In a previous post I mentioned and showed the music server parts that were delivered last Thursday. This Friday I took a day off from work to build and configure the server.
This all went very well and things fortunately worked at first power-up, so no DOA's or other issues!
Unfortunately I forgot the make pictures of the process but it's actually all very straghtforward and Streacom (another Dutch company, like Spectral) provides an excellent and detailed printed manual with the case. (http://www.streacom.com/file/fc8_alpha.pdf) It details the build process, which exact screws to use where etc. Anyone who doesn't have two left hands can do it! 
The trickiest part (I build a Streacom FC-5 system before too), which could end up very messy too is the part after where you apply the heat paste/grease to the four heat pipes and attach these pipes to the CPU and case. This requires some adjustments to make it all fit so if you're not careful you'll end up with heat paste (nasty stuff which stains like hell and is very hard to remove because of the very small (nano?) particles in the grease) everywhere! The question always arises did I use too much or too little, I think I and other people tend to use too much which is not helping at all. Though not perfect I was happy with the result.
The tiny Intel i210-T1 network card:
I forgot the make a picture of the system after I completed it but there's little inside the system besides what is show. I removed the black USB cables and only added the SSD on the drive tray, SATA signal and power cables.
General comments, this stuff is small. I'm used to working with ATX and microATX components but this thin mini ITX really is tiny! NUC stuff of course is even smaller.
Build quality of the Streacom cases is high. Perhaps not as good as HDPlex but very good nonetheless. It all fit like a glove and felt quite solid.
---
Fortunately I had not yet siold my HDPlex 100W 12/19V PSU so I could use that to power the system while setting it up in my office/study room.
While building the machine I mirrored the contents of the 1TB NAS SSD to a 500GB one. The 500GB is now in the NAS PC (which was my Roon/music server before) and the 1TB is in the new music server. Since nothing changed software wise for the NAS PC it booted fine from the 500GB SSD. I latery merely tuned it down (in OS and BIOS) for maximum power savings.
I thought I was forced to reinstall the operating systems on the disk that went into the music server but hoped this wasn't necessary and surprisingly it wasn't. Thank you Microsoft, you usually dissapoint me!
Both the Server 2012 R2 and Windows 10 Pro partitions recognized, installed and configured most new hardware. For some I had to install drivers but after that it simply worked. Roon hasn't even noticed it now runs in a new machine!
Over time I'll experiment more with the different settings in the BIOS surround CPU settings, power saving etc. For audiophile purposes these can matter. In general too much power saving tends to be not good for SQ, one want frequencies and power usage to be stable as much as possible. So no turbo speeds, dynamic CPU speeds etc.
For now I disabled any device I don't need in the BIOS (e.g. the onboard sound card) and I've made the usual audiophile related settings in the BIOS so disabled the different C-states, EIST, Speed Shift, turbo speeds etc. The CPU runs on it's stock 2.8GHz now, though I could configure it anywhere between 800 - 3400MHz.
One thing I wasn't happy about is that I noticed the BCLK (the base clock which the CPU, GPU, memory use as a base clock) fluctuates. This, no doubt is because of 'spread spectrum' functionality which deliberately fluctuates to clock to lower emissions. Unfortunately there's no setting in the BIOS to disable it. I'm used to more high end boards used by gamers/overclockers and these have BIOS's which are much more customizable than this embedded type of mainboard. Anyway, perhaps the lower EMI/RFI emissions it's a good thing and with Skylake Intel first separated the BCLK from the PCIE clock so perhaps it doesn't influence these subsystems too much which may be bad for jitter output. It does seem silly though to replace clocks which are deliberately fluctuating +-5MHz all the time. No conclusions yet, this is a difficult subject, I need to dive in it more...
After boot up and appying AO and some additional manual tuning this is the result. Only 25 processes running (without Roon itself)
Now how does it sound? I'll need to be careful because the last time I had everything powered down and up things sounded different than after some settling time. This time each and every device and cable has been touched (cleaned and moved) are in different positions so it'll probably need some settling time again but my first impressions were very positive, better than I expected! And rest assured I myself dislike people who always report huge improvements, even after the tiniest things/changes.
I'll detail on my impressions later after I had much more listening time but the one thing that really and clearly stood out was that things sounded more stable and solid, both in sound staging as tonally. Also a bit more relaxed. All jitter related things I guess.
To be continued!
This all went very well and things fortunately worked at first power-up, so no DOA's or other issues!
Unfortunately I forgot the make pictures of the process but it's actually all very straghtforward and Streacom (another Dutch company, like Spectral) provides an excellent and detailed printed manual with the case. (http://www.streacom.com/file/fc8_alpha.pdf) It details the build process, which exact screws to use where etc. Anyone who doesn't have two left hands can do it! The trickiest part (I build a Streacom FC-5 system before too), which could end up very messy too is the part after where you apply the heat paste/grease to the four heat pipes and attach these pipes to the CPU and case. This requires some adjustments to make it all fit so if you're not careful you'll end up with heat paste (nasty stuff which stains like hell and is very hard to remove because of the very small (nano?) particles in the grease) everywhere! The question always arises did I use too much or too little, I think I and other people tend to use too much which is not helping at all. Though not perfect I was happy with the result.
The tiny Intel i210-T1 network card:
I forgot the make a picture of the system after I completed it but there's little inside the system besides what is show. I removed the black USB cables and only added the SSD on the drive tray, SATA signal and power cables.
General comments, this stuff is small. I'm used to working with ATX and microATX components but this thin mini ITX really is tiny! NUC stuff of course is even smaller.
Build quality of the Streacom cases is high. Perhaps not as good as HDPlex but very good nonetheless. It all fit like a glove and felt quite solid.
---
Fortunately I had not yet siold my HDPlex 100W 12/19V PSU so I could use that to power the system while setting it up in my office/study room.
While building the machine I mirrored the contents of the 1TB NAS SSD to a 500GB one. The 500GB is now in the NAS PC (which was my Roon/music server before) and the 1TB is in the new music server. Since nothing changed software wise for the NAS PC it booted fine from the 500GB SSD. I latery merely tuned it down (in OS and BIOS) for maximum power savings.
I thought I was forced to reinstall the operating systems on the disk that went into the music server but hoped this wasn't necessary and surprisingly it wasn't. Thank you Microsoft, you usually dissapoint me!
Both the Server 2012 R2 and Windows 10 Pro partitions recognized, installed and configured most new hardware. For some I had to install drivers but after that it simply worked. Roon hasn't even noticed it now runs in a new machine! Over time I'll experiment more with the different settings in the BIOS surround CPU settings, power saving etc. For audiophile purposes these can matter. In general too much power saving tends to be not good for SQ, one want frequencies and power usage to be stable as much as possible. So no turbo speeds, dynamic CPU speeds etc.
For now I disabled any device I don't need in the BIOS (e.g. the onboard sound card) and I've made the usual audiophile related settings in the BIOS so disabled the different C-states, EIST, Speed Shift, turbo speeds etc. The CPU runs on it's stock 2.8GHz now, though I could configure it anywhere between 800 - 3400MHz.
One thing I wasn't happy about is that I noticed the BCLK (the base clock which the CPU, GPU, memory use as a base clock) fluctuates. This, no doubt is because of 'spread spectrum' functionality which deliberately fluctuates to clock to lower emissions. Unfortunately there's no setting in the BIOS to disable it. I'm used to more high end boards used by gamers/overclockers and these have BIOS's which are much more customizable than this embedded type of mainboard. Anyway, perhaps the lower EMI/RFI emissions it's a good thing and with Skylake Intel first separated the BCLK from the PCIE clock so perhaps it doesn't influence these subsystems too much which may be bad for jitter output. It does seem silly though to replace clocks which are deliberately fluctuating +-5MHz all the time. No conclusions yet, this is a difficult subject, I need to dive in it more...
After boot up and appying AO and some additional manual tuning this is the result. Only 25 processes running (without Roon itself)
Now how does it sound? I'll need to be careful because the last time I had everything powered down and up things sounded different than after some settling time. This time each and every device and cable has been touched (cleaned and moved) are in different positions so it'll probably need some settling time again but my first impressions were very positive, better than I expected! And rest assured I myself dislike people who always report huge improvements, even after the tiniest things/changes.
I'll detail on my impressions later after I had much more listening time but the one thing that really and clearly stood out was that things sounded more stable and solid, both in sound staging as tonally. Also a bit more relaxed. All jitter related things I guess.
To be continued!
PS Audio P3, Shunyata ΞTRON Alpha Digital and HC/Furutech power cables, Paul Hynes SR7EHD-MR4, DIY Roon Server & Roon Endpoint running AudioLinux Headless, Phasure Lush^2 USB cable, Audioquest Diamond RJ/E ethernet, Uptone Audio etherREGEN, Mutec MC-3+ USB, Shunyata ΞTRON Anaconda Digital XLR AES/EBU, Devialet Expert 250 Pro CI, Nordost Tyr Reference LS cables, Von Schweikert VR-5 SE Anniversary Edition, Anti-Mode Dual Core 2.0, JL Audio Fathom F112. More detail here.
The Netherlands
The Netherlands
