Topic: 2x HDSP 9652 PCI incl. Expansion What Motherboard to choose

Hello Everyone, I am using 2 HDSP 9652 PCI incl. Expansion boards for quite some time now and feel it is time to set up a new audio pc for recording. I really love my HDSPs and now I' m looking for a new motherboard where I can keep them. The majority of todays motherboards does not offer classic pci slots and I would need 2 slots... Any suggestions, please? Greetz from Germany

2x 9652-PCI
CUBASE 9 RAMSADA7
WIN10PRO/64
Making plans for a new PC

Re: 2x HDSP 9652 PCI incl. Expansion What Motherboard to choose

it looks like some compagny do external pci adaptor:
https://www.startech.com/Cards-Adapters … y~PEX2PCI4

and it seems to work as someone sell it on ebay with 2 9652 :
https://i.postimg.cc/Hny5cTTf/s-l1600-2.jpg

https://www.ebay.com/itm/RME-Hammerfall … SwQURei1of

Re: 2x HDSP 9652 PCI incl. Expansion What Motherboard to choose

Hi there hamanohashidate, I didn't know about these items. Will check these ones out. Thx for this.

Cheers Jogi

2x 9652-PCI
CUBASE 9 RAMSADA7
WIN10PRO/64
Making plans for a new PC

Re: 2x HDSP 9652 PCI incl. Expansion What Motherboard to choose

Do your expansion slots need the actual pci connectivity, or just physical slots to stick the cards into? in the latter case, the 500 dollar startech solution seems overkill, and I bemoan the lack of purely mechanical solutions (housing), seeing how a regular hdsp aio could go with 4 analog expansion cards that are impossible to accomodate in regular mainboards, seeing how a GPU will eat up 2 slot easily.

Re: 2x HDSP 9652 PCI incl. Expansion What Motherboard to choose

Hi there Delgado,

I will need the "old" PCI connectivity only to get my HDSP9652 PCI to work and it's hard to find a good motherboard offering these slots. Thx.

Cheers Jogi

2x 9652-PCI
CUBASE 9 RAMSADA7
WIN10PRO/64
Making plans for a new PC

6 (edited by robinspat 2021-02-18 22:40:47)

Re: 2x HDSP 9652 PCI incl. Expansion What Motherboard to choose

Built this PC week or so before Christmas.

New Old Stock motherboard from China Asus z97-c.  It has 3 PCI-e (I don't care), and 2x PCI slots, yes please.

I lost a PCI-e slot by installing fanless Asus GT1030 GPU 2gb ram - silent.

Chose a reclaimed intel cpu i7 4790K never over clocked, bought used for £165 on ebay.

It runs 4.0 ghz at only 30 centigrade with Noctua cooler.

New DDR3 1600 cl9 ram sticks by an ebay winning bid of £51 -

first time ever won a bid - and it was thus half price of new currently still sold if you look hard enough. 

Will get another 16 gigs later but still yet to use 5 gigs even when loading 90 odd tracks and some 188 fx. It is on reaper so you load a channel with an eq it counts it or even a gain knob, a vu meter, to gain stage unlike say Nuendo where each track already has eq, it dutifully counts' em all.

I even had RME on 32 samples for small project testing the converters with a mic WOW moment. Audio quality amazing, low RTL about 4 ms. 

Used to use Nuendo, Reaper is preferred awesome DAW -

Following that test pretty quickly went back to 64 samples for 30 track project where FX using 50% cpu and the CPU reading also hover up there. No glitches.

Audio playback is through pair of Adam a7x.

Converters compared to Terratec dmx6fire pci of early 2000s (which I still love) are fabulous.

Will be getting RME expansion daughter boards for their 4x slightly improved converters and later will add Audient ASP880 adat fir its 2x adat special pre channels as well as the other 6 adat.

Plan to max 32gb ddr3 (I have 2x8gb Ballistix Sport in it with Noctua D15 massive quiet cpu cooler) which has 2x PCI slots (not PCI-e).

I don't do orchestral and huge synth stuff 64gb unlikely need. I'm writing and mixing (a little mastering but need sub) with a bit of recording.

Lastly, FYI,  I am using RME NOS made approx. March 2019 version 1.07 HDSP9632 with 1.0.8.5 driver and it simply works on Win 7 x64.  Unistalled driver 1.0.8.5 and then flawlessly upgraded to 4.36 and new look mixer. Joy. Set ouput of card with Hammerfall DSP settings to +4db wink

Hope that is of interest and use. I hunted high and low last year to find out if ASUS z97-c was compatible with this older RME PCI card and now I can tell you all... it is... as there was nothing to tell me.

Farewell and be safe in a time of CoVid and catastrophic leadership by a couple of blond leaderless countries. Though one has come to its senses.