Saturday, January 4, 2014

Requirements for Audio PC


Been doing some research lately on what it takes to build a truly silent motionless PC for audio playback.  For now this is just a collection of thoughts.

Requirements:
  • 100% Silent
  • Low TPD CPU
  • Off-board USB
  • Pico PSU so that transformer is away from case
  • SSD for operating system
  • JRMC 19
  • Min 8gb memory
Notes:
  1. JRMC can run in 64 bit mode so Win7/64 or greater OS.
  2. 8gb is more than enough memory for JRMC 19
  3. JRMC cannot use virtual cores so a Quad-core i5 is the max processor 
  4. The lower the TPD the less chance of heat and distortion
  5. A SATA 3.0 cable is a must as it separates cables within cable
  6. Samsung 840PRO seems to be the fastest SSD available
  7. The Paul Peng $300 USB card (Link) uses the NEC uPD720202 chip.  A similar board is avail thru Newegg for $20.  It appears as though you could build a Molex to battery pack to power it separately.(Link)
  8. Any necessary connectors are avail from FrozenCPU.com (Link)
  9. Portatech is a good resource for checking prices and relative processor speed.
  10.  The quad-core haswell processors can run as low as 65w with all four cores running (Link)
  11. L3 cache is the most important memory for real time audio playback.
  12. Investigate using something like ERS cloth (Link) to absorb EMI inside the case.  Considering this is basically metal tape then I wonder if something like aluminum foil tape or furnace tape could do a similar job.  The only way to know for certain is with an EMI meter.


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