In my view I would from the whole Extreme sell the USB board and the switch only at price which mirrors the performance.
Extreme owners would to have pay less for the switch of course.
Matt
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Taiko Audio SGM Extreme : the Crème de la Crème
- Thread starter CKKeung
- Start date
In my view I would from the whole Extreme sell the USB board and the switch only at price which mirrors the performance.
Extreme owners would to have pay less for the switch of course.
Matt
Extreme owners would to have pay less for the switch of course.
Matt[/QUOTE]
I’ll try that with Apple next time I buy an iPhone, Apple can I buy an iPad now with a discount?
Matt[/QUOTE]
I’ll try that with Apple next time I buy an iPhone, Apple can I buy an iPad now with a discount?
Maybe a more politically correct solution would be to include the switch in a package with the Extreme
Matt
FWIW, I bought four HDPlex chassis just to take their cooling kits to do the DIY passive cooling for my dual Xeon CPUs. That's $1,192.
- Then I bought 2 Dynatron heatsinks for $100.
- Thermal epoxy for $80.
- 13 good quality heat pipes for $150.
- A pipe bending tool for $20.
- Then two more heat pipes for $30 because I broke two.
Total: over $1500 just to get the passive CPU cooling.
And it looks ugly, nothing like the elegant solution on the Extreme.
(sorry for the old picture, it's not the final version)
More info here: https://audiophilestyle.com/forums/...-server/page/14/?tab=comments#comment-1047952
Oh, wait, that's not all. I was doing research and planning almost every night until 2-3 am for about 3 weeks until I came up with that. It may look simple, but I looked at every available commercial cooling solution for LGA 3647 sockets. I also had to do some extensive reading about heat pipes, thermal properties of materials, thermal epoxy, etc. My head was spinning for a while!
After spending that much time and money, I had no idea if it would even work. Once you apply the thermal epoxy there is no going back! I was prepared to scrap everything and start from scratch. But I was lucky, and it worked great despite the way it looks. And I have been enjoying it for 5 months.
If I was to start this all over again and someone offered me the Taiko cooling solution for $1500 or less, it would be a no brainer.
From the Taiko HP:
We found that most aftermarket passive cooling systems degrade in efficiency over time, that is why we machined the CPU interface with a precision of 5 microns tolerance (0,005mm!). We also use solid copper for the heat sinks, for twice the efficiency as regularly used aluminium. We estimate that our custom solution will lead to a prolonged component life between 4 and 12 years extra, depending on the use and environment conditions.
The complete heatsink on one side of the Extreme which is responsible for cooling is afaik a CNC machined copper block, the other side is standard aluminium.
Maybe you get a special price from Emile but IMO it is impossible to offer the complete solution for 1,5K or less.
Matt
I think it's best to leave subjective opinions on Taiko's costs out of this discussion. Only Taiko will know what his costs are.
Well this sparked a lively discussion Will reply later today.
Will reply later today.
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Just to be clear and avoid further confusion.
I was not talking about the chassis. The big copper heatsink and the corresponding aluminum heatsink on the other side I consider to be part of the chassis. I am sure the Taiko Extreme chassis is very expensive.
I was referring to the two CPU heatsinks highlighted in red below.
I don't get special prices. Taiko does not sell those (at least for now). No one does. That's why I had to fabricate my own with the primitive tools I had access to.
I get your point.
The question is since it is a cooling system where all parts work together if you can take the two CPU heatsinks and combine them easily with non Taiko parts.
You are one of the most experienced DIYers and get surely a solution. But It can open a can of worms when some others would order Taiko parts, get unpredictable results because they have not the whole package and then need support from Taiko Audio.
I am curious about what Emile will announce.
Matt
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Our heatsink solution is probably unsuitable for DIY applications. LGA 3647 CPUs are physically large. The socket has 3647 spring based contacts, some of them needing to conduct very high currents. It needs to be absolutely flush seated, and I'm talking low micron tolerances here! This also means even pressure across the entire surface. We have blown up a significant number of CPUs and motherboards getting this right. It is very easy to "lift" the CPU on one end without noticing, the system will not boot up and if you remove the CPU it will have burned / black areas, and you can trash it, often including the motherboard. For a DIY project you would be very sad if that happens as these are expensive parts.
This is unlikely to happen with a purposely fan based cooler which only mounts to the motherboard, as if the motherboard flexes/moves a few microns, the cooler will move with it. Still you need to follow the instruction and you should use a torque screwdriver (the pressure is precisely specified) to avoid damaging the CPU when mounting the cooler. There is also a weight limitation for the cooler you should not ignore (600 grams), our first prototype cooler blocks turned out to weigh 660 grams (each) resulting in dead CPUs, our production blocks are 300 grams each. The tops weigh an additional 100 grams but are "carried" by the heat pipes. This is possible because we use 8mm heat pipes which do not flex. Together with some other measures our solution is rock solid, but it requires micron levels of precision from machining, motherboard and heat pipe mounting. We also gain heat transfer efficiency as the heat pipes are angled upwards, connecting to a specific height on the heatsinks, requiring only a single bend (each bend reduces efficiency). Altogether this is a complete concept, the CPU coolers are designed to be used in our chassis to maximum efficiency, it is structurally strong and can survive rough handling during shipping. There is more to it all then meets the eye.
What @nenon has done is a better solution for DIY as he uses thin walled 6mm heat pipes which are more flexible and can move a bit without applying pressure on the CPU mount. Still you should be careful here, first mount the cooler, then bend the heat pipes to fit, make sure you do not apply pressure on the socket by pressing up or down on a heat pipe when mounting, and do get that (precision) torque screwdriver!
Now this is all overkill for DIY purposes IMHO. This is a very expensive solution, designed to assure the lowest possible operating temperatures which results in some sound quality benefits by various mechanisms, but also in a much extended expected lifetime. However a DIY project may not need to last a decade or even longer, for the equivalent cost of our solution you can simply replace your hardware every few years which is not as big of an issue for DIY as it is for a commercial product.
This is unlikely to happen with a purposely fan based cooler which only mounts to the motherboard, as if the motherboard flexes/moves a few microns, the cooler will move with it. Still you need to follow the instruction and you should use a torque screwdriver (the pressure is precisely specified) to avoid damaging the CPU when mounting the cooler. There is also a weight limitation for the cooler you should not ignore (600 grams), our first prototype cooler blocks turned out to weigh 660 grams (each) resulting in dead CPUs, our production blocks are 300 grams each. The tops weigh an additional 100 grams but are "carried" by the heat pipes. This is possible because we use 8mm heat pipes which do not flex. Together with some other measures our solution is rock solid, but it requires micron levels of precision from machining, motherboard and heat pipe mounting. We also gain heat transfer efficiency as the heat pipes are angled upwards, connecting to a specific height on the heatsinks, requiring only a single bend (each bend reduces efficiency). Altogether this is a complete concept, the CPU coolers are designed to be used in our chassis to maximum efficiency, it is structurally strong and can survive rough handling during shipping. There is more to it all then meets the eye.
What @nenon has done is a better solution for DIY as he uses thin walled 6mm heat pipes which are more flexible and can move a bit without applying pressure on the CPU mount. Still you should be careful here, first mount the cooler, then bend the heat pipes to fit, make sure you do not apply pressure on the socket by pressing up or down on a heat pipe when mounting, and do get that (precision) torque screwdriver!
Now this is all overkill for DIY purposes IMHO. This is a very expensive solution, designed to assure the lowest possible operating temperatures which results in some sound quality benefits by various mechanisms, but also in a much extended expected lifetime. However a DIY project may not need to last a decade or even longer, for the equivalent cost of our solution you can simply replace your hardware every few years which is not as big of an issue for DIY as it is for a commercial product.
Quoting these combined. The USB card and Switch use a few custom made parts which have lead times of often several months and are simply not obtainable in the quantities which could be generated by a presumably larger demand. If we where to make these available to non Extreme owners we would need to replace these with readily available off the shelf parts. The same goes for our RAM modules, we can just barely source enough of those to keep up with Extreme orders.
As to support, it would have to be carried by others. I would envision a DIY community project with a few prominent figures providing advice/support. We could provide some parts and/or share some designs we're not pursuing commercially but which are performing very well. There's an obvious benefit to this as you're building something which is supported, shared with other builders, with a more reliable outcome then just throwing parts together and hope for the best, and as a community work together to explore ways to advance performance as there will be near endless ways to tune the basic design. If you have enough people together you could always consider a group buy to gain access to custom / more exclusive parts.
I will be honest and state this is commercially not very attractive, but there could be much we could learn from it which could be beneficial to our own development efforts. I'm aware this may help other manufacturers as much as us, but in these modern times, with active forum communication, in my mind it's a powerful tool to advance SQ for streaming in general, at a much faster pace then Vinyl / CD playback used to, by "harnessing the power of collective learning". I feel inclined to participate for these reasons, even enthused about the prospect, if we could find a few people to spearhead the project.
Sounds like the solution to the problem then is sell the case also as part of the package!!! Just kidding!!
FWIW, a lot of gamers/overclockers use Thermal Grizzly Conductonaut for better heat transfer: https://www.thermal-grizzly.com/produkte/25-conductonaut
It is liquid metal so it has excellent heat transfer property but it's very running and is conductive. So careless application will short things out. But temp drops are quite noticeable with this product. Also, it is highly corrosive to aluminum (like eats through it). It's fine with the top of CPU and copper heatsinks. Search for vids and there are plenty of warnings but also plenty of positive results.
Cheers.
HP
Good stuff, it does tend to "dry out" over time so may need re-application every 1-2 years. Very popular for de-lidding, where you remove the CPU integrated heat spreader and replace the standard thermal interface material with this, can make a very considerable difference there.
I believe the people who inspected it says it still transfers heat effectively even when it's dried out or absorbed into the heatsink. Delidding is too scary a proposition for me. I see lots of Conductonaut application over the stock IHS. I guess one can slather on some Conformal Coating to mask off any potential shorts.
For those who like to keep using paste, I believe Thermal Grizzly's Kryonaut is pretty good (not as good as Conductonaut but less worrisome).
We did delid all CPUs for the EVO models, subsequently test / cherry pick the best performing ones. These will run stable at higher clockspeeds if you’d wanted to use them for overclocking, but they also run at lower temperatures at normal frequencies. All EVOs run slightly overclocked though (maximum turbo on all cores all the time).
Too soon to tell, but do make a backup first. This release comes with an update to the database, so reverting to the previous version is not possible without a backup (unless you want to set everything up again), the database on a test machine is updating right now, taking quite some time.
