New NOS1 dedicated PC. Less terrifying thanks to you. All help still welcome!

[AlainGr]

Hi Rakesh,

I suppose you wish to go with a Windows Server OS since there is no mention of support for Windows 8 OS with the Asrock server motherboard ?

I have to say that for a terrified person aiming at the perfect PC to build, you seem quite adventurous in looking for a super powered PC. If I was unsure of what to get, I would on the contrary look for something that resembles more what is used by Peter, but this is just an humble suggestion.

The word "server" as it is used here has not much to do with a real server that is intended for quite different matters. A real server does not need to be silent as it is normally put in a server room where there is air conditioning, in a noisy fan environment, big time redundancy (hard drives in RAID configuration) and multi-"everything" (multi-task, multi-user), with 2 power supplies per server et al... It is built like a tank, weights like a tank and it draws a lot of power. All is oriented towards power, speed, economy of time between failures, etc... Not really aimed at music at all...

We have to remember that a music PC is only the PC where the processing will occur and in order to accomplish this, one needs the right balance between speed, enough ram and silence (physically and electronically). To achieve this, a nice start would be from what Peter recommends. I am sure you would be very happy with a build that is almost identical with what Peter has achieved. The CPU is very powerful, the amount of ram should not exceed a level where it would bring more noise (since each memory stick demands power and works with "spikes of power") and less internal components than more.

As it will advance, I am sure a lot of us will be happy to bring suggestions, but the music PC needs to have good balance (silence, speed and not too much power). As you will notice, I am not talking about a "server". The server in our context is a very simple thing: the hard drive containing the music is connected to another PC (the "server") and that another PC is connected through LAN with the music PC where XXHighEnd resides.

I am not a good example of what should be done. I live with my mistakes and still have a long way to go. If you hope to be helped, you will have to orient your goals toward something that is more in line with what we have and know, as opposed to "quite different"...

I will leave it there for the moment. The lack of response from many of us has probably a lot to do with the direction you have taken...

The format of the box is not really important, but what you will put inside is... The amount of hard drives is not important either, unless you have music in the Terabytes department, but even so, a 5400RPM would be a lot more silent and powerful enough for the task than a SAS 15k RPM or a RAID array (for example)...

I will continue to monitor this thread as it will evolve, but Peter, Juan, many others and I are certainly willing to help, as long as they understand and can help in assisting you

Hope this does not come as a "showstopper" comment

Regards,

Alain

[rakeshpoorun]

Hi Rakesh,

I suppose you wish to go with a Windows Server OS since there is no mention of support for Windows 8 OS with the Asrock server motherboard ?

I have to say that for a terrified person aiming at the perfect PC to build, you seem quite adventurous in looking for a super powered PC. If I was unsure of what to get, I would on the contrary look for something that resembles more what is used by Peter, but this is just an humble suggestion.

The word "server" as it is used here has not much to do with a real server that is intended for quite different matters. A real server does not need to be silent as it is normally put in a server room where there is air conditioning, in a noisy fan environment, big time redundancy (hard drives in RAID configuration) and multi-"everything" (multi-task, multi-user), with 2 power supplies per server et al... It is built like a tank, weights like a tank and it draws a lot of power. All is oriented towards power, speed, economy of time between failures, etc... Not really aimed at music at all...

We have to remember that a music PC is only the PC where the processing will occur and in order to accomplish this, one needs the right balance between speed, enough ram and silence (physically and electronically). To achieve this, a nice start would be from what Peter recommends. I am sure you would be very happy with a build that is almost identical with what Peter has achieved. The CPU is very powerful, the amount of ram should not exceed a level where it would bring more noise (since each memory stick demands power and works with "spikes of power") and less internal components than more.

As it will advance, I am sure a lot of us will be happy to bring suggestions, but the music PC needs to have good balance (silence, speed and not too much power). As you will notice, I am not talking about a "server". The server in our context is a very simple thing: the hard drive containing the music is connected to another PC (the "server") and that another PC is connected through LAN with the music PC where XXHighEnd resides.

I am not a good example of what should be done. I live with my mistakes and still have a long way to go. If you hope to be helped, you will have to orient your goals toward something that is more in line with what we have and know, as opposed to "quite different"...

I will leave it there for the moment. The lack of response from many of us has probably a lot to do with the direction you have taken...

The format of the box is not really important, but what you will put inside is... The amount of hard drives is not important either, unless you have music in the Terabytes department, but even so, a 5400RPM would be a lot more silent and powerful enough for the task than a SAS 15k RPM or a RAID array (for example)...

I will continue to monitor this thread as it will evolve, but Peter, Juan, many others and I are certainly willing to help, as long as they understand and can help in assisting you

Hope this does not come as a "showstopper" comment

Regards,

Alain

Hi Alain,

Thanks for taking the time with the thoughtful and highly instructive post. In all honesty, I do not know how this build has come to be regarded as a "super powered pc."

If it is indeed a "super powered pc," this was not my intention and the whole thing is a darned mistake. Given how little I know about computers generally, it is not at all the situation I was aiming for. And a mistake of the worse kind, because I have already acquired quite a lot of the parts required for this project. This is what I have bought as things stand:

    2 x E5-2648L v3
    Hynix 64GB DDR4 Ram (4 x 16GB)
    Intel 750 SSD 400GB PCIe NVME, to use as bootable drive for Windows 8 64bit OS and XXHighend
    2 x 300GB Western Digital Velociraptor WD3000BLF 2.5" (SATA 3Gb/s)
       
   

I am planning to add these parts:

   
    Supermicro X10DAC motherboard or Supermicro X10DAX based on what Peter has said above
    Silverstone EC04-P PCI Express Card
    Palit Geforce GTX 750 ti Kalmx
    Samsung 256GB PCIe ACHI SSD to use for Galleries

I imagine it is never really too late and I could always just leave out the Supermicro board, use only some of the RAM and go for something simpler.

But Alain, I thought the idea of having two cpus, which are both low powered and have 12 cores each, made a lot of sense (the CPUs are rated at 75W each, half of what many here are using). I never intended using Windows Server OS but rather Windows 8 64bit that I thought most people over here use. I did not know that the RAM could be too much, I had read in a thread somewhere that Peter worked out for high resolution and upsampled music one would be looking at 24GB and Juan also seemed to have added to his Ram to get to 24GB. I thought 32Gb was fine but because I had two CPUs, I thought let me make sure each CPU can access 32Gb...Maybe the reasoning above is "rubbish," using Peter's helpful terminology , but that's where my thinking got me.

I clearly have a choice. Rethink the whole thing and go for a single processor motherboard or since I have advanced so far, bite the bullet and see what comes out of it.

What would be great would be if I could meet someone who has bought Peter's XXHighend's PC that I could listen to so I would have a benchmark and could then see just how much I have messed it up. So if you Alain are not too far, and you do not mind, please let me know and I could come and listen to your system if not too inconvenient...It is about time I get to listen to someone's well settled Phasure NOS1/1a + XXHighend PC system. I will bring along a nice bottle of wine for your effort. I am in SE England and often in Alsace in France where my family lives...



Best regards
Rakesh

[rakeshpoorun]

Hi,
...
I am really a newbie in the worse sense of the word and am literally terrified at the prospect of embarking on a PC build, especially one dedicated to get the most out of Peter's XXHighend's software.

This is hopefully the thread where I can ask some idiotic questions and some kind souls with more expertise and experience than myself can offer some advice.

I hope there is no problem with creating such a thread in the first place?

Best regards
Rakesh

Hi Peter,

In my defence, I did say that I know close to nothing about "the PC side of things" and warned that some of my questions might be regarded as "idiotic."

This was a few weeks ago. At the time I did not have the foggiest about the difference between Socket LGA2011 and LGA2011R3, what is the difference between SATA and SATA III and SATA EXPRESS, a HDD and SSD, cores, hyperthreading, Ramdisk, DDR3 and DDR4 memory, server, workstation and database etc etc you get my drift...
It gradually dawned upon me that in taking a leap of faith and going for the NOS1, and reading a little bit more about it on your site that I really needed to try and understand a bit more about the complexities of designing a Music PC. I read your posts where you describe the parts you chose in building the XXHighend PC and some of the reasoning you gave behind the choices you made.
A long time ago, I worked for the Financial Times group in the City of London and we of course had some of the best IT professionals around who would come to sort out issues. A lot of that work was done in the back office but the little that I saw of their work had convinced me that IT professionals are a funny bunch. They are happy to share a joke or two, maybe go to the pub for a pint but they never discuss their work and there is little sense to be gleaned from their rare and brief utterances about the subject. I am reminded of this extremely bright French PhD student that I met at university who was writing a thesis about neural networks, teaching computers or modelling processes that could emulate the human brain (she has published a paper about this and that too is impossible for me to follow). She did try to explain but soon enough, I realised she was making assumptions about what was for her basic theory that made the exercise one in futility. I decided that I would only bother about computers as an aid for my work and stay away from them otherwise.
But buying the NOS1 changed all of that. It was not about work anymore but about my interest in audio and given that I think that in the long term the PC will be our main source of content for our acoustic systems, it made sense that I took advantage of this opportunity to try and learn the basics of building and specifying an audio PC.
Where in some respects, your website and others have proved a source of useful information – and this is no slight on them, they just were never intended to be -they do not really help someone in my shoes and in the intervening weeks, I have done a fair amount of reading and discussed my needs with people who build and configure servers for a living.

Hi Rakesh,

I have not much lust to bring across an ICT course/education. If you ask for advice then I can give you that and if you can't accept the answer then it could be better to not ask the questions in the first place. There's just too much involved in explaining (all).

Best regards,
Peter

In your defence, you do not have to answer any question at all. You offer a solution, the XXHighend PC, that people like me are free to buy if they wish and if they don’t well really they are on their own out of choice. So do not feel compelled to answer or offer comment on anything at all. If however, someone does contribute and offers some form of response, it would be nice if the answer made some effort at explaining why a particular conclusion was arrived at. That is helpful not only to me but anyone who is thinking about these issues on your forum. But it is very much your pregorative how you deal with it...And as I said, based on my dealings with IT professionals in the past, such as they were, I am not surprised and neither am I especially bothered.
Actually, Peter, most of the questions that I have, I have kept to myself. I try to be very specific and ask only one question at a time. So in the period of 6 and 1/2 weeks since I first started this thread, I have explicitly asked for help and advice on seven separate occasions (posts #2, 5, 11, 27, 30, 32 and 41, and for many of these I made an attempt to answer myself based on my limited understanding of the issues involved). Some other posters posted questions of their own which suggests that the thread is actually quite useful for those of us who have questions related to building a XXHighend pc. If that’s too much, please say so and I will close the thread since the reason for its existence is to give me (and others who are interested) a venue where some questions can be asked, which incidentally, might be questions faced by other forum users (especially new ones) and be helpful to them as well.
Peter, the problem is not that I “can't accept the answer,” as you put it, but rather that the answer you offered was unintelligible in parts and the reasoning either unclear or simply missing. The whole point of this thread is so that I (and maybe others) can learn. It is after all your software, your design, your criteria that we are trying to understand and implement because overall we bought your products believing you are highly capable and know what you are doing, and are not in the business of ripping people off which is true of most audio companies out there. So, as Juan might be also suggesting, before you offer an answer, decide, if the question is one that’s worth your valuable time and attention, what you can do to help others like myself, infinitely less knowledgeable than your are, understand better the reasoning behind your answer rather than offer an answer which is truly no help because it obfuscates and pontificates without actually saying anything concrete.
As I said earlier, I am willing to take your advice on trust. As it happens, yesterday I read a little more about the new 12 Gbp/s SAS3 storage solutions and I have read about some of the issues that might well make it unsuitable for the XXHighend PC. What I found interesting was reading that actually suggests that the difficulty arises mainly when you are looking to have SAS3 drives as an EXTERNAL solution where there are so many things that get complicated. The Supermicro distributor I talked to earlier today explained the complications involved with matching motherboard, chassis, backplanes in order to take advantage of these SAS3 drives. But in the case of the Supermicro X10dac, these issues do not arise at all since the SAS3 will each have an individual connector and as a result of the backward compatibility you can use older generations drives as well. So it seems to me, yes you are right because generally speaking the use of sas3 drives is made quite complicated because of the aftermarket raid cards that need to be specified, the backplane and the external storage device. On the other hand, if one were happy to use internal SAS3 drives, then sure the X10dac is a perfect solution. There may be other issues, but that's how much I understand of this whole issue thus far...And I appreciate why this issue might have irritated as it will not be relevant to XXHighend users in pretty much any conceivable scenario.

It was my conceit that caused this issue to be brought up and I realise it was a waste of your time. For that I do apologise. I still think you could have been a little less abstruse with your response...


Best regards
Rakesh

[PeterSt]

I realise it was a waste of your time. For that I do apologise. I still think you could have been a little less abstruse with your response...

Not at all, not needed and no.
haha

Best regards,
Peter

[rakeshpoorun]

I would like to ask a couple of questions if I may.

(i) How do I make sure I get the right Silverstone SST-EC04-P card?

 I have read somehere that there are two versions of the card and would like to order the correct one. I can see that the card is available on www.scan.co.uk, see link below:

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/silverstone-ec04-p-pci-express-card-with-4x-usb-30-ports

Has anyone ordered the card from Scan? Can you confirm whether it is the correct one? And if not and you know where the correct card can be sourced please let me know?

Is there a simple to understand guide as to how the card is to be modified and isolated from the chassis of the computer?

(ii) Would the Palit Geforce GTX 750 Ti Kalmx be suitable keeping in mind requirements for low power consumption?

I was initially thinking of the Nvidia GeForce 210 1Gb DDR3 but think that the Palit Geforce GTX 750 Ti Kalmx would not significantly affect power consumption. Is the Palit something that anyone has tried and would it be suitable? It is passively cooled and power consumption is fairly low at 10W idle (but 88W under GPU Load against 30W for the Nvidia GeForce 210) so it looks fairly reasonable to me.

Best regards
Rakesh

[PeterSt]

so it looks fairly reasonable to me.

My 3930 based Audio PC consumes 49W during 32/705600 playback and that includes the (210) graphics card.

I hope this is helpful.
Peter

[rakeshpoorun]

so it looks fairly reasonable to me.

My 3930 based Audio PC consumes 49W during 32/705600 playback and that includes the (210) graphics card.

I hope this is helpful.
Peter

Hi Peter,

It is indeed very helpful. Thanks.

It would be interesting to know the power draw of the Nvidia Graphic card alone at idle. I cannot find that information whereas I was able to get a fairly good idea of the Palit power consumption at idle which is 10W. Maybe the two cards are not so dissimilar in this respect?

The Nvidia 210 graphics card is really a boon for people who need one but want to keep both noise and power consumption very low.

It is however not silent if I understand correctly? Does the fan not come on even when it is at idle? This is what I have read in a  review online:

 "GT 210 -- The noise levels coming from the card are average, in idle you will not hear the card as we measured 40 DBa. Which is below the threshold of noise from the PC itself. Once the GPU starts to heat up the fan RPM will go up. The card however remains steady and we measure roughly 41 dBA which a decent enough noise level. It's alright -- but not silent." (from Guru3d.com review)

The Palit is passively cooled (there are no fans present at all) so should in theory be completely silent.

The disadvantage of the Palit is that under load its temperature will go up to 55C with good ventilation (against 45C for the Nvidia). That 10C difference is meaningless during playback since the two cards are at idle (where their temperatures are 32C and 39C respectively, not a lot in it).

So swings and roundabouts. I will give the Nvidia the nod though. It seems the less risky solution based on your experience so that's the one I will go for. Peter, thanks for the tip.

Best regards
Rakesh

[AlainGr]

Hi Alain,

Thanks for taking the time with the thoughtful and highly instructive post. In all honesty, I do not know how this build has come to be regarded as a "super powered pc."

If it is indeed a "super powered pc," this was not my intention and the whole thing is a darned mistake. Given how little I know about computers generally, it is not at all the situation I was aiming for. And a mistake of the worse kind, because I have already acquired quite a lot of the parts required for this project. This is what I have bought as things stand:

    2 x E5-2648L v3
    Hynix 64GB DDR4 Ram (4 x 16GB)
    Intel 750 SSD 400GB PCIe NVME, to use as bootable drive for Windows 8 64bit OS and XXHighend
    2 x 300GB Western Digital Velociraptor WD3000BLF 2.5" (SATA 3Gb/s)

I am planning to add these parts:
  
    Supermicro X10DAC motherboard or Supermicro X10DAX based on what Peter has said above
    Silverstone EC04-P PCI Express Card
    Palit Geforce GTX 750 ti Kalmx
    Samsung 256GB PCIe ACHI SSD to use for Galleries

I imagine it is never really too late and I could always just leave out the Supermicro board, use only some of the RAM and go for something simpler.

But Alain, I thought the idea of having two cpus, which are both low powered and have 12 cores each, made a lot of sense (the CPUs are rated at 75W each, half of what many here are using). I never intended using Windows Server OS but rather Windows 8 64bit that I thought most people over here use. I did not know that the RAM could be too much, I had read in a thread somewhere that Peter worked out for high resolution and upsampled music one would be looking at 24GB and Juan also seemed to have added to his Ram to get to 24GB. I thought 32Gb was fine but because I had two CPUs, I thought let me make sure each CPU can access 32Gb...Maybe the reasoning above is "rubbish," using Peter's helpful terminology , but that's where my thinking got me.

I clearly have a choice. Rethink the whole thing and go for a single processor motherboard or since I have advanced so far, bite the bullet and see what comes out of it.

What would be great would be if I could meet someone who has bought Peter's XXHighend's PC that I could listen to so I would have a benchmark and could then see just how much I have messed it up. So if you Alain are not too far, and you do not mind, please let me know and I could come and listen to your system if not too inconvenient...It is about time I get to listen to someone's well settled Phasure NOS1/1a + XXHighend PC system. I will bring along a nice bottle of wine for your effort. I am in SE England and often in Alsace in France where my family lives...

Best regards
Rakesh

Hi Rakesh,

I live in Canada, a little far from where you live Maybe someone else will raise his hand and offer the hospitality ?

Since you already have the parts, I would probably "bite the bullet" too I won't say that I am not curious about the results that will emanate from your choices. Peter may remember that some years ago, when I was about to have a dedicated PC for XXHighEnd, I mentioned "a server motherboard and a xeon processor". At the time, it seemed to me that this kind of PC would be simpler for the task. I finally settled for the Intel 3930k i7 but alas I bought an Asus Sabertooth X79 mobo and I can't get my CPU lower than 1.3ghz... When I see that Peter can go a lot lower than this... Grrrr Alain

I also understand that you have at least thoroughly studied the components and have done a lot of reading through the different threads. Somehow you have done your homework and there is nothing negative with that.

My word of advice would be like this: do not put too much stuff in your PC. Keep it simple. Raid ? No need for that. Each thing that you add is taking power and adding another variable. If I understand correctly, you may have 4 drives in your PC ?

My music PC even has its system disk in an external enclosure. This was for personal reasons but I will not require that anymore soon. The music drive is a silent 4TB drive connected on another PC (my "all purpose PC" -> older), the 2 PCs connected with a direct LAN connection. No monitor, no keyboard, no mouse is connected to the music PC (only when needed). I access the music PC from my all purpose PC through the Remote Desktop Connection (RDC). For the moment it is not the perfect combination since I don't have the NOS1 upgraded to the "a" version but it is also a future project for me too

The reason I don't need more than 2 drives has a lot to do with my habits. I do not use pics and graphics (no gallery) and I also play only a few songs at a time, so the music drive does not need to be very fast. I also have my songs in WAV format (no FLAC) so no conversion is necessary.

You will need to have a backup strategy to not lose all you will rip (and download), but for the moment it is a little too early for this

Keep on ok ?

Regards,

Alain

[Robert]

Rakesh, I've just made a dedicated PC look at my details. It was expensive for me to get Peter's dedicated PC all the way from Holland to New Zealand.

I went for the i7 4790k 4Ghz 8MB LGA1150, Corsair 16gb Ram, Corsair AX760i power supply, ASUS Z97-A motherboard. Its totally dedicated to audio. I havn't even played with Bios settings yet or XXhighend settings.
 
Well all I can say is wow!!! compared to my i3 laptop it is no comparison. When I push the on button the screen is ready to go almost instantly. And the music is massively improved in every respect.

Not having heard Peter's either I would state mine is a minimum to consider. One thing is, different manufactured computer components do sound different, some better, some worse. Unfortunately unless one has access to all these to try you just have to run with what you choose. 
There is a member of this community who is dedicated to making PC's for better sound(Chronos) based in UK, Nick and like all good things this comes at a price.

Robert

[PeterSt]

There must be a small misunderstanding at hand.
I now see that the Asus (!) Geforce 210 also exists in fanned version (or has existed ?) but this is "ours" (see below).

Obtain it in the lowest amount of memory version (which is 1GB these days - was 500MB).

Peter

[rakeshpoorun]

Hi Rakesh,

...

I have to say that for a terrified person aiming at the perfect PC to build, you seem quite adventurous in looking for a super powered PC.

Regards,

Alain

Hi Alain,

Thanks for the long response. While I doubt that my proposed build should be called either a "perfect pc" or a "super powered pc," I am delighted that this thread has given me an opportunity to read about your own current Music PC, and some of the reasons behind your implementation.

If I understand correctly, your Music PC actually comprises 4 distinct areas, as follows:

1. A motherboard with just the processor and memory
2. A separate "pc" or external enclosure that contains your
system disk
3. A Control Centre pc which is your access point to everything over a LAN
4. A separate enclosure for your music files

This sounds like quite a significant attempt at making sure there are as you say the least number of variables that affect the playback of your music files.

Can I ask whether you arrived at this solution incrementally or whether this was the "design brief" from the beginning?

If the solution was arrived at incrementally, I imagine, if you do not mind, you might explain the iterations you went through, how the different decisions affected the sound quality and ultimately what brought the greatest sonic benefits, what brought the least, or none at all, and maybe if there is anything you might have done differently based on these experiences. I am taking a liberty here I realise because in this thread which is supposed to be about my build, my questions, I am asking you questions about your system. But I think it might be of huge interest to anyone starting out like me to know what ultimately made you go for the choices that you made. I certainly would be fascinated to know how and what motivated the different stages of your Music PC journey and how you evaluate the results of decisions you took and implemented.

My word of advice would be like this: do not put too much stuff in your PC. Keep it simple. Raid ? No need for that. Each thing that you add is taking power and adding another variable.

...
Alain

It is true that the evolution of music playback systems has always followed that trend. We have a source, a pre-amp, an amplifier, the speakers and no one in their right mind would question these distinctions which follow the distinct and separate functions of various parts of our playback system. This is also the main objection I have against all-in-one solutions like Devialet's and others which try to incorporate too many functionalities in a single box. It does seem to be currently the trendy thing to do and I think there may be some good that comes out of it (like Peter's solution which seemingly takes a more holistic view on integrating the different parts of the playback chain in a more coherent whole which might be ultimately be better than the sum of the parts because of the synergy between the different elements).

So I understand the decision to have your playback motherboard with only the processor, ram (and I imagine your Silverstone EC04-P card must be located in a PCIe slot on this motherboard). So the Playback side is reduced to its bare minimum and separated from everything else, whether it be storage or system disks? This is a very purist approach indeed and fits in with your objective which is to make sure that there are no external demands being made on the generally acknowledged "dirty" PC power supply.

It seems to me that this is probably the most important design decision you made in your Music PC. If there is one aspect of your Music PC that I would like to be able to afford to implement, assuming I had a clear understanding of how to implement it, this is the one I would go for.



[/quote]

My music PC even has its system disk in an external enclosure. This was for personal reasons but I will not require that anymore soon.
...
Alain

Alain, if the Playback "heart" of your PC is completely devoid of these, if I may put it that way, "harmful" or extraneous variables, is it not simpler to keep your system disk on or connected to the motherboard of the other "Control Centre PC?" I imagine that it can (in theory but then I have no deep understanding of the theory here admittedly) make no difference since the processing is all taking place in the "Music PC?" And how come you will not even have that soon? Surely a system disk is an inevitable part of any pc, unless you mean to keep it in ram somehow (use of a battery?) but this sounds very extreme...


[/quote]

The music drive is a silent 4TB drive connected on another PC (my "all purpose PC" -> older)

...

Alain

I imagine that my thinking about the external OS system disk applies here as well. Having said that given that the music files are read from the hard drive, maybe a slightly different thinking applies here. In other words, give the music files storage a chance to do their work as correctly as possible in isolation without the power contamination/electronic noise/vibrations(?) that may originate from the "Control Centre PC." Is this the reason for this choice? And if you moved the hard drive from an internal location, did you notice a difference in sound after?




[/quote]

the 2 PCs connected with a direct LAN connection.

...

Alain

If you have your OS disk on a separate motherboard, then of course it needs to be over a LAN. Is there a minimum throughput of data transfer that one should aim for in a LAN? This is a rather important question if one is thinking ahead in selecting the motherboard as most of these come with some form of inbuilt LAN, going from what I understand to be the run of the mill versions to 2Gbe, 4Gbe and 10Gbase-T...




[/quote]

I access the music PC from my all purpose PC through the Remote Desktop Connection (RDC).

...

Alain

It appears that you have a highly differentiated system which is paradoxically also a very minimalist one (lack of Galleries for instance). This is very extreme. I really would like the convenience of controlling everything from a tablet. Is this something you have considered and rejected because of the difficulty or it is just not important to you?

Alain, I am sorry about having gone through your system in this way but there are so many of your design decisions which are very interesting to me. I think I understand the reasoning for most of them but apart from the first one, I am not too sure whether I would have opted for any of the others until I have had a lot more experience with a "basic" system as I can conceive it at the moment. The idea of a "headless" motherboard with just the CPUs and memory I find fascinating and tempting but it does make my head spin as well...


Thanks for that enlightening description of your Music PC!

Best regards
Rakesh

[rakeshpoorun]

On the basis there is no need for a separate SSD for the playback drive?

...Something else :
Best thing (SQ) is to have as few as possible in the audio PC, not as much as possible ...
This is how you may end up with two PC's in the end. One that plays the music and one that holds all the music, including Galleries.

Regards,
Peter

Peter, I like your advice but would like your thoughts on the following, if that is not too much trouble.

I would like to think ahead slightly and achieve the solution you have described there over time. But it does require thinking ahead to that eventuality. I imagine these could be the stages one goes through in order to achieve the above incrementally over the course of time, say a year:

STAGE ONE

  1. Build a Playback PC. Dual CPU motherboard with 2 ssds, SSD1 for Windows OS/XXHighend and SSD2 for Galleries, 3 hard drives for music and back-up.

STAGE TWO

   2. Build a Control PC. Add single CPU motherboard. SSD2 and hard drives from Playback PC migrate to this. The two PCs are connected over a LAN.

STAGE THREE

    3.  Build a Remote Enabler PC. Connect Control PC to this other simpler PC with Wi-fi. Now everything can be controlled from a tablet via Remote Desktop. (Maybe there is a simpler way of achieving this?)

Peter, if you are wondering, yes, there is a question there somewhere for you. Does this make sense? Are there specific criteria one should keep in mind when going through STAGE ONE knowing that STAGES TWO and THREE will follow in due course? I have some of my own thoughts on this but would appreciate your views, and those of anyone who maybe have some experience running such a configuration now or are planning to at some point in the future.
   

All what's left is the OS Disk, which in the end can also be something different, but never mind.

...
Regards,
Peter

Peter, I am not too sure what you mean by this.

I have discussed this idea with a couple of people who build and configure servers/workstations. They seem to say that the system disks cannot be on a separate PC. One mentioned that potentially it might be in Satadom but it looks like one cannot run a PC with OS in a separate PC over a LAN network. This is a similar point to the one made by Alain earlier, I suspect. If one were to offload the OS disk (that would contain XXHighend as well I imagine) in an external enclosure, how would this be done? What would be the connection between this and the Playback PC? Would it require the use of a PCIe card "extender" and the SSD drive would then be in that external enclosure? I am just trying to understand the ideas you have mentioned. Coming from you, I am sure you have tried it and it provides some clear benefits. Peter, would you mind explaining your thoughts here?

Best regards
Rakesh

[AlainGr]

Hi Rakesh,

Sorry for the delay... Many questions and in the meantime many things happening here... Suddenly days are getting shorter

First allow me to tell you that most (if not all) of what I did with the PC comes from Peter and our fellow audiophiles. Sharing our discoveries, then having them analyzed and/or tested by Peter really helped me to implement aspects of what I listen to today.

Most of the things (they are not many) I did that are not documented here because I don't really think they could be considered really useful SQ wise.

The external OS drive I use is connected to the music PC motherboard with an Esata connection ("External" sata). For the sake of the understanding, I shall say that it is the same as if it was installed inside the music PC, but it is connected with a longer cable. SQ wise, it is not the ideal, but at the time, it was practical for me to have it that way. Like I mentioned before, I could now remove it from its external enclosure and put it back inside the music PC.

"Incremental improvements" are of two natures: the ones that I can't really hear (but I have confidence in the persons that say it is worthwhile) and those from which I perceived some improvements. There are not many, since XXHighEnd takes care of so many aspects of the computer. There may be some that will come out through time, but it does not prevent you from building your computer as you actually see it. These incremental tweaks can be added later.

Since you know people you trust and you take some advice here and there, you know that our perceptions will be biased by what we will hear from them and the amount of trust you put ni them. When I chose to listen to Peter (I know he would like that I listen more haha), I never regretted it. There may be some aspects I prefer not to go as far as he does, but that has nothing to do with distrust. It has more to do with personal needs, limitations, finances and what I consider ractical.

As I previously wrote, the simpler and less loaded the PC, the better. I learned it here. Some put their music drive(s) inside the computer, some put them outside. It is again a matter of practicality. There are "plus" and "minus" to this. All depends on the level at which you you want to go. An external hard drive may be driven with USB or an Esata cable. What I like to think for example is that Esata could be better because it does not have to be converted from USB to Sata inside an external enclosure. But an external enclosure requires a longer cable.

The best is to test it yourself, since your ears will always be the final judge.

As for galleries, it is a personal choice. I never really attached importance to this aspect of things. Some people can spend a great deal of time in tagging their music files (the origin, date the album was issued, some info that brings interest to that recording, people involved, genre, etc...), looking for album covers. I do now, but in the beginning, all I wanted was to rip my CDs.

The same applies for a tablet that I could use to access the Control PC. I tried a few times and will eventually come back to it someday, but for the moment I do not feel it necessary for my personal usage.

Not having a permanent keyboard, mouse and screen is yet another matter of practicality for me. The music PC is located at a place where it would be troublesome for me to install these peripherals permanently. I use Remote Desktop Connection instead, knowing that in doing so it may affect SQ (this with the NOS1, not with the NOS1a). But I also know that having these peripherals connected may affect SQ, depending on their usage, if I apply "unattended", if I shut all services or not, etc... So you may need to make your own comparisons for your convenience, ease of use, SQ vs practicality...

While I like to understand what happens "under the hood", I do not dig far to reach all the details. As I grow older, there are aspects that are of less interest for me, so I tend to try sometimes or I simply apply something with trust to the person that suggested it. I have my own personal biased tastes also - this will always influence me of course.

You may eventually read other themes around a PC, but you have yet to build your computer and have it working

Sorry if I did not follow the path of your questions. Please feel free to ask if I missed something. I am also aware that I can be vague in my answers, but when it will come to aspects I have omitted for the moment, I will answer the ones I am more involved and knowledgeable. When time will come

Finally, about the OS being installed on a "distant" PC, like the music disk... Peter will be better than me about this, but from my inquiries and research, the conclusion was that the requirements were cumbersome. It would bring more questions and unexpected situations than benefits. This also requires a Control PC that would have a Server OS (I think), so more expensive, licenses to pay for, a "hit and miss" for many of us also and maybe too frustrating to be of real value.

Maybe some day there will be an "empty" PC without any disk, taking its software from distance, but for the time being, we already have a wonderful journey to continue

Again, sorry for the delay...

Regards,

Alain

[rakeshpoorun]

Hi Rakesh,

Sorry for the delay... Many questions and in the meantime many things happening here... Suddenly days are getting shorter

First allow me to tell you that most (if not all) of what I did with the PC comes from Peter and our fellow audiophiles. Sharing our discoveries, then having them analyzed and/or tested by Peter really helped me to implement aspects of what I listen to today.

Most of the things (they are not many) I did that are not documented here because I don't really think they could be considered really useful SQ wise.

Hi Alain,

No worries about the delay, I have had a long week myself. It seems to me that clearly we have here some areas of agreement that come from the collective effort of forum members, who especially try to pay attention to Peter's guidance and advice. I have learnt a lot from reading the different threads myself and my attempt should in fact be regarded in some ways as my own, albeit misguided, interpretation of what should be done in order to minimise the effects of all "external" (the tragedy being that they are really unavoidably internal) factors on the playback chain from data to analogue output.

"Incremental improvements" are of two natures: the ones that I can't really hear (but I have confidence in the persons that say it is worthwhile) and those from which I perceived some improvements. There are not many, since XXHighEnd takes care of so many aspects of the computer. There may be some that will come out through time, but it does not prevent you from building your computer as you actually see it. These incremental tweaks can be added later...

The best is to test it yourself, since your ears will always be the final judge...

You may eventually read other themes around a PC, but you have yet to build your computer and have it working

In a way, I went too fast. I should have used a "normal pc," and then carried out changes one step at a time and see what happens. Well it is too late for that now. But with hindsight, I would now go for a simple low-powered system like the recently launched Supermicro Sys-5028D-TNT4, a small but powerful pc based on the low-powered Xeon Broadwell 8-cores processor. I think it is ideal if one wants a low cost off-the-shelf solution.

http://www.supermicro.co.uk/products/system/midtower/5028/SYS-5028D-TN4T.cfm

Finally, about the OS being installed on a "distant" PC, like the music disk... Peter will be better than me about this, but from my inquiries and research, the conclusion was that the requirements were cumbersome. It would bring more questions and unexpected situations than benefits. This also requires a Control PC that would have a Server OS (I think), so more expensive, licenses to pay for, a "hit and miss" for many of us also and maybe too frustrating to be of real value.

Maybe some day there will be an "empty" PC without any disk, taking its software from distance, but for the time being, we already have a wonderful journey to continue

...
Alain

For the sake of those who are interested in such things, and whilst I may be completely wrong, placing the OS disk outside of the main motherboard is very hard if not impossible to achieve under Windows 8 Pro. One could use an external PCIe slot enclosure but it is really too much hassle.

The solution may be using the new PCIe NVME ssd that I will be using. An alternative would be to use the Satadom or even better the proprietary version used by Supermicro that they call Superdom. It comes in 16GB, 32GB or 64GB capacity and consumes a minuscule 1w or so in the X10 motherboard where it draws power directly from the Superdom socket and does not need the additional 3-5w it needs in other versions and earlier Supermicro motherboards. Used in the latest X10 Supermicro motherboards this is, on paper at least, a promising and beautiful solution especially when one realises that some of these motherboards have two of these (so the OS can be mirrored), so that the second one could be used for Galleries.

http://www.supermicro.co.uk/products/nfo/SATADOM.cfm

[/quote]

The best is to test it yourself, since your ears will always be the final judge.


Regards,

Alain

I agree. But I am not in a position to do that just yet. In truth, events beyond my control mean that a vital part of the acoustic system I ordered months ago has been delayed and it looks like it may be June/July before it is ready, a horrendously bad time because I go away for a long summer vacation with my family as I see so little of them in these spring/early summer months...

Best regards
Rakesh

[AlainGr]

Hi Rakesh,

Thanks for the feedback I am at least sure about one thing: you are making your homework

For the moment, I am not thinking about changing my motherboard, but I still find the "server" aspect of things interesting

And yes, family is more important than everything

Regards,

Alain