PC motherboard upgrade

[acg]

From the info Peter has corresponded to me whilst building my xx pc, I don't think that reducing the active cores will be a beneficial experience.  But consider this: a 6 core like the i7-3930K can hyperthread to 12 whereas the 8 core Xeon will hyperthread to 16 giving it much more parallel processing power, lower TDP (measured typical consumption 172W vs 56w) and therefore much less heat to dissipate.  The little Xeon also has 22MB of L2+L3 cache compared to 13.5MB on the i7 which is something from my understanding that is beneficial to XX. 

What I don't know is whether XX can take advantage of all this extra grunt right now.  Perhaps Peter can chime in if he glances at the forum during his holiday.

Anthony   

[Nick]

Anthony hi,

Got it, your Xenon has 8 physical cores, 16 threads and 22mb of cache, it must have been too late for me last night when I read your first post. That's interesting, Peter would know if the extra threads might help XX directly or indirectly by servicing background OS calls  better, but i'm guessing the larger cache might be useful regardless of the effect of the number of threads.

Nick

[boleary]

Hey Nick, I've had the ASRock MB in for a few days and the sound is getting better and better. It certainly now sounds as good as the best I was ever able to achieve with the ASUS board, though I really need to give it more time, and maybe even a switch back to the ASUS at some point, to really have a sense of how much better it may be. One thing that took me some time to adjust to is the difference in the strength of the audio signal: I'm playng tracks about 3 to 4.5 db less than I was playing them with the ASUS. This difference in volume level takes me back to volume levels I used with my old Dell which also had a micro ATX MB.

Unfortunately, I've had very little time for critical listening. Am hoping that will change by next weekend. Will post again with further impressions as things change. One other thing, I am underclocking the processor by 50% and running the memory at 800 mhz along with as many other BIOS tweaks that I could find which were identical to the tweaks I had made with the ASUS.

One sign that "special" things are happening in my listening room was given yesterday: I asked my wife to give the system a quick listen. After a minute or two she turned to me and said the sound was so smooth and life like it felt like an LSD trip! Now I didn't know her back in the 1970's, but i take this as high praise from one who does NOT share my passion for this hobby!

[Nick]

Brian hi,

That is some praise for the sound of your system if your better half is an audiophobe. Never mind drugs, play some music 

I'm pleased the new board is working well. I also had to drop 3db or so from listening levels which I took to be a good thing. It seems like the noise floor is lower with much higher dynamics which brings the perceived loudness back up to asus board levels.

I'm in Chamonix on hols right now so this is from memory. When setting up the asock I found the main sweet spot parameters were the cpu ratio setting memory speed, memory timing and surprisingly memory and cpu voltage.

I have not totally finished playing but it would be good if you could try this and let me know what you think.

Cpu ratio at 24 (a change of +-1 here collapses or sharpens the sound)

Cpu clock frequency at 103

Take the first 5 memory timming settings off auto and and use the speeds  listed on the dimms (this will be timming for the max rated speed of the dimms but since we are setting memory frequency to 800mhz it is slower timings than with auto set. In my case I think the settings are 11, 11, 11, 11 and 30).

EDIT I should also have said that I find running only 2 (not four) memory dimms is important. You can just take two out the mobo sorts it all out automatically.

Then most importantly up the memory voltage by 15% (here that means 1.65 v)

Last put cpu voltage up by 10 to 15 %.

For me this lot gives a significant sweet spot. As I say its still a work in progress. The board took a week or two to run in but worth taking ten mins to try these settings they do really help my system.

Cheers,

Nick.

[boleary]

Thanks Nick. Will give those settings a try as time permits. As the ASRock X79 Extreme 4M is the one Peter is using in his custom PC's, am very much looking forward to a forum thread about Bios settings. Peter? 

[boleary]

After listening to the ASRock Extreme 4-M for the last 3 weeks, it seemed like it was time to post final impressions. So, yesterday morning I started this post,  but as I wrote I began to feel less and less confidant in my impressions. Weren't there times that the ASUS sounded every bit as good as the ASRock? Aren't there folks here, other than Mani and Nick, who went the ASUS route based on our collective use of this very expensive board? What if it's just placebo-- drinking the Nick cool-aide--and now, by "preferring" the ASRock, I might influence others to foolishly spend more money. So I stopped writing and spent the better part of the day swapping out MB's, CPU and thermal paste.....

Boy am I glad I did it. With real confidence I can say that the ASRock is a very significant step up in SQ. To quote Nick's first post in this thread, "there was confusion, digital hash and hardness" with the ASUS, and, regarding the ASROCK, " I know this is a well worn statement but the change in sound is fundamental  EVERYTHING has changed, even more so than when a Seasonic supply was fitted. It may or may not be relevant to the change in sound that the new motherboard has reduced the amplitude of noise traces taken at the output of my DAC by about 70%." I'd bet that the reduction of noise traces is certainly relevant. Again, thanks Nick. Mani, I think you may want to dust off that Zalman case.

One possible issue with the ASROCK that may be of concern is heat if you are going fan-less. When I first installed the ASROCK I had the case turned upside down so I could mount the seasonic on the bottom where it could properly vent. Doing so caused the MB to run about ten degrees (Celsius) hotter, around 50 degrees, than the ASUS board had ever run. Concerned about that I used an external fan with the PC case left open to keep everything cool. After some googling, I turned the case right side up and removed the PS, setting it up on some rubber/cork isoblocks right next to the PC (this is a great free tweak, talk about articulation and clarity!) Anyway, set right side up, the MB temp dropped by 6 to 10 degrees; however the ASROCK BIOS gives three temp readings: CPU, MB, and SB. I don't know what the SB stands for, but turning the case right side up didn't help "SB" to run cooler; with no fan it has remained between 48 and 50. I can't find anything about SB temps and am hoping someone here can advise? I emailed ASROCK support two weeks ago and never received a reply. My CPU runs between 38 and 40 and the MB between 40 and 43 with no fans (water cooled cpu). Is a 50 degree SB temp too hot?

I think it was Paul who recently said that given all of his recent changes, it will take several months to be able to fine tune his system. I feel the same way, but at least I know which MB will be listed on EBay this week. Nick, I feel like I can now begin to apply your BIOS tweaks. Will post results as time permits.
 
 

[manisandher]

Hey Brian, thanks for taking the time out to look at this so thoroughly. I've earmarked a day next week to swap the Asus out for the ASRock. Will let you know what I think once I've had a chance to do this.

Just a quick question. Which USB port are you using for the NOS1? On Friday I did a bit of playing around and found that the ASUS mobo USB3 port was much better than the USB3 PCIe card I'd been using. Using a PS/2 connection for both the keyboard and mouse, just a single USB3 for the NOS1, and disabling all other USB2/3 ports gave me a really nice sound.

Cheers, Mani.

[AlainGr]

Hi Brian,

I think that SB stands for Southbridge (or south bridge). If so, you can see more about it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southbridge_%28computing%29

Regards,

Alain

[PeterSt]

South Bridge ...

[PeterSt]

Beaten again bij Alain ...

And notice that this small fan is for that (can also be given a "tune" in the BIOS and Xtreme Tuning Facility).

Peter

[AlainGr]

Well you could swap the 2 posts

[Nick]

Brian hi,

There is always a desire to share experiences but I'm always worried by doing so it may encouage others may invest and the outcome is not so nice. So I'm really pleased and more than a little relieved that you have found the ASRock board to be so good. After a month or so of using the board I'm still really enjoying it as well 

Regarding settings, I don't understand quite why but when I came back of holiday I spent more time on the BIOS settings and there are slightly different now, so I'm not sure that those posted may give the best possible results. The settings that do seem to help are clock ratio at 24, memory frequency at 800mhz and memory voltage up a little to 1.6 to 1.65v. I'll post more if I get to a definite set of values.

Anyway really please again to hear that it's gone so well.


Mani hi,

Just a quick question. Which USB port are you using for the NOS1? On Friday I did a bit of playing around and found that the ASUS mobo USB3 port was much better than the USB3 PCIe card I'd been using. Using a PS/2 connection for both the keyboard and mouse, just a single USB3 for the NOS1, and disabling all other USB2/3 ports gave me a really nice sound.

On my ASUS I tried mobo and PCIe USB ports and the settings that you have above re ps/2 connections and USB turned off. The settings also helped to give the best sound from the ASUS board here as well. Even with these settings applied to the ASUS the ASRock was I very big step forwards at least in my system. It should be fun to swap out the board this week and take a listen. Fingers crossed here that you get a positive result.

Regards,

Nick.

[Scroobius]

Hey Nick,

I guess we are going to have to compare our PC's again at some time. Or is that a bad idea? - really we have to hope they sound similar now and that your previous mobo was a rogue type.

Paul

[Nick]

I guess we are going to have to compare our PC's again at some time. Or is that a bad idea? - really we have to hope they sound similar now and that your previous mobo was a rogue type.

Paul hi,

Comparing the PCs again would be fun. I still believe your X58 Asus setup to be a real sweet spot setup. I am really pleased with sound quality here at last though and I hope that our PCs will be much more comparable than they were when we tried this with my Asus X79 board !


Best,

Nick.

[manisandher]

Nick, Brian, (or anyone else who may have an opinion),

I'm ready to go ahead and replace my Asus mobo with the ASRock mobo. A quick question beforehand though:

Did you find that you could use the same HDD/Win8 install or did you create a new HDD/Win8 install for the new mobo. The former would be great, the latter a right royal PITA.

Now just let me know...

Cheers, Mani.