ASUS TUF Z390-Pro Gaming

[NoFanMan]

Regarding the PSU. As I said I don't game anymore so one would think 1200w is overkill for general usage, and it certainly would be. However in an audio desktop setup PSU output makes a very noticeable difference in sound quality especially when your digital source goes through a USB port. You want voltage stability and no PSU produces linear output, it dips and peaks constantly. Computer components are designed to deal with that but external audio equipment doesn't have the tolerance level required for seamless high-res music reproduction. A more powerful PSU doesn't dip below an audible threshold, that's why high-end audio equipment have such massive power supplies.

About on-board WiFi. It has nothing to do with cost, it's about security. A seasoned hacker can enable it remotely even if it's turned off in BIOS, there's always twisted ways to accomplish this... even when the computer is turned off entirely, unless you remove the CMOS battery. As for Bluetooth it's a real joke, any script kiddie can enable it. Fortunately that technology is slowly fading away in favor of WiFi direct. I know this because it's happened to me to many times.

 

[kapone32]

Regarding the PSU. As I said I don't game anymore so one would think 1200w is overkill for general usage, and it certainly would be. However in an audio desktop setup PSU output makes a very noticeable difference in sound quality especially when your digital source goes through a USB port. You want voltage stability and no PSU produces linear output, it dips and peaks constantly. Computer components are designed to deal with that but external audio equipment doesn't have the tolerance level required for seamless high-res music reproduction. A more powerful PSU doesn't dip below an audible threshold, that's why high-end audio equipment have such massive power supplies.

About on-board WiFi. It has nothing to do with cost, it's about security. A seasoned hacker can enable it remotely even if it's turned off in BIOS, there's always twisted ways to accomplish this... even when the computer is turned off entirely, unless you remove the CMOS battery. As for Bluetooth it's a real joke, any script kiddie can enable it. Fortunately that technology is slowly fading away in favor of WiFi direct. I know this because it's happened to me to many times.

If you are worried about that I wonder what you do with your computer. (Outside of COVID-19) take a bus the full route in any metro area of North America, Asia and Europe and the number of WIFI channels your smart phone will discover will astound you. Bluetooth is fading? if anything it has already become a standard.

 

[EarthDog]

Regarding the PSU. As I said I don't game anymore so one would think 1200w is overkill for general usage, and it certainly would be. However in an audio desktop setup PSU output makes a very noticeable difference in sound quality especially when your digital source goes through a USB port. You want voltage stability and no PSU produces linear output, it dips and peaks constantly. Computer components are designed to deal with that but external audio equipment doesn't have the tolerance level required for seamless high-res music reproduction. A more powerful PSU doesn't dip below an audible threshold, that's why high-end audio equipment have such massive power supplies.

About on-board WiFi. It has nothing to do with cost, it's about security. A seasoned hacker can enable it remotely even if it's turned off in BIOS, there's always twisted ways to accomplish this... even when the computer is turned off entirely, unless you remove the CMOS battery. As for Bluetooth it's a real joke, any script kiddie can enable it. Fortunately that technology is slowly fading away in favor of WiFi direct. I know this because it's happened to me to many times.

Why would less powerful PSUs 'dip below an audible threshold'? PSUs, at the extreme get worse (ripple, etc) at the limits, but a 650W PSU running 300W is nothing. Is there more 'noise' there with the same quality PSU as there is a 300W load with a 1.2KW PSU? I don't know much about this,

You mentioned cost... we ran with it, lol! You never once mentioned security. And if people get access to the BIOS, they won't have any issues with your discrete wi-fi.

 

[NoFanMan]

I keep my PSU outside the case, it wouldn't fit in it anyway. Electronic noise floor is lower through USB that way (but remains a problem with SPDIF) and EMS interference is reduced with PSU further away and on-board sound disabled in BIOS. As for the discrete WiFi I only use it sporadically and never leave it connected unattended. I also disconnect the LAN NIC when I shut down the machine. Not sure if anyone could do harm through it but why take a chance when it's so easy to pull out. 20 years ago I never bothered to disconnect anything and let the machines run 24/7 but a few costly breaches of security taught me to be alert... and of course UEFI secure boot and TPM's have prevented disasters by blocking infected firmware updates, which are popular with vandal-type hackers since it allows them to inject malicious code inside key components. I'm pretty impressed with secure boot, it really does a great job at rejecting garbage code.

 

[EarthDog]

Good info, though not entirely sure my question was answered. I'm wondering why/how/asking for proof that, assuming the same quality PSU (just higher wattage) that there is a difference in 'noise'.

 

[NoFanMan]

Good info, though not entirely sure my question was answered. I'm wondering why/how/asking for proof that, assuming the same quality PSU (just higher wattage) that there is a difference in 'noise'.

There definitely is a difference but in order to prove it you'd have to be using two different setups with one having a PSU of significantly higher wattage than the other, for a given common voltage. Wearing headphones you'd hear hear the sssshhhhh or the weaker PSU. It's not that loud but it's annoying as Hell.

You seem to be mixing up a class of board by price and features versus support. So long as the vrm support the flafship gpu, anything can go in it. A 1.2KW PSU is just ridiculous these days when half is plenty for 95% of PCs.

I'm not mixing up anything given that I don't even use dedicated GPU's anymore, long gone are the days where I would fire up my PE5, sustain the roar of the two large Something GTX vidcards that won the coveted Noisiest Fan In The Galaxy award and then get gaming all day with a whooping 8Gb of mean-looking DDR2 RAM sticks with little Jolly Rogers crests on them. In 06 that was something to behold but now that I only use my computers for audio I choose the components with very different criteria. GPU is far down the list for obvious reasons, while PSU requirements have more than doubled. Extreme silence is most sought after and overclocking is useless for music so that allows me to use the tiny but very quiet stock Intel fan or, alternatively a fanless tower but these are huge and unsightly. Can't water-cool it uses too many fans and besides, regardless of PSU my cooling requiremets are bareboned minimal. What matters most is CPU power, amount of RAM and PSU power output.

Forgot to state why CPU and RAM specs are relatively important for anyone seeking so-called "audiophile-level" results. First, disable onboard sound in UEFI, it's utterly useless for serious music and is a major source of noisy EMI. Let's start with RAM. What you want is as large a data buffer as your board can handle, doesn't need to be ultra-fast, abundance is the issue. 64Gb of DDR4 2400 will do more than just fine, in fact it's a bit of an overkill since there won't be much of a perceivable difference compared with 32Gb. 8th or 9th Gen Core i7 can usually deal with the constant data feed since it doesn't need to write to RAM in order to get the job done, but I5 and upper-tier i3 will often struggle to keep up, which results in annoying glitches that can only be resolved with a virtual sound device, such as Sonarworks Reference 4 which processes audio data at least 18 times faster than the RAM hosting it can, which in the case of the Z390 Pro amounts to 64Gb and 64Gb is twice the usual amount required for premium sound, depending on downstream gear evidently (DAC+Amp). If your primary source is live streaming then 16Gb is sufficient, even with a Core i3 since streaming technology mostly relies on two cores for local processing, not 4 or 6. It's the lossless files in local storage that require the juice. So from my personal perspective this motherboard is well suited to my needs and almost ridiculously affordable for what it brings.