I Can't Believe What This $25,000 Computer Is For

i recently found a listing for a pc which i i just  had to share with you because i think unless you   specifically recognize the product you're not  going to be able to guess what it's for it has   a starting price of 24 000 euros which translates  to about 26 000 us dollars now i did reach out to   the company and i asked them hey would you guys  mind sending one of these pcs over for a video   but surprise surprise they didn't reply so  what we're going to do instead in today's video   is we're going to go on to their website  and we're going to have a very close   detailed look at the pictures of the system  and then i'll have you guess what you think   it's for in the comment section below at which  point i'll reveal its use case and then the fun   starts because then we're gonna go look at  the marketing material for this pc which is   it's pretty next level so with that buckle up  because today's video is gonna be a bit of a ride now before we have a look at the system uh  just a quick note i did photoshop all of the   branding of it for the initial first look  because it kind of tells you what it is in   the name so i wanted to make it harder for you  to guess although i'll obviously tell you what   the company's called later but yeah let's have a  look at the first picture which is the outside of   it and it's admittedly very beautiful you can  see that there is a lot of aluminium there's   some ventilation drilled in the top and then  we have this minimalist logo on the front with   what i hope is the most satisfying power button  any human has ever pressed considering the 24 000   euro asking price now one thing to note with this  picture is that this system does not seem to have   standard server rack mounting so just bear that  in mind when we flip over to the picture of the   inside now this picture of the interior is the  kind of thing that you wouldn't be able to leave   young david alone with for any extended period  of time lest you massively impact global tissue   supplies like that is a beautiful interior now  the first thing that i notice about the inside of   this system aside from the fact that it doesn't  have single channel ram which would have been   just the absolute cherry on top but aside from  the huge amount of ram the cooling solution is   very interesting because you can see that  it is passive there are no fans involved   there are just three heat pipes per cpu that  draw heat away to this heatsink on the side of   the case now that heatsink is apparently solid  copper which that's pretty cool i'm not going   to lie that really is pretty cool but despite  the fact that that is a solid copper heatsink   there are two cpus under here i don't know if that  cooling is going to be enough but when you find   out what the system's for you'll realize that  maybe heat output is not going to be much of a   problem for the system now the company is very  vague about the cpus that are under there the   most information they give you is that they are 10  core 20 thread xeon cpus they don't tell you what   xeon cpus they are now going by the motherboard  heatsink that is an asus workstation motherboard   and i've actually gone and found it it is this  asus workstations c621e sage power motherboard uh   which is a real thick boy motherboard with these  two huge lga i think those are 3647 sockets which   does kind of help narrow down the cpus because  there are only three cpus that can fit in this   motherboard that have 10 cores and 20 threads  editor david here it's not technically true there   has been three generations of these intel scalable  xeons and in the second and third generation there   are a couple more 10 core variants littered in  there although most of them seem like refreshes   or intel just shifting around product stacks still  i just thought i'd mention that now the first one   is this intel xeon silver 4114 which is 10 cores  20 threads and it's an 85 watt cpu and they sell   for about 700 or at least did when they came out  and then we have the other option is just the t   variant of that cpu and then the other option  is this one which is an intel xeon gold 5115   which has 10 cores 20 threads and a slightly  higher core frequency now i'm kind of hoping that   it has these in it just because of the pricing  uh it's it means we're looking at about 2 400   for the cpus that are in there and then about  800 canadian dollars for the motherboard so   that'll be about 3 000 for the motherboard and  the two cpus let's have a closer look at the ram   configuration here it looks like there's a hell  of a lot of ram but each of these sticks is a 4   gig stick of ram which they talk a lot about in  the marketing material for the system uh but it   sounds like it's like just ecc memory uh but we'll  get into that a bit later that is a total of about   48 gigs which is a lot of ram but it's not that  much ram for a 24 000 euro pc with two zeons in it   and then there are also these two expansion cards  which uh those are like m.2 slot cards so that you   can put a bunch of like nvme storage in there and  then just a quick final note on the system specs i   don't see a graphics card in there which makes it  clear that the system's performance is all about   fast storage and cpu power but anyway let's have a  quick look at the power supply which is this whole   side bit of the computer now it looks very  impressive we have these large capacitors very   neatly laying out in a row and then we have this  massive toroidal transformer down here surrounded   in wood i'm assuming to deal with emi but i'm  not sure and then we also have a power supply   for it down here which seems to be aluminium  as opposed to the copper heatsink for the cpus   uh now again this looks really cool but it's  only a 400 watt power supply which considering   that we've got dual xeons in this system is not  a whole lot and then it's fully proprietary so   yeah you're kind of stuck with it so this  is the shot of the i o which has a brushed   copper i o shield which i'm not going to  lie looks really beautiful that is sick but   it's interesting because you look at the i o and  then you go and look at the picture of the i o   for this motherboard on amazon and you'll notice  that there are some ports missing so they clearly   designed this i o shield so that it covers up  any ports that makes it look like poor people   use the system i'm guessing right because it  covers up the ps2 port with the usb 2 ports and   the the onboard audio so we don't need any of that  for this system although we do need redundant lan but without further ado let's reveal what  this obscene system was designed to do it's   called the taco audio sg extreme and this 24 000  system with dual passively cooled xeons in it   and 48 gigs of ram is a music storage server this  system is designed to run roon on it which is like   music playing software so this is like the server  for that and then you use an ipad running roon on   it which then streams your lossless music  files from the sgm extreme to the digital   to analog converter in your hi-fi setup that then  converts the digital signal into an analog signal   that feeds it to the amplifiers in your hifi  so as far as i understand it this sgm extreme   is just a glorified nas in fact if you go onto  roon's website they actually tell you that you   can run roon core on a synology nas which is  insane because for the 24 000 euro asking price   you just get two terabytes of internal storage  which is really not that much for a nas right and   in all fairness to taco audio uh they don't  actually charge you as much for additional   storage as apple does which is kind of wild to be  honest uh but still it's that's a crazy amount of   money for a storage server but they also give  you the option to spec extreme usb which costs   uh it costs almost 2 000 euros i don't it's just  usb that's more extreme i guess it's got like   anti-jitter stuff in it i guess is the argument  around that but you can also spec up legacy   outputs things like aes or spitf now getting a  spitf port on this system which funnily enough   the motherboard actually comes with  one but to get the taco extreme spedef   uh the one that they didn't just block out  with an io shield costs over 2 000 euro extra   for a port that is already on the motherboard so  i wonder i i would actually like to see i wonder   if that spec up just gives you access to the split  off on the spdif on the back that would be amazing but now we get to what is almost definitely  my favorite part about this system which is   the marketing material now i want to preface  this by saying that i am not an expert when   it comes to digital audio reproduction but i am  a bit of an expert when it comes to identifying   [ __ ] marketing and this is some of the best  i've ever seen so let's see what taco has to   say for themselves they say that the taco audio  sgm extreme is a state-of-the-art music server   designed to deliver the most realistic sounding  live reproduction from stored music files   they then continue to say that they left no stone  unturned when it comes to maximizing how much   money you can charge for an ass but basically they  continue to justify the decisions they explain   why they chose the hardware that is in this  system starting off with the dual cpu design   now the english is a bit difficult to follow  there but they're basically saying roon is the   best software to use with the server and then they  say that the choice to design a dual cpu system   was for a large part fueled by finding a way  around the impact of roon's luxury interface on   sound quality so they're saying that roon is great  but because it has a really beautiful graphical   user interface you need two passively called  xeons that's kind of what they're arguing there   i i don't know man i feel like that's a that's  a veil thin justification for that because if   you go onto roon's website and you look at like  the specs that they recommend for their software   uh they tell you to buy things like this to use  roon on as a music server storage you know you buy   an intel nok and then you plug a a nas into it and  there you go you'll have a great rune experience   but according to taiko you need dual xeons uh but  but they could they continue they explain it a bit   more with our groundbreaking custom allocation  of processes you can now have both the best   sound quality as well as the best user interface  what's more due to the low amount of heat that's   generated due to this design you can expect much  longer component life than a single cpu design   yeah this is going to be low heat production  because the system's idle the entire time in fact   i would be surprised if this pc doesn't explode  under full cpu load for both of those cpus just   due to the the cooling solution but anyway let's  move over to two which is one of my favorites pcie   storage now they're saying here in our research  we found ssd storage to be a big bottleneck for   the overall performance of a digital source  they're saying ssd storage is a bottleneck   when it comes to storing flac files like lossless  music files an ssd always connects to your system   via motherboard dmi chipset for the extreme we're  using pcie modules so just an m.2 nvme drive   which connects directly to the cpu because it uses  pcie lanes therefore we achieve speeds up to four   times faster than ssds which results in lower  latency and much lower system noise giving you   black backgrounds this is when it comes to music  black backgrounds huge space rendition and brings   an ease to the musician's performance only matched  by the very best vinyl and tape playback systems   so i don't even know i don't even know what to  say about that because that's so ridiculous but   let's carry on so they say they also rely on  the new vmv technology that intel introduces   with their new xeon cpus and that allows them  to even further reduce latency and they say   you can select anything from two terabytes to  24 terabytes eliminating the need for playback   from external drives such as a nas but this is is  where it gets really good right so they're saying   worried about backups we found that raid  is not beneficial to the sound quality why   what like what impact does raid have on the sound  quality of a music server like i don't understand   can they please elaborate here like what so  okay but then they say therefore we strongly   recommend to our customers to use an external  backup drive with this 24 000 euro music server   this server does not have redundant storage in it  because it apparently affects the audio quality   so they're they're bragging about  it not having raid in it like i   yo the balls right it's they don't even  ignore it they straight up brag about it like   okay i think i've composed myself so let's  let's move on to number three which is selected   high-speed ram uh now they say here ever heard  of dram refresh you should because it's one   of the main reasons why many think fewer and  lower speed dimms are better for sound quality   i have literally never heard anybody try and  correlate ram speed and audio quality before i   have literally never heard that before but anyway  in our research we discovered the true source   of why ram has such a big impact on sonics and  were able to deal with it in our way so the way   in which they dealt with this well-documented  problem that ram screws up your digital audio   uh by using custom ram modules that have  factory pre-selected a-grade memory modules   uh all dim components memory chips capacitors  resistors etc are matched to within a one percent   tolerance and selected for low current draw uh now  i'm assuming considering that it's a xeon system   they're using ecc memory in here but  that that sounds like it goes beyond that   and they're saying that the side effect of this  is refresh rate burst current is reduced by   almost 50 percent and operating temperatures  are much lower allowing lower refresh rates   combined with power supply filtering this  allows us to use 12 memory dimms with a high   combined bandwidth at a very low refresh noise  levels noise levels so they're saying that the   combination of the memory modules and the  power supply means that they can use 12   dimms like it's because of the cpus  and the motherboard what do you mean okay i think i've composed myself again i think  we're good now in all honesty i don't want to   spend much more time talking about any of this  stuff it's just more non-specific marketing   language about why this is the best music storage  server ever and how they selected the capacitors   in the power supply by ear and all kinds of  stuff like that but under this there are some   outtakes from professional reviewers telling you  how this system has just changed their life they   no longer have erectile dysfunction they're happy  everything works and it's the best music they've   ever had from their system because of the taco  audio extreme but what's really interesting to   me is under these pages of marketing material you  get to the specs of the tech audio extreme where   suddenly they become really vague about all of  it they don't tell you exactly what the cpus are   that's in here they don't tell you what speed the  ram is or what kind of ram it is they just tell   you that it's industrial memory modules that are  custom order and that's the part that's that's so   crazy for me about this system is that when it  comes to like unmeasurable non-specific stuff   they they talk for hours about it but the moment  when it comes to actual specifications they become   very very vague about it which that is just dodgy  that's just weird full stop so i don't know this   thing may lead to the best digital music audio  reproduction that anybody's ever heard before but   this looks like some pretty crazy marketing to  me right there which i think is a very good point   to end this video on so thank you for watching  please let me know in the comment section down   below what you think of this system and uh yeah  until the next video thank you for watching bye

Channel: Dawid Does Tech Stuff

Views: 271,306

Keywords: dawid, dawid does tech stuff, PC, gaming, intel, AMD, Corsair, Gaming, Game, Computer, Gaming PC, David Does Tech Stuff, DDTS, Tech, Stuff

Id: V8K1skAmsjk

Length: 17min 58sec (1078 seconds)

Published: Wed May 04 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/thewolfofafica]

Yes, you need to also use liquid cooling with only the highest quality of snake oil to dissipate the heat as efficiently as possible. You can hear the difference in the cleanliness and general toan of the sound

[u/Rumplesforeskin]

Wow.