I also like to keep the Core some distance away from the listening room. Initially I had a Gigabyte BRIX (now running as a MOCK in a second system), but I wanted more storage. Once I realised that size and noise weren’t factors where the server would be, I opted for a larger water-cooled AIO push-pull fan setup. Runs about 40-50° C.
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poly-sinc-ext2
andybob:
Ext2
I will give this a go then! Thanks.
What did you like about this filter? I tried last night and seemed good. More testing needed I think.
Its probably more often sitting around 50c but I do take your point. I did look around for a fanless case at one point but no-one was producing for this NUC, NUC7I7BNH. I have looked, but will look again, does anyone know of custom cooling for this NUC? I could change the thermal compound and check for dust. I also wonder whether I should head into the bios and put a more aggressive fan speed, although that will mean pulling the NUC and bringing it downstairs to add a keyboard, monitor, etc.
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Not that I know of. Roon had to do a lot of work on passive cooling of this same NUC model for Nucleus Plus… it’s a NUC7i7BNH inside.
Akasa had one but then pulled it.
The later (and more powerful) i7 NUC models were a bit easier to cool and have an Akasa fanless case.
This fanless i9-9900K (Airtop3) powerhouse looks cool… a bit pricey though!
Wow, just a bit! I think if I was to build again, I would just build a PC and stick water cooling on it as @andybob has done. I would re-house the NUC innards if I could find a case that would do the job. I will try the more aggressive cooling later!
Incidentally, today is warm in the UK, so keeping an eye on temps. Listening in my office (to The Beta Band - I missed them mostly the first time around), upscaling to PCM 176kHz and the NUC is sitting at 42C. Its the HQ Player and DSD 256 which pushes things!
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Yep PCM up-sampling is p!$$ easy (relatively speaking).
I have a little Intel Atom CPU (LattePanda SBC) that can up-sample to PCM768kHz without breaking a sweat.
Yes, true!
A bit of an update; I have put a more aggressive cooling profile onto the NUC as the fan noise doesn’t really effect anyone as the cupboard where it is situated is in the spare room. I am currently using poly-sinc-ext2, DSD 7 256+fs before upscaling to 44.1k x256. Firstly, it sounds good, I still need to listen more however in terms of temps the NUC is sitting between 60c - 70c with a 10% load, so an improvement. Is the poly-sinc-ext2 less intensive that the Poly-sinc-xtr-mp-2s?
Interestingly when using CPU ID and then HW Monitor on the NUC I noticed it was a NUC7i7BNB where I purchased a NUC i7BNH, which died last year and Intel replaced under warranty. I don’t think it makes much difference but good to know!
I also got in touch with Thierry over at Home Audio Fidelity again to ask why I had been given 176kHz files, and in the end Thierry, very kindly, sent futher wav’s over in 352.8kHz, so I have reloaded these and plan to have a listen now.
So, back to the filters…
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Choice of filters is all about trade offs.
I generally prefer longer filters with a sharp deep bandwidth rejection. I believe this preserves spatial cues better than shorter gentler filters. The downside is that shorter filters have a better transient response, which can be important for microdynamics. Ext2 is a longer filter that preserves a pretty good transient response.
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Hi, currently using the new asdm5EC modulator with poly sync ext2. Just fabulous. The 7EC modulators give intermittent silence, even tho both 5EC and 7EC are using approx 50% cpu.
The hardware is core i7 gen 8700 6 cores coffee lake in a fanless streacom case. However as I live in the tropics I keep a small silent usb fan ( separate psu) next to it for the hot days. Yet, without fan the core temp never goes above 70.
Ps. This is converting all to dsd 216. Dsd 512 gives intermittent playback with all the new EC modulators.
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Hi sanj
Sorry to hear your i7-8700 is struggling with ASDM7EC with DSD256 + ext2 filter.
But you are not alone. This is the new version of “can you do DSD512 xtr non-2s” 
Yeah, but using Asdm5ec with 256dsd @ poly sync ext 2 really makes the music shine. Soundstage, definition, transients…just wow. It’s a step up from dsd 512 poly sync ext 2 with vanilla asdm7. It’s a bitch it wont do 512 but I wonder why since it’s not really maxing out the cpu cores.
I see one report of i9-9900K being able to do ASDM7EC with DSD256 + ext2 filter, without issues.
But I’m waiting for more reports with that same CPU before I commit on my next build.
What kind of processor are we looking at to do 7ec and 512 with ext 2 filter without cuda offload?
Whew! We sent a man to the moon with far less computational horsepower at our disposal.
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Ha. And like the moon landing, let’s take it one small step at a time… DSD256 first.
But yeh, if the i9-9900K is what it takes, then I would guess roughly double the power of that CPU is what it would take for DSD512 
But @jussi_laako has said he’s working on optimisations that may help things.
I seem to remember Jussi mentioning the AMD Ryzen Threadripper 2990WX Processor somewhere. But, if you are going that high, you might as well get a lower processor AND an NVIDIA card for off-loading some of the computational work.
Are you referring to the quite new ASDM7EC modulator (at DSD512 with ext2) here?
I think so?, I dont’ remember where I read the reference. I might also be mis-remembering the correct Threadripper Processor.
Either way, when you are going that high and want power, it does not makes sense to avoid off-loading via CUDA.
I wonder if jussi every measured which method gives the biggest punch: Going up in CPU cores and speed or adding a CUDA enabled card?
No worries. I know the old discussion of CPU’s where Threadrippers were discussed… but the discussion above is about the very new EC modulators.
Like July 4th 2019 new…
As mentioned above, this is the new version of “can you do DSD512 xtr non-2s"
It’s a different/new beast.
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I’m sure Jussi has mentioned that EC modulators utilise CPU resources only, not GPU (Cuda) resources.
Filters benefit being offloaded to a supported Nvidia GPU.
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Ahh, I do not have HQP 4, yet. Thanks for the info.
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