Taiko Audio Launches A Fanless PC For Audiophiles And It's Only $30K
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Hobbies can be expensive, but not many of them are as excessive (as well as excessively subjective) as audio. Case in point, Taiko Audio's $30k digital music streaming server that takes the category to new heights. Other audiophile-grade servers up to this point like Roon's Nucleus Titan start out at a 'paltry' $3,700. To counter any doubts about the price, Taiko has decked the Extreme Server with everything the company believes audiophiles would want, but didn't know they needed.
Powering the entire system are two Intel Xeon Scalable 10-core CPUs: one dedicated for the Window 10 Enterprise OS, while the second is specific to the Roon music management app. The company said that "the choice to design a dual CPU system was largely fueled by finding a way around the impact Roon’s luxury interface has on sound quality. It does enable Roon processing to become virtually inaudible, a world’s first in our experience."
The Roon dilemma is something audio enthusiasts still don't agree on—some believe that the Roon app without DSP seems to sound different from other bit-perfect platforms, but without any objective, measurable data, Taiko's approach seems moot.
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Despite the robust innards—the twin-Xeon CPUs, up to 48GB RAM, 280GB PCIe Intel Optane storage for the OS (plus up to 24TB of music storage), 400W linear PSU, Lundahl chokes, and 700.000 uF of Mundorf and Duelund capacitors—the server is a completely fanless design. The aerospace aluminum housing features 6,000 holes that serve as passive cooling (and supposedly reduce emissions by 81dB), whereas the bespoke 240W passive cooling setup utilizes solid copper heatsinks.
“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!),” the company says. Alrighty then.
In terms of connectivity, the base Extreme Server has five USB ports, two RJ45 Ethernet ports, one fiber SFP open-slot Ethernet port, one VGA port, a S/PDIF, and an AES/EBU (PCM/Dolby Digital 5.1) port.
