know the sound I'm listen to would have folks running from the room  ;) 

Best Nick

Oh an extra thought on packaging the PC. The power switch on my (free from any house hold dump) PC case packed up a couple of days ago. Fortunately the Asus mobo has a power button on it so right now I am having to reach inside to turn on. One side effect is that I have no space or cooling issues as the side of the PC case cannot be fitted, I am not sure that the audiance for you new system would appreciate such features  ;)

Not in my opinion, I understood correctly your words and what you wanted to say. I hope my words were also understood, far from any second intention here.

Nick or anyone else, could explain in an easy way how to build a linear power supply for the drive and what should be the specifications?

Kind regards,
Juan

Nicky-o ...

Without words this is exactly what I was referring to. I mean, I know as no one else but yourself how much troubles you went through to FINALLY get where you are now. It is almost to sad to describe, while in the midsts of your problems (more than we all together ever encountered) you tried to improve and in the mean time DID do this fine job. Well, only you now about it ...
So my completely underwater and in between the lines remark was : how to do this all *and* knowing that only for a "few days" you have it going like you attempted to for - how long ? ... should be 18 months.

But I don't know much how to make this clear.
Well, that you must live in a haunted house, may people outside of the UK understand something of it ...

Kindest regards - and the most happy that you are where you are now !!
Peter


PS: I just want to put emphasis on this : If you only look how Nick guided us through a couple of things lately - and which things are related to the NOS1-USB, WHILE he could just listen to distorted music with the DAC section shut off, and which distorted music was just audible at low level passages while normally playing ... what can I say ...
:cry:

For those interested, and since I'm with my nose in the list again, this Noctua is 9mm lower when the top fan is not mounted : http://noctua.at/main.php?show=productview&products_id=37&lng=en&set=2 (NH-C14 with 140mm fans). So, contrary to the NH-C12P SE14, with this one a bottom fan can be used which makes it lower in the end (with top fan not mounted).

Peter

My PC for XXHighend:

This PC is built foremost for no noise. No fans are used. 
SQ I think is good, the best until now for me,  but I don`t have any good references to compare with so I don`t know.
I am connecting the Phasure NOS1 to the USB 3.0 port with USB 2.0 cabel.

Processor:
Intel Core i5-2400 Processor at 3.1GHz, 4 cores, no HT, Sandy Bridge, Socket 1155.

Motherboard:
ASUS P8Z77-V LX. Z77 chipset with integrated USB 3.0 from intel.

Memory:
Corsair Vengeance DDR3 1600MHz 16GB

Cooling:
No fans are used.

CPU cooler:
Noctua NH-D14 CPU Cooler used without fans. (I use 1 fan under installing/heavy CPU work, the fan is not needed when playing music.)

Discs:
OS Disc: Western Digital SATAIII WD10EZRX  1000GB (Low power, low heat and quiet)
Music Disc: Western Digital SATAII WD AV-GP 2TB (Low power, low heat and quiet)

(DVD/Blueray drive only connected during installing OS.)     

Power supply:
Seasonic X-400 Gold Fanless.

Graphics: Internal Intel IGP (clocked minimum)

Case:
Fractal Design Define R3. No fans are used. It has room for two topmounted fans, but i open up without any fans, so the heat can go up and out. Cold air from the floor will be sucked up through the bottom of the case when the heat from the cpu/Discs/PSu vents out on the top.

Operating system:
Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit sp1 installed directly from Microsoft DVD. No update's applied.

Mouse on PS2-port, and keyboard on USB.

Harald

Hi Nick, PM sent...

Cheers, Mani.

This is strange...

I'm trying to use 2 'regular' computer PSs  (both Seasonic) - one for the mobo and one for all other peripheral devices. I can power the whole PC from either PS no problem, i.e both PSs work fine. But when I connect the mobo to one PS and the peripheral devices to the other PS, the peripheral devices remain totally dead and are not detected. If I swap the two PSs, I get the same result! So it seems a 'regular' computer PS will simply remain dormant unless it detects a mobo.

Weird. Anyone know why this should be?

Mani.

On off is managed by the motherboard via the large multi pin ATX connector. You can only plug one in the mobo so only one psu can be controlled. It shouldn't be hard to figure out which of those pins actually controls the on-off state of the psu... You can fool the other supply in being set by the motherboard by proving the right pin(s?) with probably 5V. This is tappable from a molex on the connected psu.

Am I ranting?

regards, Coen

 

Probably because the the PS need to be connected to the mobo to be turned on . This is my guess .

s

Edit ; we should take a look at a generic PS schematic and find out what is the circuitry that provides the turn on and see if we can do a little mod to do that from the MB or a molex itself .

Here is an example :  http://www.pavouk.org/hw/en_atxps.html
and this also should help a bit : http://www.wikihow.com/Convert-a-Computer-ATX-Power-Supply-to-a-Lab-Power-Supply

Hi there Harald. I see this is your first post in here. Well, great post. Thanks !

Regards,
Peter

Missed that. And you're a NOS1 owner. Welcome. Looking at your sig it looks like you've got everything working well already. Cool.

Mani.

Hey Coen, Stefano, thanks for the ideas. I'll look into this when I can. Meanwhile let me know if you come up with anything else.

Cheers, Mani.

OK  let me present  my Pc for High End  :) :

Processor :
Intel i7 2600k at 3,4 Ghz , 4 cores , Hyperthreading , Sandy Bridge , Socket 1155

Motherboard :
MSI Z68A-G43 (G3) with USB3 ( Renesas driver )

Memory : Kingston KVR1333DN9K2 16GB (easy to overclock and looks stable ) .

CPU Cooler : Cooler Master Hyper 212 Plus (set to minimum speed fan )

Disks : 2X Seagate Momentus Laptop ( OS and XXHighEnd ), 1X Samsung Laptop(Music)  . Sata . Will upgrade to new and better Disks later.

Case and PS (400watt ) are generic but good . Later will upgrade PS to a silent one probably from Corsair .

Graphics : Internal , no overclock .

OS: W7 , sp1 from updates ; It still gives the 15msec resolution .

Wireless mouse and keyboard by Logitech .


Well I am very happy for now with the set up , which was all in a look to save some money ( thank you Peter for suggestions of the CPU ) .

The only problem I encoutered initially was the impossibility to go into Minize OS correctly . After some trial and error with the BIOS settings  , it works very well again . I did disable the UEFI boot over other things .

Another thing I did noticed is the DRAM timings ( and overclock ): they seem to produce different sound presentation .
For now I am not overclocking the RAM , and use a timing like 8-8-8-20 . Also the timing suggested by the MSI memory-z works very well ( and it is rather defined with 10 values to set ) .
Some spare tests with the Latency checker , shows values as low as 8micro seconds , and overall the PC is very very smooth at use .

Great , thank you all around !


Stefano

Stefano hi,


I also noticed this, on my old pc I used to get the front side bus going as quickly as possible and work on timings. Generally faster was better. My new pc build was carefully specified to give quite fast memory performance. Good to know that others are getting similar effects from memory speed.

Best,

Nick.

I am not so sure Stefano said that ?
And actually I'd think it is the other way around (theory only !)

Peter

Edit : FWIW I have mine running at 833Mhz (can do 2100).

It's  a matter of bandwith probably ; so then the refined timings lend to a more relaxed listening .
I like to reason in analogy to my amplifiers , which ar both very large bandwith , fast yes , but also particular in topology and super enjoyable .
So instead of overcloking we could *infact* think of underclocking .... at times . lol

S

Sorry I should read more carefully !

Will be trying under clocking later me thinks  :)

Nick

Hi all,

OK, now it’s my turn to show you my PC. I recently got my Phasure NOS1 and I build a PC for XXHighend exclusively.

Thanks to all the valuable information on this site I borrowed ideas and knowledge and brew my own specs. The goal was a simple PC, with low noise levels and an audio-component appearance.

PC case: Modu MD11

Processor: Intel i7-2600S for low power consumption (65W)

Mb: Asus P8H67-V

RAM: Kingston DDR3 16GB

HDD 1: WD Velociraptor 300Gb (for XXHighEnd and Windows 7 Ultimate 64bits)

HDD 2: WD 2Tb Caviar Green

DVD drive: Plextor

USB 3.0 PCIe: ASRock

PSU: Silentmaxx FanlessII. With 500 Watt it is oversized, but one of the best fanless PSU’s

I used no casefans, only 1 NoiseBlocker 120mm fan on a Thermalright AXP-140RT low profile CPU cooler. Later I will experiment with the fan disabled.

For the XXHG settings please see my profile below.

And the SQ? I’m very impressed and pleased. It surpasses all the DAC’s I tried here (DCS Debussy, Audionote 4, PSAudio, Bryston, etc).

Finally I’m released of that hard to describe digital fog :nea: that many people don’t seem to notice, but of which I became allergic for the past 25 years.

Thanks Peter and other forum members. 

(How do I downsize this pic??)
[I've done it for you - Peter]

Hi stanray, congratulations for that great system including the rack and the Purepower conditioner, the NOS1 in black looks great although I almost can´t imagine it other than blue.

My working pc is almost like yours, maybe I´ll try it with the NOS1 to see how it sounds, the mb that I use in that pc is a P8H67-M EVO, with a i7 2.600 and 16Gb kingstone, a pasive GPU and it is very silent also. Making some arrangements I could make almost a clone of yours. I´ll follow your changes to see if I can apply it to my computer and compare it with the one that I have now dedicated to music.

The Modu MD1 looks very nice, where did you buy it, in Italy?

Regards,
Juan

Cool Stanley. You really made a nice job of it. Thanks for sharing.
Now, what about something like Coverart showing in that right leg of the NOS1 eh ? ... oh, oops. Yea, so stupid. Let me promise that for the next version after 0.9z-7 (and not ages after it).

Peter

Hello Everyone,

Just a gentle warning for anyone who will attempt to use water cooling system in a city which has regular black out like Bangkok. You tend to use UPS to feed power to your audio PC. In my case, I use true on line UPS. Please make sure that you power the water cooling pump from the UPS source too. Otherwise, when power fails, cooling system will stop while CPU is still running. Of course, mobo will do the shut down work automatically. But it is safer to run cooling pump from UPS source.

Please see more details in my post last year with some photos. It has been almost 2 years that I use Reserator 1. It is sturdy and very reliable.

http://www.phasure.com/index.php?topic=1662.msg16787#msg16787

Best regards,
Praphan

Well Peter, it is my speculation that you will fire up the screen on the right leg from the long waiting 0.9z-7 onward ! But we can wait.

regards,
Praphan

Interesting, curious for your results.


Yes, from http://www.modushop.biz/. Good quality, reasonable prizing and fast delivery.

Stanley

Ah, that's where the mysterious display is for. Didn't know that. This will really look cool!

Stanley

Mani hi,

Coen was close in his reply - when ATX PSU is not connected to MBD it needs pin#14 (PS_ON, green wire)
to be short connected (shorted) to COM (any black wire) order to power up. See here (http://www.techpowerup.com/articles/other/22) and here. (http://www.audioasylum.com/forums/pcaudio/messages/6/64941.html)
 
(http://i851.photobucket.com/albums/ab79/giokka/psconnshort.jpg)
HTH

:drinks:

Hey Nik, thanks for this. Nice and simple - I'll definitely give it a go. Will let you know how I get on...

Cheers, Mani.

Yep, it works fine. The only thing to bear in mind is that most modern ATX PSs are not 20-pin. Mine has two outputs for the mobo - an 18-pin and a 10-pin. It's the 10-pin ouput that has the green wire. All I did was short this green wire to a black (gnd) wire on the same 10-pin output.

Will report back on any changes to SQ using two separate PSs.

Mani.

Hi Nick, just wanted to let you know that I'm currently waiting for my CPU water-cooler and passive graphics card to arrive. Once these are here, I'll be able to take Le Monster completely fanless and apply all of your tweaks as a package. The only tweak I'll hold back on for a short while is the linear PS - I going to use a separate low-ripple fanless SMPS for the HDD for now. So, the mobo/CPU will be powered by one low-ripple fanless SMPS and the HDD with another. Both of these SMPSs will be powered from a 1KVA isolation transformer to stop grunge getting back into the mains.

I'll soon have a bunch of very, very nice Noctua fans and a CPU cooler sitting around doing nothing. Oh well, I'll add them to the collection of hifi separates, pro ADC/DACs and PC components I have gathering dust in my cellar. Somehow I think it's more hassle advertising, selling, and then packing and shipping them out than it is to just leave them there.

Mani.

Mani hi,

Great, I really hope it is worth all the effort for you, fingers crossed  :)

The extra SMPS sounds like a good way to test the hdd setup. It might be worth playing the earths between the two supplies a bit when the time comes. With my linear setup this made the different between just smoother sound and smoother sound with good bass.

Looking forwards to hearing how it sounds,

Best,

Nick.

Hey Peter, in case it's of interest to you, the mobo Nick and I use allows you to switch between DC and PWM power for the fans. My PWM Noctua fans seem to be totally happy with the switch set to DC. What I really like about these fans is that they're very, very quiet.

Mani.

If the Megahalems cooler and cpu get a little warm I manually turn on my extra silent noctua 14 cm fan. This fan is super silent, though it seems to leave a signature to the sound when plugged into the motherboard. Yes, on my mobo you can also select between pwm and voltage fan control.

This SQ effect gets less significant when I tap the power from an unused molex and use a little rheostat to tame the rpm of the fan. Most heat is coming from the northbridge and cpu so I only need very little rpm to keep temps very low with the i5. Probably uneccessary low for a XX only PC.

Regards, Coen

Thanks Mani. At least I now know it can be an option.

Btw, just ordered the lot a few hours back, including such a nice Noctua. :swoon: But the mobo is a different one, so I'll have to see about the PWM. But anyway it looks easy to just take a normal power line and stuff in whatever resistance ... (and then check whether all keeps nicely cool).

I (too) will inform further when (ok if) I have all running.

Thanks,
Peter

Haha

Well, based on recent emails, it appears that my updated NOS1 is currently over the pond and will be in the Philadelphia area early next week. Can't wait. So that I can use all the updates of the upcoming version of XX, I'm considering building my first computor. The Core 2 duo, though it sounds great,  doesn't let me use straight Contiguous in a normal way. Anyway, am thinking I'll go with the Asus P9X79 WS with the 3930k cpu instead of the 3960X. The K is around $500 (US) cheaper and is rated as only being 6% slower than the 3960X.....if this is a mistake please speak up!
      Never having built a computor before, I'm wondering about cooling and "noise." I want to use a Reserator 1 v2 for the CPU and a Seasonic 400w, fanless power supply, as well as a fanless, low end video card. Given how XX operates is it necessary to have case fans to keep memory and hard drives cool? Thanks in advance for your reply.

Don't you mean the 3930(K) ? I think so.
I wouldn't bother about that 6%. It's merely the topology (like 4 memory lanes and such - which both have).

Yes, my intention is to get the 3930(K).

I have the 3930 CPU, you can set the clock speed anywhere upto 4.2ghz with ease so I would not worry too much about losing out on the 3960.

 Running my pc totally fanless in the spec you outlined mobo temp reads 38 deg c, hard drives etc a get warm but are fine at about 45 c to the touch. Ambient room temp for these case conditions is about 18c

I think you should be fine. You can always add a small case fan from a wall wart supply if needed but I'm guessing it wont be needed.

For fun I put the resorator gpu water block on my passive gpu card which gets a little more heat out of the case but this was more because the  resorator kit comes with the gpu kit anyway.

Best,

Nick.

Thanks Nick, you confirmed what I understood from your description of your build but I wanted to be certain. Am waiting to here how Mani's two Seasonic PS's work out. Don't know how I could accomplish that with a standard case but it would be nice to have the dvd drive and additional HD's plugged in.

Am sure more questions will follow. Can't say how much I appreciate your, and everyone elses, contribution to this forum!

Brian

Mani, all,


I have been spending some time messing about with device driver loads using MS Autoruns. Windows 7 loads every driver it can think of when installing on this Asus P9X79 WS mother board and when it has done this it adds LOADS more for devices that i don't think are even part of the motherboard !

I am about 2/3 the way thought the driver thinning out process and there is a subtle but significant change to sound quality. Dynamics and attack apear to drop a little but there is a nice change in tone accuracy and differentiation. Harmonics and delicacy of decay are much improved, like the a slightly faulty sustain peddle on a piano has been fixed. Digital hardness has reduced and analogue type smoothness hasimproved (again  ;) ).

I don't intend playing with all the driver load permutations and combinations (they are endless). I may set up some restore points to track blocks of Autoruns changes to make sure that things are moving in the right direction.

It's an old tweak this but it's really working on the Asus motherboard.

I will post when I have something worth trying, discounting the slight change to dynamics (still making my minde up on this) I would say this is a very worthwhile change, similar in scale of change that the use of USB 3 brings.

Back soon with some Autoruns lists to try out.

Best Nick.
Edits to grammar  :)

I have another tweak : Don't install the Asus "sh*t" in the first place !
I never do that ... (are you crazy ?!)

And so the question : will all still work a little (OK) without this loaded for your mb ?
For almost sure you will need to install the USB3 drivers from Asus, which btw is the only thing I did for my mb (which is not an X79 of course).

Peter

Haha  :)

Me neither generally but only the stuff to tweak the clock speed. Funny thing is that Minimised OS stops it loading very nicely (you must hate that stuff Peter  :) )

The drivers I have been stripping are Windows 7 installed.

Nick.

Edit
Ps the Asus USB driver is gone  :) just the NEC PCIe USB 3 driver left.

Hehe Nick ... now the other way around ... when you want to prevent it from being stopped, just exclude it in the list for it (I guess you will know).

Regards,
Peter

Hope this question isn't too elementary: Using a midtower, desktop case without case fans, but with a side vent, is it better to mount a fanless PS at the top or bottom of the case?

My idea ?
At the top so it won't heat up the other components;
At the bottom so it won't heat up itself.

But net, at the top seems worse because its own heat can't go anywhere.
But neither seems very okay. Ah, that's what you thought yourself eh ? :yes:

Right. My thoughts exactly! I'm just wondring what others that have a desktop case and went fanless, if any, decided.

Here's one case I'm looking at. It's cheap but has everything for either water or fan cooling. Also, it has a top air grill as well as back/top air vent for a fan. The only problem is that the PS mounts on the bottom.

http://www.coolermaster-usa.com/product.php?product_id=3009&product_name=HAF 912

Hi Brian,

Check with the Cooler Master web site or the store if you can change the PSU position in the box and place it at the top. I own a Cooler Master Sileo 500 and although in the pictures you can see that the psu is placed at the bottom the placement of the hdd box can be changed for the PSU box.

The Sileo is also a great case and very silent although it´s not prepared for water cooling.

You can check also the Silencio 550 that besides it is a silent case it also has a removable (interchangeable) hhd box and is prepared also for water cooling, I´m sure you can change the psu position. http://www.coolermaster-usa.com/product.php?product_id=3044&product_name=Silencio%20550 (http://www.coolermaster-usa.com/product.php?product_id=3044&product_name=Silencio%20550)

Best regards,
Juan

Thanks Juan.

Hey Juan the 550  looks very nice, not like the cheap one I mentioned before, a kids gameing box..... BUT...I would think that a side and top vent would be necesary for heat transfer in a fanless box and I don't think the Silencio 550 has either. I'd also worry about the extra noise reducing padding as an impediment to heat transfer. I don't really know, just going on intuition here......any other suggestions from you or anyone else are certainly welcome!

Hi,

You may like to consider cases that do not really need any fans. Antec used to offer Skeleton which was posted in XX forum 2 years ago. I think it is no longer available. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811129056 

Lien Li also offers similar bare bone style. I like Lien Li aluminium range manufactured in Taiwan. Great craftsmanship.

Hi,

I am 100% aligned with Peter. If you place SMPS on top of the case, heat generated from other components such as north and south bridge heatsinks will soak your SMPS. Combined with its own heat, your Seasonic fan will kick start all the time.

Why don't consider placing the PS outside the case, so you can go for multimedia PC case. For more noise (both audio and RFI/EMI) immuned linear power supply system, please check this out. It will be available next month.

http://www.itemaudio.com/index.php/power-supplies/detail/1-power-supplies/flypage/1011-item-linear-atx-power-supply?sef=hcfp

Regards,
Praphan

Hi Brian,

If the problem is to avoid noise I´d go for the configuration I have in my Sileo 550 case with a Be Quite! 730w psu in the top of the case, I could use also the Corsair AX750. This is the system I use for work with an i7 2600, 16Gb of memory and a passive graphic card. I wanted this pc silent because I work at home in the same room I have my sound system, this way I can listen music all the time while working. This pc is, as I say, absolutely silent, more in fact than the  one I use for music. At a distance of 20cm the noise I can hear is zero. The case has two 12mm fans one in the front, one in the rear and one Scythe fan in the cpu, all of them working at low rpm. So, no noise and no heat.
I have not tested this pc though with my sound system so I can´t say if it makes the sound better or worse than the one you can see in my sig.
Let me tell you again, if the problem is noise, I´d go for a pc similar to the one I use for working because also is very easy to set up and very cheap.

On the other hand, if the problem we want afford has to do with interferences, besides noise, maybe I´d go for something like Nick and others are building. Well, the problem is in my opinion that:
- you are changing the fan noise (negligible in the pc I´ve described above) and interferences inside the case (motherboard,etc) for the noise of the external water cooling pump, if any, and the interference you are putting into the wall that maybe also affect the sound.
- The system that Nick is building is still under experimentation and although maybe at the end would be applicable in an easy way so far is: a) hard to understand for the non technical guys like you and me  (and many others here, I guess). b): this system is more complicated to build and more expensive.

What I´d do in your case is build a pc like the one above which is not expensive, as silent as possible with fans and wait that Nick, Peter and others finally get a great pc to be used with XX and NOS1 and wait that they put it here in an easy way to be appicable for all of us. Meanwhile I´m glad and feel lucky that they are working hard on it.


Best regards,
Juan

Thanks Juan, now that is some sage advice. :) I'm afraid I'm a lot less technically experienced than most in this forum. I think I've settled on beginning this project with fan cooling, but having a case that can evolve into water cooling...on the other hand I can be a risk taker who jumps right into difficult waters (results vary, somtimes foolish sometimes brave!). However, given that my funds are a bit limited, your words really hit the mark.

Praphan, I very much appreciate your input too. As I'm all about function and don't care much about form, the open air test bench may be the alternative, if I do decide to run over the cliff.

Will be working through the weekiend in Nashville, so I won't have much time to put into the project, though I am excited about checking out the live music scene!

Oh the voices in my head....thanks to all who have posted in this thread.

I went ahead and water cooled (Zalman Reserator 1 v2)and used a cheap (Boy....do I mean cheap, $39!) case with a Corsair AX650.

MB is an ASUS P9-X79WS witn 16 gigs of 1600 DDR3--3930kcpu.

Let me just say that my old Dell Core 2 Duo, 32 bit,  did a fine job, but  I now have MORE of every range. The bass, in particular, has gone to another league entirely.

However the best....I now have on the fly volume control, if nothing else that was my primary goal!

Again, thanks to all.

Last night I remembered the above exchange from earlier in this thread. I went into the ASUS bios and, in the Ai Tweaker (overclocking) section I played around with the memory frequency settings. I've always used the EZ Automatic overclocking function of the bios and have wondered why it automatically set the memory frequency to 1373 MHz when I have GSkill-1600, CL9-9-9-24. Anyway I set the Memory frequency to 1648, 1373, and 1098 and gave each a listen. There was a very significant change in sound for the better the lower the frequency. There is a 824 Mhz setting I've yet to try, but it seemed that the sound became so delicate and smooth at 1098 that it I really need to listen "here" for a while before changing this setting again.

Just an FYI regarding things I don't understand but which my button pushing nature and ears regard as worthwhile!

Brian hi,

I will take a look at the memory speed as well, in the past I have always gone for faster settings but this sounds very promising.

Post coming up soon on the Adnaco fibre interface, there is more evidanve now of its effect, Paul has been borrowing my setup to try out whilst I sort out my amp. I think it has made quite a posertive impression.

Paul,

Please post your thoughts on the Adnaco if you would like to.

All the best,

Nick.

Hi Brian,

maybe buildung a Rolls-Royce and driving it with 50 miles/hour could be a solution. Additionally I got better results by reducing the processor speed and switching the AMD from unganged to ganged mode for memory transfers. Ganged meanns that every core is using the 128 bit memory bus exclusively - the other cores must wait.

Georg

Hi Nick - I have a couple more things to try and will then post my experiences in a new thread I suspect it will be a biggish thread.

Best

P

Most of us are using now the USB 3.0 as the interface to connect the music pc to a) external hdds, b) to connect the music pc to the NOS1.
The advantage to improve the USB 3.0 speed for transferring data is obvious but I wonder if the speed of the USB 3.0 has any influence in the sound quality when transferring data to the NOS1.

I´ve found this interesting review: Faster USB 3.0 Performance: Examining UASP And Turbo Mode http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/usb-3-uas-turbo,3215.html (http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/usb-3-uas-turbo,3215.html)

Turbo mode can be found in the bios (at least in the Asus boards) and can help to burst the USB 3.0 performance. http://event.asus.com/mb/2010/The_Best_USB3_Experience/The_UASP_For_USB3.0.htm (http://event.asus.com/mb/2010/The_Best_USB3_Experience/The_UASP_For_USB3.0.htm)

Manually enabling Turbo mode on a board from a vendor that doesn't offer its own utility is possible by modifying the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINES\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\usbstor\054C00C1 registry key. Add a 32-bit DWORD value named "MaximumTransferLength" and specify the maximum transfer size value between 65535 (64 KB) and 2097120 (2 MB) in the data field.

I enabled Turbo mode in both ways, in the bios and in in the registry and it seems to me that now I have a better sound.
Maybe others could test it and let us know about it.

Best regards,
Juan

Hi Georg, Per Uncle Google, it looks like "ganged" is an AMD only tweak. Don't know if there is an Intell equivlent. I guess one buys a Rolls Royce to be as insulated from road vibrations as possible. Of course never exceeding 50 mph keeps those vibrations to a minimum.  :)

Brian

Hi Brian,

tried the memory tweak too, but setting the lowest speed possible. Very smooth and relaxed sound. Fits optimal to Oscar Peterson / Fred Astaire Complete Norman Granz Sessions  :)

Best regards,
Georg

Glad to hear it worked for you too, Georg. I tried the lowest setting 848 MHz and the sound was a bit too relaxed or too "woody" sounding so I went back to the 1048 (I think that's it) setting. Gotta be on the look out for those little statments from Peter; like gold nuggets, they are.  :)

Maybe I am not sure myself why I'm sometimes thinking what I think. But okay, it works out a lot. ;)

But by now I really wonder what's they actual key factor when we talk about "just PC's". I mean, I now have that hexa core running myself in optima forma, but how to relate the sound to what "happened" ?
Sometimes (if not always) I think it is too difficult to proceed on things. This may be one of them. Look :

What this PC shows as the very first is a snap unheard. Bass has a resolution - the same. You even hear the stings vibrate of a cello (this was my aim ever back : make the somewhat higher frequencies "vibe" as well, and the instrument to do that was a cello in my view). But why ?
IIRC the memory is at 1333 which was the default. CPU runs at 4GHz (which is not the default, that's 3.2GHz). Ok, fine.

An important variable in the equation is that super-duper 0.9z-7 feature (yea yea, it will come to you, I'm sure :)), and on my normal audio PC day before yesterday I shut it off to compare again. Unlistenable. Remember, this is what you listen to today; all is relative and for me too it was the best. Today ? unlistenable. Sheer distortion. And I am the most serious. So ...


Thus, smoothened things a bit and now the distortion is less audible ? should be something like that IMO. But when so, it should mean that the higher setting is the better, if only first that other distortion is out of the way. Thus imagine that you tweaked it the exact other way around. Instead of towards moody, it's going towards metal. And *then* you are not disturbed by anything. Something like that I perceive from that hexa core PC.

If it is correct that the higher settings (yea what ? higher current draw or higher freuency current draw ! -> smoothening !) create the better resolution, I should be able to proove that. Thus, it looks like I can have it because of less inherent distortion, and then there should be more snap without it being disturbing.

By now I am close to being as far as the "snap level" being a measure by itself. Thus, the less snap the worse it should be, and the other way around. However, it is not allowed to have yourself disturbed by harshness jumping in at the more snap levels. When the most snap is there, it is time to work on the harshness. Of course this is not to be done by eliminating the harshness, but by eliminating the distortion which comes from elsewere. And I know, this is undoable ... it would come down to getting another ampo etc., right ?

No, not right. Not right because you will be having 0.9z-7.

By the time you have that, you will start to be a theoretical nerd, like me. So, what I noticed with my normal audio PC is that this most pure sound is accompanied with less snap. Think like the stick hitting the cymbal being less audible, while the cymbal itself is okay. But it can't be, because pure = pure and it's main cause is higher resolution (I'm sure). This is up to the attack of an electric guitar being not there at flagiolettes, while another situation shows you the attack is there for sure. And I said it more often, flagiolettes are (somehow) the most difficult to bring forward (possibly they contain all the harmonics in the world - I didn't look it up.

So, we have that other PC, and suddenly all comes together. A bit of the USB3 solution, which *also* was just necessary to let my super-tweak work out.

Guys, when we operate at this really high level of squeezing out the best, and we see how much difference these non-sense appliances make - especially when we don't know the real theory behind it all (which actualy shouldn't even exist), we must not forget to re-judge, for example !, Vista and the lot. Not that I am telling you that we really should do that, but what I do say is that no element operates on its own. And again, if I now listen to that "distorted" pre-0.9z-7 sound, how could I even have been judging something like Vista. Or an SSD. Or RAMdisc. Whatever. Everything.

It is going to get too compleeeexx ...
(but in the mean time I am trying to see the difference between my speakers and the real woman singing. Okay, right. I see the difference. But I can't hear it anymore ... :teasing:)

I was sitting in my favourite armchair last night sending myself nuts (OK so I am already) listening to fibre or perfluorinated polymer plastic (POF) versus Copper (Cu) USB interlinks (chemical names for Peter ha ha).

Once I settled on my preferred link (more later) I sat back and began to think surely now, surely this time the SQ is as good as it gets. So what I was listening to is muddled and distorted compared with what is coming in 0.9z-7  -  Peter you are such a tease!!!

P

Might SFS be one of those areas we revisit? To me the change in sound caused by changing the memory speed was very, very similar to changing SFS, but in the opposite direction: increasing SFS smoothes the sound and reduces harshness the same way that reducing memory speed does.

Just a thought....

Hi Guys, greetings from Rio (I'm in Brazil for a few days business)! Far be it for me to preach to anyone, but as soon as Peter mentioned his Noble-winning feature, I pretty much stopped tweaking all together, with a view that it was pointless. But I have a few weeks off in July and hope to be able to join the fun then.

Thanks to everyone who's shared their experiences to date - there will be so much to play around with... can't wait...

Mani.

Tall and tan and young and lonely
The girl from ipanema goes walking
And when she passes
Each one she passes goes haaa...
 :holiday:

Enjoy it, Mani!!

Best regards,
Juan

Don't know if I'll be able to take them getting any better than they are in my room right now....

 :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :) :)

Take them ?

a. my English is too poor to understand what you not mean;
b. your American is too strange to not tell what you are really talking about;
c. You bastard.

Okay, about stripper poles and stuff (other topic) ...

I have been listening for the 5th day or so to this machine, and I more and more run into albums I'm familiar with and hence can notice the enormous difference. I now, finally, hear the umpff which I recall from my ever back 100K+ chain (if it's a quarter of that today it's much) and more analogue setup. This time though, with all the sprankle "CD" carries.

Okay, never mind, because I can't explain it anyway. But what this is about is that apparently the PC may play the largest role of it all. This is not what I expected ... (don't tell this to cPlay users). On the other hand I can't imagine that just tweaking the PC for low voltage memory and what not can create this really huge difference. It must be something else.

Yesterday I have been "watching" very explicitly what actually has happened to my familiar albums, and the only real conclusion of it is "better". Well, nice, but fairly useless.

Maybe especially for pedal, might he read this :
I had to put up Made in Japan again. Remember, that quite heavy early 70's rock where cymbals are smashed around too much to really enjoy them because of poor quality. Well, the picture of that totally changed. The main thing what happened is that they are not in the mass of the sound anymore, and now stand out. But in the back (meaning : not too profound and out of everything they even sound fragile now). The hi-hats which was the first drum instrument which ever came to me as "hey, it's there !" now are right in the room and at a level which is quickly a real level while the music is more in the background. I don't know why yet, but I see similarities with voices being so profound now. Something with close micing which works out different from "a tad further away" perhaps (hi-hats always have the microphone *very* close). Could even be the recording engineer who dialed in all nicely while listening through monitor speakers while now that balance changed (for the better).

Anyway, yesterday I was thinking about opening a topic with a title "I declare my system ..."
(which I may do later)

Peter

= Women's Voices

Let me rephrase: If the women's voices get better than what I am lisytening to right now, I just might loose my mind!

 :)

Peter, to use an iPad based remote for the NOS1 requires the PC server to have a hard wired network connection correct?  If so, are using one now as you evaluate the sonic performance?  If not, could such a connection degrade e performance substantively? 

I ask as my set-up really requires a remote control of the server.  Wireless from iPad to the router and then wired to the server from the router. 

Thanks.

David, no. Look here : http://www.phasure.com/index.php?topic=2063.0

So ...


Yes it does. But this is why this is solved differently with the due 0.9z-7 and those dongles do the job. Thus, no LAN, no WiFi in the server (audio PC) and still use the iPad to fully control XXHighEnd.

Btw, I think this is quite :offtopic: in here. :yes:
Regards,
Peter

My apologies.  Thanks for the response.

I really don´t know if anyone has the same mb and case I have but, for the ones who are using the same system as me I´d like to post some considerations. I believe however that what it has to do with vibrations is applicable to everybody.

So far I had working in my case three 18cm fans in the bottom, one 12cm fan in the upper side of the case and one in the cpu cooler (the Noctua NH-U12P SE2). Now I took out all the fans but two, those that are in the bottom of the case.

This case, the SilverStone Fortress FT02, has 90-degree motherboard mounting design that makes a favorable effect for natural heat convection, the CPU fan is oriented in to the path of the coming air flow from the bottom fans. I took out the CPU fan but the two working fans at the bottom provide enough air to maintain the CPU, motherboard and North bridge at 41ºC, 39ºC and 66ºC respectively which is well into the safe side. The warm air goes out of the case for the upper part which is open. The room temperature is 23º/24º.
The speed of those two fans are fixed at 900rpm so the noise barely audible. The psu fan is never working because it has enough cool air coming from one of the bottom fans.

The hard drives don´t need any fan, they are in vertical position so the air is also naturally going upwards, also the rear part of the case where they are is open (you can see part of the WD Green label)

The case is closed but only in the front side, the rear side has no cover although this part is almost totally closed by the rear plate where the mb is attached, this open rear part allows a better refrigeration of about 4 or 5 degrees for the cpu than when it is closed.

I have also the case resting on four Vibrapods.

At the end what´s the situation now?:
-Just two fans vs 5 fans that I had working before.

That means:

-Less interference.

-Zero vibration in the mb because there is no fans in the cpu nor in the gpu which is passive.

As this has to do with hardware and not with software the improvement in sound that I can feel now, smoother and cleaner sound, are applicable at any XX version, including the next 0.9z-7 and in my opinion has to do, besides with less interference, mostly with the lack of vibrations. Even those cpu that are refrigerated by water has vibrations.

Vibrations are considered very important in the audiophile world but still need deeper consideration in the music pcs.

Here you can see some photos. The only working fans are the two at the middle and right side in the bottom of the case.

Best regards,
Juan

Booleary said:

Last night I remembered the above exchange from earlier in this thread. I went into the ASUS bios and, in the Ai Tweaker (overclocking) section I played around with the memory frequency settings. I've always used the EZ Automatic overclocking function of the bios and have wondered why it automatically set the memory frequency to 1373 MHz when I have GSkill-1600, CL9-9-9-24. Anyway I set the Memory frequency to 1648, 1373, and 1098 and gave each a listen. There was a very significant change in sound for the better the lower the frequency. There is a 824 Mhz setting I've yet to try, but it seemed that the sound became so delicate and smooth at 1098 that it I really need to listen "here" for a while before changing this setting again.

Just an FYI regarding things I don't understand but which my button pushing nature and ears regard as worthwhile!



I can confirm this. Lowering the FSB ( underclocking ) improves the sound. More airy, more open, more all. :pleasantry:
I couldn't change the frequency in the BIOS because mine hasn't this option  avalaible, so I had to change it via software. The only one that worked for me was SetFSB. You need to find your MOBO clock generator in the list and get the FSB, then lower it.
Two drawbacks in my case (or not) :
- I can´t go beyond 275 Mhz from initial 333 Mhz. (1.330 Mhz to 1.100 Mhz). But the sound is so good that I am satisfied with that.
- You have to adjust it every time you reboot the PC. This can be an advantage for people, like me, with two diferent boots, one for normal use of the PC and other for XXHighend.

You can see the effect in the image. The latency readings falls to almost zero. So thank you very much for the advice :thankyou:

Hi there !

I didn't fire up Latency Checker for a longer time, so I may have forgotton how it shows its data, but ...

Must I assume that where the latency drops (time passing by from left to right) it is where you applied the underclocking ?

If so ... INTERESTING !
But did you mean to explain it like that ?

Thanks !
Peter

Hi, Peter! 
The latency drops instantaneously when I push the setFSB button and the change in frequency takes effect. The latency checker was only a visual constatation of what I have noticed before in the sound. I haven't use the DPLatency for a long time too and I am not sure about the connection with the underclocking, but the improving of the sound is clear to me.

Thanks
Maxi

Hey Maxi,

Now, if that only could be the absolute measure of how music will sound eh ? :scratching:

Can you tell ... the value I see in your picture is 164us (max) when you didn't undeclock yet; If you "Reset", while underclocking is active, what is the maximum value then ?
(try to not incorporate one-occasion peaks which might happen)

Thanks again !
Peter

Peter,

Yes, the 100us peaks  in measure are before the underclocking. After that, when I fire a program like XXhighend there is a peak of 1us as much. But apart from that remains at zero all the way.
Howewer (I am obviously in the normal PC boot session) I'll check it again when reboot  to XXhighend session.

Thanks
Maxi

This is is how it looks in my sistem if set in BIOS @ 1600 ....  ;)

Couldn't test the Setfsb , but I can say that the LC shows increasing latency ( if little ) when the Freq in BIOS is lower .

Instead for the fun , with Throttle stop , I notice also encreasing the latency ( always with DPC ) when decreasing the chipset clock modulation .

I guess I will still wait .  :)

And this is Throttlestop in use now .

Pratically I pushed on Ram Freq by BIOS , and decreased a bit the Chipset Clock Modulation . Don't really know if it has some sense .But I am listening ,for fun and doesn't seem bad .
As it can be seen in the picture the actual CPU speed is also decreased from the 40x to 30x .
It does load every song in the previuous XX settings : SFS= 2MB(SC) , Buffersize 4096 , Q1=15 .

s

Checked the latency on my music pc.

With nothing started by me, I get the following latencies:

35-57 for 1333
21-50 for 1066
37-60 for 800

Looks like 1066 is the sweet spot here. Seems to sound a tad more relaxed than 1333 or 800 also.

regards, Coen

Edit: with xx playing latency is around 350. Best sound, no contest, is with 1333 setting.

Hi all,
Checked again with DPC and XXHighend running in attended mode. There are several peaks when the music starts to play and then zero.    :scratching:

Crazy ...

Crazy, especially because I already dare say that from these very few obervations (observators) - and despite it would be statistically illegal to draw conclusions - ... that what people heard before, is confirmed by looking at the graphs now.
(boleary might like to post some)

Coen seems to be off, but maybe he is not at all. So, sound is best at 1333 and latency is quite high. But how does the latency show at 1066 when sound is worse. Higher ? (suring playback I mean)

Peter,

Latency when playing is a little lower with 1066Mhz than with either 1333 or 800.

Right or wrong, i dunno. I much prefer the more focussed and dynamic and "musical" sound when in 1333.

How to manage the latency? Practically no mobo tweaks applied (graphics to 400 Mhz). I allways got the impression this board is a little slow. Gonna update some drivers soon.

Regards, Coen

Regards, Coen

Oh look , I did it :
this is obtained by the means of tweaking the MOBO , in some ways .... Without the setfsb software .

Also ,  the graph seen in the previous post remains the same regarding RAM speed . If select 1066 or 1333 is the same , and it remains so playing music .
 :good:

Are these world records ?
I don't follow this kind of stuff (at least not for a longer time now) but I never saw something like this ...

this is done in a simple way . It's not a record , but the sound is gorgeous .  8)


 :soundsgood:



 :thankyou:

How did you do this? I was unable to get any significant change in latency by changing the memory frequency. Results below;

824 Mhz; 8-15 at idle, 18-35 with  XX playing
1373 Mhz: 8-15 idle,  12-22 with xx playing
1648 Mhz: 9-13 (very occasional spike to 17-19), 14-20 with xx playing (very occasional spike to 50+)

OK , this is mainly a little work of tweak , and precisely is ..... ready?

Fine tuning the BUS speed .
It is allowed by the ( very nice ) MSI mobo via software . The Bus speed is set by default at 100Mhz or so ; lowering that speed by a couple of Mhz do the magic , and I say magic becouse it is listenable ...
So take a look also at the CPU-Z picture attached ;

If I can have the exclusive to say what I feel about the music ( which I have been playing for over 15 years ) in this tweak well , it is like suddenly an heavy tapestry has been raised , or like when I go to a live concert and feel all the air and freedom around the instruments . This is good .

Hi, Stefano!
Nice to see you've notice the same kind of improvement in the sound. It's seems that we have reach the same spot in different ways.
But I have a doubt, What were your core frequency before the change? I've notice that is higher that one specified in the CPU: 3,89 vs 3,40. Maybe I am wrong but I thing it is overclocked. If so, you must check your temperatures with RealTemp or something like that.
Another difference with my settings is the multiplier: yours is ¡x40! and mine x7,5. I think I'm getting lost :wacko:

 Maxi 

Ha-ha  :) Maxi

yeah it is a 40times instead that the default 34 ( from which the 3.4 GHz comes ) .
Following some Peter suggestions between the writing , I also
like my PC Fast !!! (yeah ) . So let's go to 4GHz .

Of course everything is under my control . Temperatures are around 38 degrees .To answer your question , CPU Freq. before the "tweak" was just about  100MHz faster or so .

s

Ok! I see.  :swoon: The core speed is the Bus speed x multiplier.
My bus speed is a lot higher than yours: 275 Mhz vs. 95 Mhz. Obviously I am not an expert in this stuff. :blush2:

regards
Maxi

Thanks God I decided to buy a Big PC ( lol ) , that said we are all learning ...

Everybody has different dacs and xx settings. Wasn't special mode all about low latency?

Coen,

When we would be able to find it back, you would see that at the time Ultra Low Latency Kernel Streaming came about, my PC of the time showed a standard latency of 1000us always (this was Vista and only happened to me). Isn't that 1ms ? that is way more than the few samples @ 384KHz I could achieve back then. So to that regard Latency Checker is a dangerous thing to interpret.

But being all further with everything for quite some years now, the lower latency that Latency Checker shows seems to be related to SQ.
There are also reports around that tell that when XX starts playing, latency drops significantly. So that can happen too.

Thus let's be careful about using this as an absolute measurement and notice it influences itself too (what about the 1ms ClockResolution it depicts ?).

Peter

I quote . Infact I did try the other way around of seeing things , and was not bad also ... ( letting see to it more latency than usual ) .
I will be careful with tests .
Moreover regarding the XX clock resolution I have to say one thing .
The graph above I obtained , was also Disabling the HPET function in BIOS . But that has the effect of pratically halve the HH clock resolution available ( of course in my system ) .
Re enabling that I have back the 15msec , and again .... in DCP the latency shows a slightly higher value .


stefano
 :thankyou:

Hi

Disabeling the powersaving functions of the cpu does not help for latency (or sq for that matter).

What helps for the idle latency is disabeling the HPET timer. From avg 40 to avg 9 uS :). When playing XX with below settings the latency rises to 400uS (indeed at apprx half the timeres) :(.
Is this normal for NOS1 on USB3 PICe or might it indicate that the pc is somewhere not optimal?

Updated the USB driver to the latest version, but that does not matter.

regards, Coen


EDIT:
400 uS is for playing with 4mS NOS1 buffer
220uS @ 2mS buffer
80uS @ 1mS buffer (totally cracked sound)

So there is some 1:10 ratio between driverbuffer and dpc latency.

Above latency with 24/48; with16/44.1 latency is a bit lower @ 380uS. Throttling back the AP from 16x to 8x reduces the latency to 220 (for 16/44.1).

:yes:

I´ve  tested the music in an external USB3 drive and yes, it seems to sound a bit better than with the internal drives. It seems like there are more harmonics in the sound.
Other thing that I noted is that the volume (Alt + U) reacts faster and also the volume level seems to be a little higher from one level to the next one than when using the internal music drive.
I have one question, if I use this USB3 drive, should I disconnect the internal music drive to get better SQ?. I guess that would be better with less hdd working.

Best regards,
Juan

Hi Juan,

Why not ? I'd say it can't be for the worse. Of course anything can happen when we thing "noise" as such can improve (smoothen, whatever). But it shouldn't be the base of things.


This seems impossible to me. Of course, when the sound comes across as more loud (but think more harsh) it can be so to some extend, but the relativeness of levels shouldn't change really.
:scratching:
Peter

What I noticed is that when I turn up the volume (Alt + U) the amount of volume (level) seems to be higher than when I use the internal hdd. I don´t know if I explain myself correctly but anyway, I´m not really sure about it, maybe all the album seems to play at higher level. Not an important issue though, what´s important is that it seems that the sq is better using an external music USB3 drive.

Regards,
Juan

Has any one tested the external USB3 drive (music)  powered by the USB bus versus powered by an external power supply?. If so, what are the differences with respect to the SQ?. Maybe this is already answered in the forum.....

Juan

Hi Juan ,

what can I say is that I had the same "feeling " about the volume when using the USB3 external drive but with external PS .It seemed for a while that in the USB3 it was a bit lower volume and different presentation.

Cant say more for now ,because didn't test very much of it .

Juan, per Nick's Tweaks, i get better sound unplugging my Plextor optical drive and secondary SATA II drive when listening. This is a bit cumbersome when wanting to rip cause things have to be plugged in (just the optical drive, the secondary internal drive never gets used). Given the need to access the inside of the computer, I'm currently using the sides of my computer as bases for my amp and DAC! My wife kicked me and my system out of the living room and I'm now on the third floor where I can play as loud as I want whenever I want. Though everything was moved hastily and I now have to figure out how to organize the room. I haven't decided yet whether to get a proper "tower audio stand" to put components --DAC and AMP--on, or whether to just get a couple of "single shelf" boards (extra thick hi-end meat cutting boards perhaps with some well placed spiked feet  :)) and leave the DAC and amp as they currently are on the floor. See below.

Sorry about the digression there. What I really want to say is that I currently run the OS with XX and all of my music on the same 3 TB SATA III spinning drive. I have found an amazing difference in SQ between music ripped to the internal SATA II secondary drive and music ripped to the 3 TB OS drive, with the latter providing the amazing sound. I have not tried an external USB3 drive but am willing to bet the family farm on an external drive not being as good as the SATA III OS drive.

Of course there are important practical problems with setting ones system up this way, namely: If music sounds best on the OS drive then why make backups that sound inferior? In other words be prepared to rerip ALL your tunes if the OS drive dies-- a pain in the ass, truly. But if you don't have a "lot " of music--my entire collection--as wave files-- is "only" 1.5 TB's-- its a risk/pain you might be willing to make. For me, the sound is that much better that, for now, I'm willing to do it this way.

Though I don't know for sure all the causes for the SATA III OS drive sounding so good, I do know that the SQ is made worse by connecting the SATA III drive with a standard SATA cable. My Corsair AX650 Power Supply came with two dedicated SATA III cables. At one point plugging and unplugging drives I accidentally used a stadard SATA cable on the SATA III drive. SQ was not what I had gotten used to and when I realized the mistake I switched back to the SATA III  cable  and, viola, the good sound returned. SATA III has a metal locking clip that the standard SATA cable doesn't have. Certainly the electronics of SATA III contribute to the difference.

On the other hand, I wonder if the UEFI interface that came with the ASUS MB, which interface is necessary for using a 3 or 4 TB drive as an OS drive, is what has so changed SQ here?

Lastly, my new room's dimensions are 11x15 feet with an 18 " "punch out" for a bay type widow on the exterior wall. The sound here is much better than the living room, probably because there is no piano between the speakers and the floor has wall to wall carpet. Anyway, any suggestions regarding room treatments are welcome!

Hi,

this discs makes wonder for € 1500,00 and you need nothing else. Looks weird on the walls and ceiling, BUT ........ .

http://www.combak.net/roomtune/roomtuning.html

Joachim

Well, at least that most dedicated (and very good sounding PC I built plays from SATAIII ...

Juan,

The USB3 disc I use for my normal audio PC is
a. connected through a powered USB3 hub;
b. the disc (enclosure) itself is powered as well (if that still matters at all).

I'm pretty sure this setup is a good thing for SQ.
Notice that the music files still are where they always were (as far as I know they are all SATAII, but some will be SATAIII connected - by "accident")

Peter

Brian, I know you don't have all the width in the world there, but it seems easy enough to try put the speakers under that roof (so, a 90 degree twist of all). That really does things, but probably you'll have too few length now ...

Regards to your wife and tell her that you banned her to downstairs ...

Will do!

Thanks guys, I´ll try to make some tests with the external drives while we wait for the new XX version. Who knows if all of this experiments will be of some use once the new 0.9z-7 arrives.

Brian, about the room treatment, the best non technical and more practical treatment is to put some shelves with plenty of books on the walls, the front and rear wall can be similar but just try to put something different in the left than in the right wall.
As you can see I use those Ikea thick boards under the amps, dac and computer. When I use two of them like under the amps and also under the NOS1 I use some mouse pads to stop the vibrations. Not high tech but it works very well.

My room is (L.W.H) 7 x 4,95 x 3,03 mts. A little narrower in the rear wall.


Thanks Peter, so far I only have an USB 3.0 drive powered by the USB bus, however I notice some improvement.

About SATA II and III I have to investigate a little further.

I don´t understand what you mean with "Notice that the music files still are where they always were". I put the files directly in the USB 3.0 drive, is there some other way to do it?.

Juan

So the hub is also part of the setup. If I read it well both the enclosure and hub have their own supplies (not via an usb3 port).
Those are probably switching supplies. Soon I will have the means to check Nicks tweak #3 (seperate liear power for the sata devices).

I wondered about Juans difference is the sound of rips to os disc of to a separate music disc. This is really odd, bits should remain bits wherever they are stored. Do they have the same hash (md5)? If so then it must be either due to differences in connection (sata ports, cables, powersupply cables), disc (production tolerances, country of manufacture) or formatting/filing (sector size, disc type). Can we rule any of these out?

Regards, Coen
Regards, Coen

Thanks Juan, looks like I'll be making a trip to IKEA. Enjoyed the photo's too!

Brian

Peter 

I´m a little confused about the hhd configuration to store the music files. In the PC you build you have the music in an internal SATA III hhd. You also use an external (powered) USB 3.0 hhd in your normal audio PC, this hhd connected through an also powered USB3 hub, in your opinion "this setup is a good thing for SQ".
I´m planning to rebuild some parts of my music PC now that XX 09z-7 has been released and I´d like to start with the music hhd.
Could you explain a little the differences in SQ you have found in between both, the Internal SATA III and the external powered USB 3.0 hhd?

BTW, I can´t find your post about the PC you build for sale and I´d like to take a look. Could you post the link please?

Best regards,
Juan

Hey Juan,


Not that I know of. :)
There's an OS disc which is fixed internally and which is SATAII and the 3 removable bays are SATAIII. Neither of those is meant to contain music discs, although they can of course. But music discs are meant to connect to USB3. Notice though that this is only to reach "infinity" for storage capacity (also using USB3 hubs).
The difference in sound is unknown to me, because I just never tried.


Did I say that somewhere ? I don't know. But the reason I just gave above as it is the same reason. Well, almost ...

The USB3 connected disc (which is one only at this time just because I never found the time to move the internal pile to the USB3 discs I have laying around for close to a year by now) is the famous "Playback Drive" you may have seen from 0.9z-7 by now. And from *that* I say it's good for sound;

If you are not confused yet I will make you confused now :
This (Playback Drive thing) is not related to USB3 at all and worse, for the PC we build that "Drive" (hence hdd) is to be in one of the removale bays.

So ... what I read back from a few of you is that USB3 connected hdds would be good for SQ. I don't think I ever said that. But that doesn't make it untrue. I just never tried (and really, I try to stay out of this hocus pocus which may or may nor work, and rather concentrate on things which will work independently of "hocus pocus". Cheap USB cable for the NOS1 could be an example of that).

Is it clear a little ? I hope so ! But otherwise ask ahead.


Juan, you are out of shape ! haha. I mean : no 0.9z-7 has been released that I kow of.

Here the topic about the XXHighEnd PC : CPU considerations (http://www.phasure.com/index.php?topic=2084.0;all).

Thank you Peter. Yes, it is clear a little, he, he, but not totally  :scratching:, I guess that once I get some more control over the 09z-7 settings it will be clearer, of course  :pleasantry:once it has been released!!

Peter, could you tell me please what´s the brand name/model of the external USB 3.0 hub and powered USB 3.0 hdd you have?

At the end, what I wanted is to know more about the differences in SQ between the internal SATA III vs. external USB 3.0 used for music storage. Any comment from the ones with some experience about it is welcome.

Best regards,
Juan

I only have experience with my music disk on XXHE v9-06c and this didn't turn out for the better. What I took for extra space and detail was actually accompanied by a mean harsh glare. I blamed it on the casing's switching PSU, but a linear (lab) supply brought no improvement.

Aspects that may matter: no hub was in place, I bought a quite generic not-too-expensive-on-stock ICIDU 12V 3,5" casing and had to use the packaged USB3 cable. I connected it on the remaining USB3 port of my PCI-e card (mobo USB3 is off).

I don't know how this works out for v9-07 and when used in Peter's abovementioned fashion. I am not risking 1,8Gig of music  :nea:.

regards, Coen

That's 3 CDs. Ok, 6 in FLAC.
:tongue2:

Hi Juan,

The USB3 hdd is a "Medion". It's 2TB and in a beautiful piano black enclosure. Believe it or not, but it was 66 euros (ex VAT) and came with USB3 cable as well. There's also a eSata connection. I bought all I could get (which was 4). http://download1.medion.com/downloads/anleitungen/bda_20047837.pdf
But these can't be bought anymore, as far as I know. The replacement (which I just tried to find) doesn't look as nice I think.

The hub came from HongKong was was hard to find in it's 7 ports version (back then). It is as piano black too by accident. I think this is the one :
http://www.amazon.com/Uspeed-Cable-Adapter-Backward-Compatible/dp/B006TT91TW/ref=pd_cp_e_0/186-7244552-4957921
http://usb.brando.com/usb-3-0-superspeed-7-port-hub_p02384c061d015.html

Peter

OK, I'm a dynosaur, this is not 1992 anymore!
I need more time to get used to GHz and Tbytes ;).

regards, Coen

Thanks Peter,

This is the Medion I´ve found although it is 1Tb not 2Tb like the ones you have: http://www.medion.com/gb/electronics/prod/MEDION%C2%AE+P83771+1TB+3.5%22+USB+3.0+HDDrive-n-go+%28MD90175%29/50038078A1?category=external_hdd_61 (http://www.medion.com/gb/electronics/prod/MEDION%C2%AE+P83771+1TB+3.5%22+USB+3.0+HDDrive-n-go+%28MD90175%29/50038078A1?category=external_hdd_61)

And in Amazon is possible to find the hub: http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B006TTA75Y/ref=s9_simh_se_p147_d0_i1?pf_rd_m=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE&pf_rd_s=auto-no-results-center-1&pf_rd_r=4F6F6FA2DD5C4C5883FF&pf_rd_t=301&pf_rd_p=240112507&pf_rd_i=HDDrive-n-go (http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B006TTA75Y/ref=s9_simh_se_p147_d0_i1?pf_rd_m=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE&pf_rd_s=auto-no-results-center-1&pf_rd_r=4F6F6FA2DD5C4C5883FF&pf_rd_t=301&pf_rd_p=240112507&pf_rd_i=HDDrive-n-go)

About the hub it is important to have one with enough current to drive well the hdds. Each external hdd needs 900mA, the hdds must have its own power supply if the total current exceeds the one provided by the hub.

I´ve found also a couple of hubs with 3.5/4A just in case someone could be interested:
- LogiLink UA0091: http://www.amazon.es/LogiLink-UA0091-5000-Mbit-3-5/dp/B003EC6H94/ref=zg_bs_937877031_3
- DeLOCK USB 3.0 External HUB 4 Port: http://www.amazon.es/gp/product/B003URZAMI/ref=ox_sc_act_title_2?ie=UTF8&smid=A1AT7YVPFBWXBL (http://www.amazon.es/gp/product/B003URZAMI/ref=ox_sc_act_title_2?ie=UTF8&smid=A1AT7YVPFBWXBL)

Peter, I have a couple of questions about the external hdd and its connections. You said that the Medion has also an eSata connection, I wonder if you have tested it or if you think that could be a good idea to get an external hard drive with this kind of connection besides the USB 3.0.

What I´m also considering is to get out the internal WD hdd where I have the music stored and use some kind of docking station like these ones:
- Sharkoon SATA QuickDeck Pro (24.95€): http://www.sharkoon.com/?q=en/content/sata-quickdeck-pro (http://www.sharkoon.com/?q=en/content/sata-quickdeck-pro)
- Sharkoon SATA QP U3 FireWire (?€), it has USB 3.0, eSata and FireWire connections: http://www.sharkoon.com/?q=en/node/2237 (http://www.sharkoon.com/?q=en/node/2237)

There are more docking stations for 2,5", 3,5" and SSD hdds with different connections.

What do you think about this idea?.

Best regards,
Juan

I´m, once in a while looking how to update the hardware in my music Pc. Lately it is the turn of hdds and now I´m thinking if the Enterprise hdd could be a good choice. Although now I´m primarily thinking on using it for Playback Drive could it be also an interesting election for other uses in the music Pc.

In my music Pc there are four different kind of drives determined by the use I give them. As a general rule for a hdd the faster the better, but to be more specific this is what I have, well I better would say I should have because e.g. I use an USB 3.0 (30Gb) pendrive for Galleries instead an SSD:

- One hdd where the OS and XXHighEnd resides. This must be fast and not necessarily big (120-300Gb)

- One hdd where the Galleries resides. Must be fast. Can be a SSD drive, 60-120Gb can be enough.

- Several hdds where the music resides. Big (2Tb or more) and not necessarily as fast as the others.

- One Playback Drive hdd. This is the one that condition the SQ. How must it be?, I´m not sure besides that it must be fast and not necessarily big, that´s why I´m going to try different connections and hdds. There are different experiences here in the forum that I read. There are some people having good results with hdds with 5900rpm or 7200rpm, SATA II, SATA III, eSata, USB 2.0 or USB 3.0, with more or less cache size, etc. At the end not a final conclusion on what is best.
Of course you can use an external USB 3.0 hdd for Playback drive and forget about it but I want to be sure what is the best choice.

In order to try the different connections I´ve bought two external cases with USB 3.0 and eSATA, this way I can check the differences in SQ with different drives and connections :

http://www.sharkoon.com/?q=en/content/sata-quickdeck-pro (http://www.sharkoon.com/?q=en/content/sata-quickdeck-pro)

http://www.sharkoon.com/?q=en/content/sata-quickdeck (http://www.sharkoon.com/?q=en/content/sata-quickdeck)

Why I´m thinking about Enterprise hdds?. Because they have some important qualities: they are fast, reliable, can be run 24/7 and have extra protection against vibrations. The problem is that they are primarily made for RAID and I don´t want to use it in RAID and I don´t know either if this kind of hdd can be used as an stand alone hdd. Some people say yes, others say not. Some help on this issue is welcome..
By the moment I´d use this Enterprise hdd as Playback Drive to see how it is going on, I´m thinking on this hdd:http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136697 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136697).

Here it is an Intel Paper that explains the differences between Enterprise drives and Desktop drives. I think that can be important also for Sound Quality, please read mostly the parts about vibration and Data integrity (1.1.4.2, 1.1.4.3, 1.1.4.4, 1.1.4.5): http://download.intel.com/support/motherboards/server/sb/enterprise_class_versus_desktop_class_hard_drives_.pdf (http://download.intel.com/support/motherboards/server/sb/enterprise_class_versus_desktop_class_hard_drives_.pdf)

Best regards,
Juan

Hi Juan,

http://www.sharkoon.com/?q=en/node/2237

I have a couple of these, and they are totally unreliable. Not in all situations, but you will run into it when using them. And for example, with USB3 over an USB3 hub, forget it at all.

I don't know what this tells about the other Sharkoon types, but I'd say : avoid them.

Don't know more ...
Peter

Thanks Peter, too late because I´ve already ordered it. About using the USB 3.0 QuickDeck with the USB 3.0 hub I don´t see a reason to use it if you can connect the powered QuickDeck directly to an USB 3.0 port in the mb. Well, the only reason could be that I have already the USB 3.0 pen drive (Galleries) connected to the hub and if I want to use it I´ll have two USB 3.0 connected at the same time in the mb. If that matters I don´t know.
What worries me more is about the Enterprise drive I mentioned before, I´m not sure if that´s a good choice because if it has some bad sector at any time will be difficult to recover it due to the firmware which is prepared for RAID with a short time (8 seconds) to recover the drive making it unusable.
Other possibility is this hdds that is prepared for running 24/7 http://wdc.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=150 (http://wdc.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=150)

Juan

Juan,

No drives we use run 24/7 unless you set them to that in Power Management. Not sure whether this is your angle though (really running them 24/7).

But to be honest, I never before heard of such a thing (like : more reliable because of for businenesses). But I guess it exists ...

Regards,
Peter

I read the Intel paper with great interest, mostly the ruggedness and reliability of the enterprise hard drives.

You should not be worried about the fact that they mention "RAID". They will work fine as standalones. We do have a few old servers in our company that do not have RAID specs (one that goes back to 2001) and they are still working. RAID is a method that can provide for more protection against data loss (and/or speed depending on the kind of RAID), but it does not change a thing about their reliability and ruggedness.

Yes they are normally rugged and reliable, but you should verify if they allow as many Start/Stop cycles, since they are conceived to work 24/7. Generally speaking, they would allow at least 50,000 Start/Stop cycles.

I assume that when you talk about enterprise HDD, you are still talking about Sata drives ? I ask this since there are also SAS drives (the connections look the same, but they require a controller generally not found or a standard desktop motherboard). Just mentionning.

As for SQ, I can't tell... Peter could chime in ?

Alain

Hi Peter, 24/7 is interesting just because it is a proof of reliability and roughness, also because I usually have the music Pc turned On 24/7 like the NOS1 and the rest of the system, of course I can turn Off the external drives.

Enterprise drives are more reliable and protected against vibrations which is always important.
Here are some extracts to save you the time to read the whole document (Intel Paper) that I put in the other post:

Enterprise-class drives generally incorporate internal mechanisms that allow faster data access and retrieval. These features include heavier actuator magnets, faster spindle speeds, denser magnetic media, and faster drive electronic components with more cache memory and faster hard drive micro-processor speeds.

-Vibrations
The source of vibration that can affect drive operation can come from moving components within a system, such as fans and neighboring hard drives. Vibration from fans can be transmitted through the system chassis to hard drives, and vibration from a drive can be transferred to another drive, or from the drive to the system and then reflected back to the originating drive. While data is read from or written to a disk, these vibrations can push the read/write head out of alignment with the data track. Failure to compensate for vibration induced misalignment can result in data that is written or read off track. This increases the possibility that an off-track write could corrupt data in an adjoining track, or that an off-track read could result in incorrect data or data that cannot be located or read. Some forms of misalignment compensation can have a dramatic impact on performance due to the time required to spin the data target location back under the read/write head. Performance loss of up to 90% has been observed in some tests. The amount of performance loss is dependent on the frequency and strength of the vibration.

- Misalignment detection
Most drives incorporate multiple “servo wedges” in the track. Most desktop drives do not have dedicated servo and data path processors or the firmware compensation algorithms that make them more susceptible to RV (Rotational Vibrations) errors, which results in poor performance due to vibration. Most enterprise class drives have dedicated servo and data path processors with servo algorithms in the drive firmware to enforce this compensation. Enterprise class drives are able to more effectively detect and compensate for vibration.

- Enterprise class drives use ECC for data passing through drive memory and may use additional error detection methods for data transmitted within the drive electronics. The form of this error detection and correction capability is usually proprietary to the drive vendor. Desktop drives do not have this data protection feature within drive memory, If a data error occurs in memory it will not be detected. The error will be transmitted to the next stage in the drive electronics, and the error will be propagated to the drive media or to the host device. This type of error becomes very difficult to detect and can affect operating system stability or client data reliability.



Thanks Alain, yes the hdd I´m thinking on is a SATA drive. The problem could come with the ERC (Error Recovery Control), for more information please read this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Error_recovery_control (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Error_recovery_control).

I think that I´ll get the WD RE4 WD5003ABYX 500GB drive anyway to test it, I have 7 days to return it if I get problems with it. http://www.amazon.com/Western-Digital-Cache-Enterprise-Drive/dp/B003SALVN4 (http://www.amazon.com/Western-Digital-Cache-Enterprise-Drive/dp/B003SALVN4)

Juan

Hi Juan,

Very interesting link indeed :) I was not aware about this. Maybe my comprehension is not right, but if the TLER is adjusted to 7 seconds, I guess that it is mostly to comply with RAID controllers, but I (still I could be wrong) guess that not using a RAID controller does not change the fact that this drive carries a 5 year warranty, plus that it is considered an "enterprise" HDD... I would be confident with this drive :)

Have you checked Seagate ? The Constellation 3.5in model seems interesting also...

As of now, I like the Black Caviar Western Digital 3.5in for desktops, as it carries a 5 year warranty and they seem quite durable. But as I understand things now, the method for reliability differs between the 2 categories.

But I find very interesting that you can try the drive and return it even if it works fine :)

I hope you will come back with your impressions with that drive.

Regards,

Alain

Is that so ?

Alain, it doesn´t matter if you use it in a Raid configuration or not to preserve the 5 years warranty, it is not mandatory to use it in RAID. At least I haven´t read anything about it.

The Constellation seems similar to the WD but it has much less feedbacks than the WD and if you read the Western Digital WD RE4 WD5003ABYX feedbacks e.g. in Newegg you´ll see that this drive is considered a kind of Rolls Royce of the hdds among the users. Many of the people there, in Newegg, use it as an independent driver.
On the other hand now I use a Seagate Barracuda (LaCie) as Playback Drive and the sound is very good, but the same way I did with the other components in my music system I like to investigate further and, why don´t try this WD hdd if it is one of the best?. I mean considering the special facts like that it is built thinking on vibrations and the other things we were talking about.
Of course I´ll share my experience with it, I´ll get it here in a few more days.


I can return it in 7 days with no questions about it if I keep the hdd and the box in perfect condition. Here is where I bought it (but in Pixmanía Spain). In this site the Satisfait ou remboursé is for 15 days, so even better than where I bought it http://www.pixmania.com/fr/fr/8165562/art/western-digital/disque-dur-interne-re4-wd.html (http://www.pixmania.com/fr/fr/8165562/art/western-digital/disque-dur-interne-re4-wd.html)

Juan

So, we all find more "types" of these, try them out and return them ? hahaha


PS: By coincidence I had a 1TB LaCie (looked like an SSD but was not) in my system as playback drive. Don't know the type. But the sound was totally aweful !

Sure! we all can make a testers gang and "buy" a different hdd each one of us, so no one will be the only baddie  8)


Uhmmm, then maybe mine is also awful...and I was thinking that my sound was terrific... I need to listen personally your system asap!, jeje

I'm fairly sure is was this one : http://www.lacie.com/products/product.htm?id=10518

BUT, it was not self externally powered (we didn't). That could be a problem ...

Peter

Mine is physically  similar but inside is a Seagate 7200rpm 230Gb, it is USB 2.0 and it is externally powered. I have it from around 5 years or more.

Then yours will sound better. ;)

After some time testing some hdds for Playback Drive I´ve come to some conclusions:

First, let me tell you that I compared the following units:

- USB 3.0 32Gb pen drive
- WD Elements USB 3.0 1Tb, self powered
- LaCie (Seagate Barracuda), 230Gb, 7200rpm, 8Mb cache, USB 2.0, externally powered.
- WD RE4 WD5003ABYX, 500Gb, 7200rpm, 64Mb cache, externally powered.

I tested the WD RE4 with some different connections like SATA, eSATA, USB 2.0 and USB 3.0. The LaCie was connected with the USB 2.0 directly to the computer and through an USB 3.0 hub.
To do that I used some Sharkoon SATA QuickDeck, one with eSATA and USB 2.0 connections and other with USB 3.0 connection (I returned the one with USB 3.0 because I can´t reboot the computer with it connected and I used in place of it a TooQ Prodata Series USB 3.0 external case that works flawlessly)^*1. The USB 3.0 and USB 2.0 were connected to a powered USB 3.0 hub and directly to the computer. The SATA and eSATA were connected directly to the computer.

Soon I discarded the two first ones in the list because the sound seemed too cold and lifeless, so I concentrate in the other two.

The WD makes a sound that is really clear, vigorous, clean, it seems to me that it is more true to the real music, in other words less euphonic. It doesn´t mean in any way that the sound is cold or something like that, no, the sound seems to be like the real recorded sound is, that´s the feeling I get listening this WD RE4.
The LaCie hdd, on the other hand is a little more veiled or, better I´d say smoother, but I wouldn´t use that word because the WD is also smooth if the recorded music is that way, I´d better say that the LaCie reproduce the music giving the sense that there is some less information than with the WD.
The information with the WD RE4 is outstanding, I heard things in some albums that I listened hundreds of times that never heard before, some details, subtle sounds...
In my opinion this WD RE4 makes a fantastic hdd for Playback Drive.
I´m going to use also the LaCie as Playback Drive. In fact I´m using both drives as it is very easy and fast to change from one to the other in XXHighEnd. When I use the LaCie?, well not very often really because I´m in love with the WD sound, however I´d say that I sympathize with the LaCie in some way. I´d use it e.g. if I had a party or a casual reunion in my home and I´d have some background music. If I´m alone listening music I´d use the WD RE4 unless...I wanted to listen an album that would be very brilliant, and even so...

So in my opinion it is a great discovery this WD RE4, but let me tell you that, as Peter says in the tutorial, the Playback Drive sound depends on many things like where it is connected and I guess it depends also on the other components you have in your computer. But anyway I recommend it, just read the specification and you´ll see that all can be for the better like e.g. the control of vibrations and in general the way it is built.

I posted this test here, and not in the topic "Playback Drive drive" because I have some other parts that now I use in my Music Pc like the SSD for Galleries. It doesn´t have any influence in sound but it makes the selection of music much faster. Mine is a 128GB Crucial m4 SATA 6Gb/s (SATA III). I connected it to a SATA 6Gb port and goes really fast.
Btw there is not different SATA cables for Sata I, II, III or for 6Gb/s. All SATA cables can work with all SATA connections, the only think you must take care of is to buy a good quality one, that´s it. For more information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_ATA (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_ATA)


I´d like also to give some ideas to the ones that use a laptop as Music Pc, they also can make big improvements for no much money.

- Buy an USB 3.0 card if your laptop doesn´t have any USB 3.0 port, with maybe two ports and if it´s possible look for an externally powered card. Maybe you´ll need also a powered USB 3.0 hub to connect some other drives (for Playback Drive or for a hdd with your music files).

- Get an old hdd no matter if it is only 200 Gb or so, and use it for Playback Drive. If it is USB 2.0 or IDE use an adaptor to connect it to the USB 3.0 ports. Of course you can buy for less than 100€ a very good external hdd USB 3.0, no need more than 500Gb, it is important that this hdd be externally powered (as a general rule use always devices with external power).

- You can put your Galleries in an USB 3.0 pen drive connected to one of the hub ports.

Total cost?, depends on the hdd you get but I´d say that even with a good external USB 3.0 the total wouldn´t surpass 200€. If you use an old IDE hdd with an USB adaptor the total cost could be around 120€.

With just that you can play a lot and enjoy the music in a way that probably you haven´t imagined before.

Best regards,
Juan

^*1
Sharkoon adapters:
http://www.sharkoon.com/?q=en/content/sata-quickdeck-pro (http://www.sharkoon.com/?q=en/content/sata-quickdeck-pro)

http://www.sharkoon.com/?q=en/content/sata-quickdeck (http://www.sharkoon.com/?q=en/content/sata-quickdeck)

TooQ Prodata Series USB 3.0 external case:
http://www.tooq.es/product_detail.php?id=1463 (http://www.tooq.es/product_detail.php?id=1463)

Thank you Juan ...

Some little things that can help to get better sound, I´m using these two...:

Against vibrations in the Playback Drive: http://www.sharkoon.com/?q=en/node/915 (http://www.sharkoon.com/?q=en/node/915)

To clean the power just for the USB 3.0 hub and Playback Drive: http://www.psaudio.com/~psaudio/ps/products/detail/duet-power-center (http://www.psaudio.com/~psaudio/ps/products/detail/duet-power-center)

Now the sound is even better! :)

Juan

I tested the WD RE4 WD5003ABYX that I use as Playback Drive connected directly to the TeckNet USB 3.0 PCI Express Card and the sound now is even clearer and more detailed, fantastic!!. A very noticeable improvement. (Thanks Praphan!).

So I don´t use anymore the USB 3.0 hub to connect the Playback Drive. I´ll use from now on the hub just to connect other external hdds with music files.

Best regards,
Juan

P.D. For the ones interested in HOW TO BUILD MY NEW PC... I recommend to check once in a while the Updates in the first post of this topic.

Credit to you Juan !!   :thankyou:

I have been so busy with work and just follow you recommendation on WD5003ABYX. Spot on. This enterprise drive is the best I tested so far. I also had best result by directly connect it to Star Tech PCIe USB3 card. With this connection, you don't need to use on MOBO USB3 and hence I recommend you to disable it in the BIOS.

Best regards,
Praphan

I´ve been using lately a new hdd from WD, the Red one, for music storage. I even played music directly from this hdd and the sound is great. Although it was made mostly for operating in NAS and RAID environment I use it as a standalone hdd and works perfectly. So a new hdd to take into account if you need more hdds for music storage. Recommended.

http://www.amazon.com/WD-Red-NAS-Hard-Drive/dp/B008JJLZ7G/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1356804937&sr=8-1&keywords=Western+Digital+2TB+3.5inch+SATA6+Internal+Hard+Drive+-+Red (http://www.amazon.com/WD-Red-NAS-Hard-Drive/dp/B008JJLZ7G/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1356804937&sr=8-1&keywords=Western+Digital+2TB+3.5inch+SATA6+Internal+Hard+Drive+-+Red)

Best regards,
Juan

Hi Juan,

I'm attempting to plan out my new PC.  I'd like to copy exactly what you're doing with all drives.  I'm worried that your setup is too complicated for me to operate even after initial setup. 

What are your thoughts?  I like your idea of keeping all things consistent -playback drive- so that SQ can be consistently optimized.  Thanks

Bob

Hey Bob, it could seems complicated but it is not. I´m going to let you know how I have the hdd set up right now. To operate this setup later is easy because XXHighEnd is doing it for you, the only thing you have to do is to configure XX correctly, which although it is not a minor thing you are going to find the necessary help here in the forum.

These are my hard drives:

1- The hdd with the OS and XXHighEnd (WD VelociRaptor 300GB. Looking at the pictures this is the only one horizontally placed))

2- One hdd with music that I always want have at hand. This hdd have all the albums that for one reason or another I want to have all the time at hand. I have a lot of albums here and are classified by genres. This is a personal classification but for me is ok (WD Green, 2Tb):

- Classic Piano
- Classic Piano concertos
- Classic Symphonies
- Classic Violin and Strings
- Classic Violin and Strings concertos
- Classic Voices and Opera
- Classic others
- Downloads (HDTracks, HDTT, Blue Coast, etc.)
- Folk
- Jazz (classic)
- Jazz (slow, all kinds of jazz)
- Jazz (modern)
- Rhythm and Blues
- Voices (men)
- Voices (women)
- Voices (mix)
- Other ones of interest
- Special selection
- Pop (groups)
- Rock (groups)
- Burning and test albums

3- One hdd that is hot swap connected/disconnected with a specific kind of music, e.g. Classical, or Jazz, etc. You can have as many hdd as you need and you can just take out one and put another with the music you want to listen at a certain moment and that you don´t have in the hdd nº2. Well, this is going to be the logical configuration that I´d like to have for this hdd in the future, depending of the amount of music I´ll have but in reality I only have so far one hdd full of music of all kinds alphabetically ordered. (WD20EFRX, 2Tb)

Let me tell you that as a general rule I use WAV files mostly for the albums that I use more frequently or that I like more, although of course I have a lot of music in flac files.

4- One hdd that I use as Playback Drive. This hdd is externally connected to the USB 3.0 PCIe card (WD RE4 WD5003ABYX, 500Gb). I used several different storage units as Playback Drive like an Usb 3.0 pen drive or different hdd but I ended up using the WD RE4 and I´m very pleased with the sound I get with it. The Playback Drive is important for two reasons, first because it eliminates the differences in SQ (if any) that the Flac or wav files could have and second the Playback Drive conditioned the SQ, I mean the sound is different if you use a pen drive or a ssd or a hdd and even the kind of hdd and more even depending the kind of connection. As could you imagine the number of combinations is infinite but as I tell you I´m very satisfied with the SQ of my WD RE4 connected via USB 3.0 to the USB 3.0 PCIe card.

5- An SSD for the Galleries. It makes a fast access to your albums but at this moment I don´t use it.


As you can see I don´t use a remote to control the Music PC but instead a keyboard, a mouse and a VGA monitor. To get better sound, once the music is playing, I turn off the monitor and also disconnect the USB 2.0 (keyboard and mouse) from the hub (see pictures).

About fans, I only use two of the three fans that I have at the bottom of the case (the middle one and the right one), no fans in the cpu cooler even when I use Ultimate Tweaks that are very demanding. My temperature oscillates between 29ºC and 40ºC (Room temperature 23ºC). That means less noise and less interference.


Here you have some pictures where you can see my Music PC with the hdd inside and outside. I also have a CD Rom but I have it disconnected and I don´t use it. When I want to rip a cd I use other computer and later I copy the file to the Music Pc.

Please ask whatever you need to know, I´ll be glad to help as much as I can.

Best regards

Juan

Your help remains impressive Juan ...

Thanks Peter. Those are gratifying words

Juan

Hi Juan,

Outstanding!  Thanks Juan.  I think I may copy your system almost exactly.  I was thinking of using two (tight voltage + or - 2%/ lower power) power supplies and two boxes so that the MB does not share power with any other components.

Hi Bob, about the power supply I think it is still a pending issue although some people here have worked on it. If you have ideas about it go ahead, you might find something new and interesting to share. If I can make a suggestion I would go first to a simpler construction, perhaps like mine if you like it, and then I would work on it implementing other solutions.

Best,
Juan

Juan,

Here is part of my order below.  The Windows 7 Ultimate for sale at newegg.com does not indicate that it is 64bit.  Is it always 64bit?

They are out of stock on the sabertooth
I bought the i7 970 on ebay for $399

Qty.    Product Description    Savings    Total Price
   

Western Digital WD RE4 WD5003ABYX 500GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive
Item #: N82E16822136697
Return Policy: Standard Return Policy
Recover Your Data(expand for options)
-$10.00 Instant
$99.99
$89.99
   

Western Digital Red WD20EFRX 2TB IntelliPower SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive
Item #: N82E16822236343
Return Policy: Standard Return Policy
Protect Your Investment (expand for options)
Recover Your Data(expand for options)
$119.99
   

Seasonic SS-760XP2 ATX 12V/EPS 12V, 760W, 80 PLUS PLATINUM Full Modular certified Active PFC Power Supply
Item #: N82E16817151120
Return Policy: Standard Return Policy
$179.99
   

CORSAIR Vengeance 4GB 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model CMZ4GX3M1A1600C9
Item #: N82E16820233141
Return Policy: Memory Standard Return Policy
-$2.00 Instant
$221.94
$209.94
($34.99 each)
Subtotal:   $599.91

Cheers

Bob

Juan,

I assume I need a third drive? (WD Velociraptor SATA II, 300Gb)

This is for OS and XX?

Juan,

I found the sabertooth on ebay.  Is this the right thing?

http://www.ebay.com/itm/ASUS-SABERTOOTH-X58-SOCKET-LGA1366-DDR3-USB-3-0-INTEL-DESKTOP-MOTHERBOARD-/390578024696?pt=Motherboards&hash=item5af043b0f8

"ASUS SABERTOOTH X58 SOCKET LGA1366 DDR3 USB 3.0 INTEL DESKTOP MOTHERBOARD"


Thanks!

Hi Bob,

I see that you have decided to build your PC with almost exactly the same components as mine. As I say in the first post of this topic: as we all know, computers and its parts become obsoletes very soon, so it is important to understand that you should choose to build your music PC, as a general rule, the fastest possible processor with a motherboard appropriate for that processor. It doesn´t mean that you must choose the latest processor in the market but one of the previous ones that will be much cheaper.... The i7 970 is not the fastest there today but it can work at 3.2GHz-3.6GHz with 6 cores plus 6 virtual cores, so it is fast enough to run XXHighEnd with no problem. You got a very good price for the i7-970 so it is an excellent choice in my opinion.


Windows Ultimate includes 32 & 64-bit versions, here you have a link: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002DHGMVY/ref=s9_psimh_gw_p65_d0_i1?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=center-2&pf_rd_r=0SEVQG5RFZHX67HFXNNX&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=1389517282&pf_rd_i=507846 (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002DHGMVY/ref=s9_psimh_gw_p65_d0_i1?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=center-2&pf_rd_r=0SEVQG5RFZHX67HFXNNX&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=1389517282&pf_rd_i=507846)

The 64bit option is important because it has not limited the amount of memory to 4Gb and that is an advantage over the 32bit version.


Yes, I use this drive only for OS and XXHighEnd.


Yes, this is the mb I use.

Best regards,
Juan

A small notice from my side :


Generally it is not about the speed at all but how the processor can (quickly) deal with interrupts, memory and a lot more. For example, currently I run my i7/3930K machine at 350MHz per core (yep, that is 0.35GHz). No problem whatsoever with anything (also not track loading and FLAC conversions etc.). CPU usage during 32/705600 playback is still under 1%.

Peter

Yes, you are right Peter, I emphasized it on the processor speed while there are other important factors to take in to account, but if you have to choose a processor what is the specification to look for if the main one that defines the processor in the specification sheet is the speed?.

Juan

Peter - If I remember well the reason to lower the processor speed is to minimize as much as possible the vibrations produced by the processor high speed. Could you please remember me how to lower the processor speed to such a low values?.

Thanks,
Juan

You guys are great!  Many, many thanks.

I just bought the Sabertooth, Win7 ultimate("takes advantage of 64 bit capable processor /Mb") and a passive videocard.

I found the TeckNet USB on Amazon but it's priced in Pounds and it says it does not come with "molex splitter".  Do I need that?
It gives an option to buy it with 2 other accessories. 

There are similar looking things on Ebay with 4 USB3.0 outs.

Help!:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/TeckNet-Interface-Expansion-Splitter-included/dp/B004S0Y9FK

Thanks again!

Here is the 4 port option priced in $$

(faster delivery)



http://www.ebay.com/itm/NEW-Sabrent-USB-3-0-4-port-PCI-Express-Card-4-x-Type-A-Female-USB-3-0-USB-Pl-/360638477811?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item53f7ba75f3

Is this one just as good?

Juan,


I never told about this and officially it can't be done. But I seem to be able to do "many" things these days which can't be done, and this is one of them. Can be much lower still.

People, please don't start to do/try this right away. It needs a new XXHighEnd version (I'm always the first who has that somehow :) :)), and there's quite some more for "reasons" why this can be for the better. It's not finished yet.

Peter

You don't need that anyway as long as you have a free molex connection from your PSU (and I guess you will).

Otherwise if you click the link "see more product details" someone explains in the comments near the bottom that it is not needed anymore to outboard power the card. Still I would do that, I think, when the option is there (SQ).

Lastly, I don't want to interfere much, but the USB3 card as Juan uses it will be for the NOS1; if you don't have that (or don't plan to) you won't need this card either - unless there's no USB3 on the MoBo (but I'm fairly sure it will be there).
So this is just about from which interface the NOS1 sounds best and general consensus is from these cards (with NEC chip I think - I didn't investigate this one).

Kind regards,
Peter

Bob - The X58 Sabertooth has its own USB 3.0 ports, so as Peter said the PCIe card is to communicate the PC with the NOS1. Maybe you want to buy the card but then you´ll need to order the NOS1 if you don´t want to waste 9 pounds  ;).

Juan

Thanks Peter that seems another interesting feature.

Juan

LOL Juan !
I don't want to quote about what because then I might look to be commercial.

Outstanding!  Many thanks, again all.

I'm going to the computer store this weekend to get case.

Juan,
Is this case ok?

I can only say that it *looks* cool (to me)

http://www.frys.com/product/6579543?site=sr:SEARCH:MAIN_RSLT_PG

Bob - That case wouldn´t be my first choice, too many fans, very big, etc. I´d look for something that take care of the noise like the Fractal Design Define R3 ATX or the Nanoxia Deep Silence 1:
- http://www.silentpcreview.com/fractal-r3 (http://www.silentpcreview.com/fractal-r3)
- http://www.silentpcreview.com/Nanoxia_Deep_Silence_1 (http://www.silentpcreview.com/Nanoxia_Deep_Silence_1)

Take a look here http://www.silentpcreview.com/section9.html (http://www.silentpcreview.com/section9.html)

I´ll try to investigate further and let you know what I find. The idea is to get a case built with some kind of noise isolation but with enough room to put your components and with enough ventilation (fans) or with the possibility to refrigerate by water but not with "more of everything".

Juan

Bob Juan hi,

I have two of the fractal design cases in the link from Juan above. One is used for my main audio pc. The are very well built and tick the boxes for an audio pc that Juan mentions. Very nice kit.

Regards,

Nick.

Nick - The Fractal Design Define R3 ATX can be a good candidate to help Bob, more even if you have a direct experience. Thanks for your opinion.

Regards,
Juan

I see..

You guys are great!  Many thanks, Juan and Nick.

Juan,

I didn't see any instructions on this...

What optical drive do you recommend?

What is the best ripping software?

Bob - I´m using two CD-Rom: an old Plextor PX-230A and a Plextor PX-L890SA. The first one is very fast and very good ripping cds that can have some problems (scratches), this cd-rom is hard to find second hand at ebay, is expensive (around $200) and it is considered by some people as the best one ever built. The Plextor PX-L890SA is a modern cd-rom and has FUA capability important (not so sure) to avoid ripping errors.

After using the CD-Rom I disconnect it to get better sound.

The software to rip cds could be any of these two:

- EAC (a little softer sound that could be appealing to someone): http://www.exactaudiocopy.de/ (http://www.exactaudiocopy.de/)

- dbpoweramp (it rips faster than the EAC). This is the one I use: http://www.dbpoweramp.com/cd-ripper.htm (http://www.dbpoweramp.com/cd-ripper.htm)

Best regards,
Juan

Hey Peter - Talking about PC cases take a look here to see how to combine the love for trains and PC:

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/pc-ck101-mini-itx-locomotive-review,review-32672.html (http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/pc-ck101-mini-itx-locomotive-review,review-32672.html)

 :prankster:

Juan

Hahaha. Does it contain a horn (whistle) ?
Is it async USB ?

Crazy though ...

And you can even order it including motor and a 10' track. Could be a nice add to your collection!

Juan

Another useful case mod:

http://boingboing.net/2002/12/08/coffeemaking-pc-case.html

Juan,

Many thanks again for your help. 

First, and most importantly, the sq of XXHE is stunning!  I spent all Saturday night saying "Holly ##@##, this is CD??!!!"

I finally got my PC working a couple of days earlier (it was a bad velociraptor - I think it maybe the Sabertooth took a bite out of it)

My son (who is better with computers) and I tried to set up the separate drive as the playback drive and kept getting a bunch of errors.  One thing that I just thought of is the guys at Fryes told me that they used that drive as the OS drive to isolate the problem to the Velociraptor.  Could that be why I need to do something different?

We're not using a separate playback drive now.

The other error I keep getting is playing the first song results in a match error.  But if I start the second song and stop it and go back to the first it works fine.

Thanks again.  What a fantastic product!

Hey Bob,

As you can see in the first post of this topic I use, like many other people here, one hdd for OS and XXHighEnd, other hdd (or as many as you need) for music and finally another hdd for Playback drive, this one has nothing inside but one folder. XXHE use this hdd to put there the list of music you are going to listen and that music is erased every time you close XXHE. As far as I know by your private mails your problem is how to format this Playback drive or more exactly how to find the System Volume Information File folder http://www.phasure.com/index.php?topic=2086.0 (http://www.phasure.com/index.php?topic=2086.0)
I couldn´t help you more on this issue so maybe Peter or someone else can help you better than me on how to format this hdd.

When you have the Playback drive correctly set up probably you´ll solve your other problems.

Bob, please put your signature in the post, that´s the way we can see your system and configuration and help you better.

Best regards,
Juan

This is a known bug for the current version, solved in the (due) next. IIRC it is related to playing mixed formats. There's a topic about it somewhere (no 2 months old), but even for me it is hard to find.

And Bob, please post your problems with the Playback Drive in a separate topic and add some "context" for me. That is, if you still have a problem with it.

Regards,
Peter

Hello,

Sorry, false alarm.  My son and I just fixed the issue. We reformatted the playback drive.  Then we started over using the instructions and it worked. 

We, originally, set permissions for the drive instead of the system file inside of the drive.

Fantastic sq!

Congratulations Bob!!

Juan

Juan,

Thanks again for all of your above and beyond help.  Could not be happier with the sq

Is this still how you feel Peter or Nick?  Any newer ideas about how to treat memory with XXHE?

Personally I never experienced with that (but mine is at 1333 while all can take 2133).

I have to add this though :

I always and ever try to stay out of tweaks which can't apply to you all. All BIOS tweaks belong to that (but I do experiment with the "XXHighEnd PC" because customers have that and why not try to utilize it with a benefit to not me only). So, all you see pop up in XXHighEnd for tweaks in the "BIOS" direction should apply to all. When not, it won't be a setting.
In the mean time this is how I don't know. I just don't try the things which can not work out the same to you all, because all what might happen is that I have super sound, while you have sh*t and I think I did well *for you*. So I just stay out of it.

Peter

I'll try all the various settings I have for DDR I have when I get the new computer put together.

While I wait for my upgraded NOS1 (thanks, Peter) I´m thinking about how to configure my hdds in an external way. The advantage would be, compared to an external USB hub and several external hdds with its own cases, to have only one power supply and only one USB 3.0 cable. I have some doubts and maybe someone could help on this regard.

I´m considering a dock station for four hdd like this one:

http://www.startech.com/HDD/Docking/4-Bay-eSATA-USB-3-to-SATA-Hard-Drive-Docking-Station-for-25-35-HDD~SATDOCK4U3E (http://www.startech.com/HDD/Docking/4-Bay-eSATA-USB-3-to-SATA-Hard-Drive-Docking-Station-for-25-35-HDD~SATDOCK4U3E).

This dock station can be connected to the Music PC through one USB 3.0 or eSata port and it can deal with all the four hdds at the same time, so I could have there one hdd with the OS and XXHE, one hdd as Playback Drive and two hdd with music that I could change whenever I´d want. What I don´t know is if would be possible to have the hdd with the OS in the dock together with all the other drives or if this hdd with the OS have to go to other different port like one eSata port (or USB 3.0) in the motherboard.

Best regards,
Juan

Hi Juan,

I checked this dock station... I find it quite expensive and it is essentially made of plastic... I have the bad feeling that this will vibrate a lot... Compared to what you actually have with the suspension you added.

But I understand that with a single box (with multiple drives), there would only be one power supply to take care of...

I am still looking for a "miracle" enclosure that would have those properties:
a) Trayless (no need to mount the hdd with screws in the enclosure), so easily removable
b) Made of aluminium (to evacuate the heat)
c) No fan
d) Carry Esata (even Sata I will be ok) and USB 3 connection
e) Have a 12V connection with a "barrel" shaped plug. This to allow the eventual replacement of the cheap wall wart with a linear power supply.

As of now, I could not find such a product. The only product that could approach this description is a Icy Dock enclosure, but it needs braces to be screwed on the hard drive prior to insert the hdd inside the enclosure.
http://www.icydock.com/goods.php?id=146
The enclosure can be either placed vertically of horizontally (it does not seem very stable as it is narrow when vertical - I keep it horizontal).

But of course it would need a linear power supply (12 volts) to be more silent (electronically speaking)... This is the point where I am (try to find an affordable power supply)...

Regards,

Alain

Hi Alain,

I can find the dock for only 90€, that web site was only for information. About vibrations yes you are right but the fans can be shut off. The case carries both eSata and USB 3.0. The power supply?, well that is still something to solve in a better way but the individual cases have also one each.

Could you tell me please about my question if the OS could be in one of those hdd placed in the dock?.

Best regards,
Juan

Hi Juan,

I did not see any mention about this and I am not sure about the requirement(s) (other than a disk needs to be bootable of course)...

Normally I would think that a recent BIOS would scan the devices that are attached to the pc and select the bootable drive, but I would inquire to Star Tech first ?

Regards,

Alain
Note: it would be good to ask about this for each of the 2 different connections (Esata and USB).

I wouldn't count on this being bootable. Something tells me it will be too complex.

The bootorder when USB is involved is already quite out of control and I don't think you can even "set" it when not first a normal hdd is involved for the OS. Think like this :

- Boot from whatever is bootable;
- Insert USB device (now "something" is recognizing this so that later the BIOS knows (???));
- Reboot, go into BIOS and set Boot Order with USB device first;
- Boot (continuing previous step).

So, this "complex" it already is for a directly connected USB device.
Now, when you'd insert a normal hdd at some stage (which can also be in that bay), the bootorder changes (this is a sort of SATA behavior). And for example, any USB device could be in there (in the BIOS) but when attempted to boot from it, it just won't (instead of going on to the next device in the boot order list).

All this assumes that the devices (HDDs) will show up in the BIOS anyway, which is doubtful as well. But my point (from experience) is : within no time you won't be able to boot at all, and it needs another normal HDD to boot so you can rearrange the boot order and get it working again.

But you can try it ...
Peter

Ok, I will think back on all of this with ease, now I'm away from home for a few days and when I return I will do some tests about the booting disk.

Anyway Peter, as far as I understand, you have a configuration with all the hard drives outside the PC, regardless of any hardware/software special that you have (?), I would like to know what is the goal you pursue with this configuration.
What I can imagine is that the less work the PC power supply the less electric contamination and the better the SQ. For example, if the OS and XXHE are in an external drive with an eSATA connection with a separate power supply connected to a power conditioner, I guess that it would avoid some contamination of the electrical connection (although all contaminates, including the power conditioner). If at the same time the other disks, the Playback Drive and the disc with music, are on one external dock with only a single power supply (also connected to the power conditioner) I imagine it would be better, even the Playback Drive also could be placed in memory (ImDisk) .. . In summary, the key is if we take the hard drive with the OS/XXHE outside the PC or not (and the other hdd) and if we take it out what are the advantages and disadvantages.

Regards,
Juan

Hello Juan & Peter,

may I get details about the update, because if it is worth, I will send my NOS1 to the Netherlands for a ........... .

Thanx

Joachim

Hi Joachim,

Take a look here: http://www.phasure.com/index.php?topic=2629.0 (http://www.phasure.com/index.php?topic=2629.0)

Regards,
Juan