My pleasure Nick. If you come up with any particular tweaks for the mobo let me know.
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
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”
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.
Notes1) 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
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.