That looks super sweet dude
2 Likes
Thank you so much. Still tweaking air flow, OC’s… I had a great GPU OC/Undervolt… in a game got unstable somehow on a bench. I just had to replace the reservoir tube… the smaller tube was striped. It got bumped and started to leak. Just glad I noticed it. So looks a little diffrent. Probably should have waited till the next gen but oh well. Am holding out for a AMD card. Ive never used one so Im going to be happy try it.
2 Likes
Am getting some better frame rates with the upgrade… temps are higher though… still think its worth it. IPC (instructions per clock) have to improved from the i7 8086k I had.
May be selling the old z390 MSI MEG, with the delidded i7 8086k with all copper IHS and the monoblock as a single unit. Will post it up as for sale if I can part with it. It was my baby so long. I was able to easily get a all core OC of 5GHz on 1.27V… really is a great peice of gear.
Seeking advice on a good set of headphones and DAC or other audio hardware that might be good. Ok I’m not spending thousands on this, but in the neighborhood of maybe 500-700 USD.
I really love my music and I like the full ranges of sound. I like clear highs and a decent bass, I like the punch, but dont need extended low frequencies.
I used to do custom car audio for a while with component speakers and subs for DB Drags and SP competitions. I know a lot has moved to digital vs hardware IE-caps, resistors, and coils. So I was looking for a little help with modern items/something good with a computer which is completely out of my element.
Bose I know has a leg up because they “tune” their speakers to that warm natural frequency response curve of sound such as this…
Then also we want headphones to be in this range depending on preference…
Source: A Deep Dive Into Harman Curves - The Long Way Round (Part 3) - Headphonesty as credit for images.
So I’m looking for something I can use to get a warm sound I guess.
Right now I only have Arctis pro wireless, their EQ is not successful in allowing adjustment of the frequency response curve to my liking. The best I have found is leave it’s EQ flat and use Dolby Digitals software for something bearable. I’d love some help as I have been out of the game a bit. For listening in the home I’m fine… I have 5.1 (yeah not atmos or 7.1 because wife hates free standing speakers) with a decent Onkyo Amp and a set of Klipsch for reference of what I like. Least the EQ on the amp is enough I can get some good sound. But now that I’m at the PC alot, being quiet not wanting to disturb the wife while shes at home working, I would really like something better…lol
Hope this makes sense… I was hoping @Den-Fi or anyone you know could give me some input… I’m not sure who else really enjoys this kind of thing… If you know anyone feel free to invite them to read this.
Gotcha. I’ll be back here later when I get home. Just don’t want you to think I’m ignoring you.
1 Like
Hey no worries, just whenever ya have time I’d love some advice 
@Den-Fi I really appreciate it
Sooooooooooo…my Gaming PC with the Intel i7 8086K and MSI Z390 mobo must have had some deeper issues. I dunno if something was loose, or there was a Arc somewhere but I have yet to have my Ryzen 9 3900xt and the MSI X570 Unify trip the breaker using my monitor. 
I have no idea what happened with that. I’m honestly at a loss but there must be a hardware issue with the motherboard and CPU because that was all that was changed.
Now I am considering changing out my Ram from the Corsair 32GB 4 Dimm kit thats C14 3200, to two G.Skills Neo 32GB kits that are 3600 C16 with two dims each for a total of 64GB of Ram… I’m only thinking of this because I use PrimoCache… I have a 260GB Pcie Optane Drive. This hooks directly to the CPU via PCIE (why I picked the MSI X570 Unify Board) See below:
It’s only 8x, but its faster than through the chipset I think. Im fairly sure even with an older 2080ti I dont think the PCIE is saturated… Actually I have 3d Mark so I’ll try testing that now.
I’m super happy with the performance and decreased load times once a Game loaded into the cache and warmed up. I usually play one game for a while so this works really well. (Thanks for the recommendation @wendell).
I dunno if I’ll see too much uplift in speed allowing the system to utilize close to 40GB-50GB of ram at 3600 (if I can get that speed with two identical kits that dont come as a full matched kit) with the Optane drive already as a level two cache. I know the latency is great on the optane drive, but I believe ram is still faster…
I also have one 32GB kit thats two dimms. Its a G.Skills Neo 3600 C16 kit. Maybe I can just use two slots and try to OC these sticks? I know it used to be a thing, but I’m not sure it is with 3000 or 5000 series AMD processors.
Appreciate input from anyone on any of this theory ideas.
1 Like
What genres are you listening to?
Also, are you looking for closed backs or open back?
1 Like
It runs the gamut from Classical to House music. I like Punk, Ska, techno… you name it. Ambient noise isnt an issue, I just prefer something clear but has a good response for wide range, and or possibly a DAC that allows me to make profiles.
Honestly I’m not sure what is best for what situation. I know I prefer fabric cup ear pads if possible because of the heat in my area. Though I hear the other type might offer a better seal for lower frequencies.
That matters more in a closed back.
My starter recommendation is typically a Schiit Stack + HD 6XX. That checks the breathable earpads box.
1 Like
Ahhh, great options. The headphones I was eyeing already but the stack I had not seen. I have the optical out on my machine is that preferred? If so what Schiit should I start with or combo do you reccomend? Or is it strictly how much your willing to pay? lol
The Modi 3E and Magni 3+ are the go-to. You could spend more money, but listening skills are one of those things that you need to develop. So spending a lot of money up front isn’t going to do you many favors if you’re going to be doing casual listening.
Optical is nice to avoid driver nonsense and Windows getting in the way.
There are tons of options out there and just about everyone will give you a different answer, but I’m pretty confident this will start you off in a good place with room to grow if you develop a deeper interest. Schiit stacks don’t lose much of their value, so they resell nice and easy if that time should come.
1 Like
Awesome thank you so much. Have you done many posts with reviews and useage of these for me to read? Or, do you have resources that are useful to read?
The other thing I wanted to ask was is there a way to measure the sound from the head phones to see the frequency response to help tune the headphones?
I haven’t written about them in detail, but headphones .com really dove deep. Schiit Magni 3+ & Magni Heresy - Review & Comparison
Just don’t get lost in review hell. At the end of the day, while some guidance is good, you’ll find yourself being pulled in a lot of different directions if you fall down the rabbit hole. Best thing to do is just start listening and enjoying for a few weeks. Give your ears time to adjust to the new experience, then you can start tweaking. I cannot stress enough how important it is to get some good, clean baseline experience.
You would need a measurement rig. The only one anywhere near affordable is the MiniDSP EARS, but it is far from accurate. I don’t think you need to get that far into the weeds to enjoy the experience.
This will get you most (if not all) of the tweaking functionality you’ll need.
1 Like
That is amazing, thank you. And some solid advice as well… I didn’t need to go as far as Electrostatic Speakers to get a good experience in my home theater…lol I assume this is the same. Also, I lost sensitivity in a few ranges in my hearing that do not respond too well so I usually need to tweak a EQ to help with that so I can enjoy my music to its fullest.
I assume the Sennheiser HD 800 S may be a bit too much to start lol Just playing.
Charts like this and many hours of listening sessions helped me correlate to the point where I can EQ on the fly if needed. Developing listening skills will do wonders for you terms of finding exactly and where you need to make adjustments.
For me, and I stress heavily for me, the 800 S didn’t come alive until I squeezed diminishing returns for dear life. It’s a stage monster on tubes and in the right genres it’s a truly amazing experience. Between the 800 S, the DAC, the amps, and the tubes… definitely 5 figures. 
So I can’t really say I recommend that route, but yeah…
2 Likes
Awesome thanks lol. That’s a awesome chart. I have a ear for frequencies and did a lot of tuning for pink and white noise, distortions, spikes in frequencies and crossover tuning. I got it from car audio and also music (drumming, bass playing).
You said that they hold their value well, I am assuming there are spots that are better than others for finding said hardware at a reasonable price used… Can you suggest anywhere to do so?
That’s a bit of a minefield, but r/AVExchange isn’t a bad place to start. eBay is a mixed bag, so you always need to sanity check prices.
2 Likes
Well I ran into the same power issue after running the new PC for an extended period. I have now run a extension cord across my room to the bathroom…my hope is the wife gets so annoyed I get the green light for the outlet drops I need in my office LOL Sneaky way to do it but I have a feeling a month or two of dodging the cord she will break LOL.
I did however get the green light for the new 7000 series GPU for my birthday. So I’m excited for that Will be my first all AMD system. So I am excited.
Also, Server news… Somehow my PLEX install was put on my spinning rust disk…LOL I wondered why it was working so slowly. I’m also hoping it speeds up transcodes. I have to dig into plex and see where it does its DVR images prior to processing them to the DVR drive I designated which is spinning rust. I think this is why I had a huge spike I/O Delay on the server. I was going to run it on the Proxmox root drive which is a RAID1, but decided against it. Server load also dropped dramatically. I wonder if the delay to the spinning rust was slowing everything down. ZFS memory usage also dropped dramatically so we will see how it does over the next week.
BIG Difference here
4 Likes
Dude, youre nuts.
Tickling the dragons tail with that extension cord.
4 Likes