Motherboard + CPU combo for music server?

[CageyH]

I am planning to upgrade my music server PC soon.
I am looking for recommendations to let me build a fanless PC. I have a Zalman FX70 cooler that will cope with a CPU TDP of 80w without a fan. It will fit Intel and AMD processors.

The PC is only used for music playback, so I don’t need anything particularly powerful.
It will run Windows 10, as I have this already. ATX form factor is preferred as it is going in a Fractal Design R5 case, which is hidden behind the TV, so a small form factor is not required.

[Sherwood]

My solution was much simpler: an Intel NUC. Runs completely silently as it has no fan!

[CageyH]

I am not sure my Asus Xonar Essence STX II will fit in a NUC, and as the internal DAC is rather good, I am not wanting to get rid of it.

[CageyH]

I am thinking of an AMD Ryzen 3 2200G processor and an ASUS Prime B450M-A motherboard with 8Gb of DDR4 ram.

The processor has an onboard graphics processor, and the motherboard has video out.
With a TDP of 65W, my passive cooler will work well.

[CageyH]

Any thoughts/experience with something like the above?

[NRG]

Any thoughts/experience with something like the above?

Just a bit curious Kevin, why not a raspberry pi? It has more than enough compute power for audio and the options for play back software is vast. Personally I do not see any benefit in a dedicated x86 playback computer, it seems overkill IMHO...and expensive.

[CageyH]

I want to keep my Asus Xonar Essence STX II audio card, as it sounds very good with the upgraded Burson Audio V6 vivid opamps. I also have a very good PSU running the system.

If I was going down the Pi route, then I would need to start from scratch to find a DAC I like.

[Gazjam]

This Asus looks a good bet?
https://www.asus.com/Motherboards/MAXIMUS_VI_GENE/

Pays attention to the power supply and SNR.

For audio, I found its better to get a higher power CPU and underclock it.
Depending on what you want to do, upsampling room correction or whatever, the PC will do the heavy lifting.
An i7 would be a good bet, no real preference audio wise.

The Xonar's a nice bit of kit, used to fit them in my Korus Servers.

[CageyH]

Thanks. I will take a look at that. The main idea is to fit a powerful, but efficient CPU.
I have a Core Duo Q9550 at the moment, running at around 3GHz. The main reason for wanting to upgrade was the lack of USB3.0, but I recently learnt that I could use the spare PCIex4 graphics slot to fit a PCIe card in. I never knew that....

So for €15 I have USB3.0 in an old Asus P5K motherboard. It seems to work well, so I may put off the possible upgrade until something decides to release the magic smoke within.

So the current spec is:

Asus P5K with 8Gb of ram.
Q9550 cooled with a Zalman FX70 - this seems to be working really well!
2Tb WD blue for system files
2Tb WD Black for music
2 x Noctua NF-S12B redux-1200 PWM fans
2 x Fractal Design Dynamic GP14 140mm fans (which I plan to change to something quieter)
Asus Xonar Essence STX II with Burson Audio V6 Vivid
EVGA SuperNOVA 550 G2 PSU (which scores very highly on the JonnyGuru reviews )
Asus Radeon HD6850 Direct CU 1Gb graphics card - which I plan to replace with a passively cooled card.
XCsource USB3 PCIe card.

Sure, the PSU is not a linear supply, but that would cost more than my complete PC is worth for a marginal gain. I may look at a cheap Linear PSU for the sound card.

It's an old PC, but it seems to do enough for a music server. If I was going to go for an i7 powered model, then I would probably upgrade my main system which is a Skylake i7 6700k, so a few years old, but powerful enough for what I use it for.

[CageyH]

I have just picked up a azotates GT710 2Gb passively cooled graphics card for €30.
I am almost done with the build now, just need some quieter 140mm fans to push air through the case and it can be classed as almost finished.