My 7th gen NUC, ROON ROCK, has turned up its toes. I did some troubleshooting, but it was really hot when I unplugged it to take it apart. Best to let it go before it starts a fire. So what do I do now? It’s Black Friday. Seems an ideal time to find something new. I’d appreciate your thoughts and suggestions for reasonably priced Roon server options, please.
(Could I get a new NUC and directly switch the M.2 and external drives into that? If ROCK doesn’t engage with the motherboard that sounds like it might work, but maybe not.) TYA. 
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Have you cleaned the fan and air vents to remove all the dust? Is the fan working at all?
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Nucleus One or Mac Mini.
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That was a good thought. Thank you. I’ve done that. I’d replaced the fan about 3 years ago. I cleaned out all the dust, and I can feel a breeze when it’s on, but it’s not finding my server. I suspect the M.2 is fried.
I have a Mac Mini i5 from 2018 I still use. I guess I could upgrade and switch it to a headless ROCK … I’m hesitant because of the lack of io on the newer ones … Seems overkill to put a brand new Mac Mini into service as a server, and yet … hmm. Thank you. Have you used the Nucleus One? I remember quite a lot of complaints about it, and it doesn’t seem to ship with any storage, or am I mistaken about that?
Hilariously, that clear out seems to have finally taken effect. It might have been doing a database update or something similar, as I had nothing for half an hour and now she’s back! Disaster averted. Thank you!
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I have 4 Roon servers, but not a Nucleus One. I have a Nucleus (Rev 2), Mac Mini (late 2014), NucBox G5, and Dell XPS 15 laptop.
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If your NUC was running hot before you cleaned the fans etc then, since it is quite an old model and assuming you have not done it before, you might consider disassembling it to separate the heatsink from the processor, cleaning the heatsink base and the processor surface with some iso-propyl alcohol and then re-assembling with some new thermal paste - I use Artic MX-4 but other pastes are available.
Just avoid the liquid metal pastes (like Thermal Grizzly - Conductonaut) unless you are very comfortable doing this. Whilst they perform very well, liquid metal pastes are much more difficult to apply and the consequences of getting it wrong are much more severe (they are electrically conductive whilst normal thermal pastes are not) and, should you need to, they make future disassembly and re-assembly more difficult as well. A NUC used as a RoonOS Roon Server is unlikely to be stressed to the point that the additional performance of such pastes becomes necessary. These pastes are aimed more at the desktop overclocking market.
This procedure should typically be done every 5-6 years or so with any computing device (including appliance type devices like the Nucleus devices) because the effectiveness of the thermal paste degrades over time. The best pastes are supposed to last up to 8 years - but I prefer to err on the safe side so, even with these pastes, I will re-apply every 6 years or so.
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Thank you. I’ll look into this. There was a slab of the thermal putty stuff that came with the new fan, and I installed it when I installed that about 3 years ago. Probably not as good as stuff bought separately. I’ll follow your advice and not bother with the stuff for overclocking. I appreciate you taking the time to reply in such detail. Thank you.
I had a NUC 7i7 that died a year or so ago & I replaced it with a NUC 13i7.
And I also regularly went through the disassembly / cleaning / new thermal paste exercise, which worked fine until I tried a fanless case, which didn’t seem to do the job & ultimately (I believe) cooked something critical.
I removed the RAM & SSD (including the Windows 11 installation) and simply plugged it in to the new NUC, crossed my fingers, and it worked!
I’m sticking with a Windows NUC instead of Rock as I want to run e.g. Plex too, and perhaps other Programmes - such a small & powerful device can & should be able to be used for other things on my home network without any strain.
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Thank you. That’s interesting. I once tried shifting a hard drive between an i3 and an i7 NUC and had to spend a long time on the phone with the lovely people from Microsoft to sort out transferring my Windows license to the new motherboard. We got there in the end. I run ROCK now. There’s no Windows installation, so maybe the direct swap into a 13i3 would work? I’m tempted. There are some features you can get on the 13, and I’m assuming one day the 7i3 will really die and won’t come back to life. I appreciate your detailed reply. Thank you.
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That is really helpful advice about the thermal paste. My NUC runs quite cool where it is situated but using some room correction stuff, which I am about to try, would make things a little warmer I’m sure
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When my NUC8i3 overheated, the M.2 failed, so this is possible.
Given its age, I’d probably recycle and buy a new NUC. However, if you simply want to run Roon OS, consider the Nucleus One, which doesn’t cost significantly more than DIY, and has 10% off at the moment.
This will be good for 100k tracks although I’d probably up the memory to 8 GB. There’s little point buying an i7 for Roon as the latest i3 is on par with a NUC7i7.
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When dealing with PCM data, even running at quite high sample rates (I have gone as far as 384kS/s 24bit ), room correction does not usually stress my NUC (a NUC11TNHi7) to a significant degree.
By contrast, attempting to do the same on a high bit rate DSD file (DSD256 and above) will work it very hard unless I convert to PCM.
You may be able to do this - certainly trying it won’t hurt. However there are a number of things that you need to consider:
- The NUC 7i3 installation may be using BIOS boot (is it on RoonOS build 259 and stays on build 259 if you use the ‘Reinstall’ feature in the WebUI?). A NUC 13i3 will likely come with the BIOS set to use UEFI boot. If this is so then the new NUC will not boot from the old SSD unless you first enter the BIOS is set the boot type to ‘BIOS Boot’.
- I believe that RoonOS build 259, which is the most modern version that supports BIOS boot, has problems with the HDMI support on 12th and 13th generation NUCs. This has been fixed in more recent RoonOS builds but they only support UEFI boot.
- The latest UEFI only builds of RoonOS include Tailscale support which could be significant if you want to use ARC but have problems with port forwarding (usually due to ISP infrastructure).
Considering points 2 and 3, if your current 7i3 NUC is using BIOS boot, then, on upgrading to a 13i3 (or any recent NUC), rather than reusing the old SSD and the RoonOS installation on it, it may be better to reinstall using ROCK using the modern UEFI boot method. This will give access to the more recent builds of RoonOS that only support UEFI boot.
This would appear not to be the case since @Fiona_Thurn has already stated that the NUC is back up and running:
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Ah, I hadn’t read that far. That’s good new for @Fiona_Thurn.
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Exactly! Thank you. What a clear explanation of the boot differences between 7 and 13. Now I get it. I had been incredibly frustrated last year when I tried to update my ROCK and, exactly as you observe, I’m stuck on 259. I eventually worked out it was because of the age of my 7, but I wasn’t sure why. Now I know. That feels great! It was the Tailscale integration in the new version I was after, as I’m hamstrung by a G5, sim driven modem, that has all of Vodafone’s considerable “protections” making ARC impossible for me. The new machine would open up ARC for me, which would be well worthwhile.
May I ask another question, please, oh wise one? Given I should install fresh, could I wipe the M.2 and repurpose it in the new build? I understand the issues with the BIOS boot, but I’d like to make use of the hardware.
Thank you very much! I learnt something today. 
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If you want to update your RoonOS install to the latest build (271?) in order to support Tailscale, you may be able to do it without purchasing a new NUC by changing the BIOS to use UEFI mode. If have not, personally, done this with a NUC 7i3 - but a quick search leads me to believe that it may should be possible (at least if your NUC is a NUC7i3BNx) although it’s possible that you may need to perform a BIOS update.
The release notes for the latest BIOS for a number of 7th gen NUC models specifically mention UEFI boot:
If you can change your NUC to use UEFI boot, you can then:
- Perform a Roon Database Backup
- Change the NUC to use UEFI boot (this will make your existing installation non-bootable)
- Reinstall RoonOS and Roon Server using the latest ROCK install image (linked from https://help.roonlabs.com/portal/en/kb/articles/rock-install-guide#3_Download) making sure that you install to the NVME ssd if you also have a 2.5in SATA SSD installed for local library storage. It may be easier to disconnect the SATA SSD during this step so that there is no doubt.
- After new install has completed, reconnect the internal 2.5in SSD if you disconnected in order to perform the ROCK install.
- Use the ‘Reinstall’ facility in the WebUI to update to the latest version of RoonOS (and the latest Roon Server software).
- Using a Roon Client, at the login prompt, you should see an option to restore a backup (without loging in). Use this to restore from the backup created in step 1.
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Thank you! Fabulous. That’s very helpful. Unfortunately, my NUC is an Intel i3BNH, not the ASUS. I think that was the hurdle I hit last time. I thought I could sort it out, but I was just one step lower than I needed to be and in the wrong eco system. I’ll have an explore now I have your excellent directions. Greatly appreciated. Thank you.
P.S. That was my sloppy reading. I found the file to update the BIOS. Thank you. I have a new project! I’ll get to this this afternoon and let you know how it goes. Hooray!
But absolutely no difference in the Roon Server functionality provided between these versions
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Apart from the integration of Tailscale, which is key as I love ARC, but can’t currently use it.
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