Bee Link GS King X

Roon Software Discussion
1

Hi, I used to run my Roon core from my pc but it recently conked out. One major issue I had with my pc as a Roon core is that I usually had to make an effort to turn on the pc and keep it on while I’m in another part of the house which can be a hassle and sort of defeats the purpose of using Roon for multi room listening. I can’t just leave the pc on because of the power consumption and my wife keeps bugging me about it when she sees it on with no one in the room. I’m thinking about getting a Bee Link GS King X which I recently saw being advertised as a combination android box/NAS/hifi music player. I’m wondering if I would be able to use this as a Roon core? I figured as a NAS I could keep it on all the time without wasting too much power and with all the other functions, I could also hook it up to my home theater and use it for other things. I’m not much of a techie so I’m not too familiar with the hardware involved and diy/detailed set up requirements would probably be too much for me but here are the specs of the Bee Link that I found:

Updated Beelink GS-King X specifications:

  • SoC – Amlogic S922X-H hexa-core big.LITTLE processor with 4x Arm Cortex A73 cores @ up to 2.2 GHz , 2x Arm Cortex A53 cores @ 1.8 GHz , Arm Mali-G52MP4 GPU @ 846MHz; 12nm process

  • System Memory – 4GB LPDDR4 RAM

  • Storage – 64GB eMMC flash, microSD card slot, 2x 3.5″ SATA HDD drive bay for up to 32TB storage in total

  • Video Output – HDMI 2.1 up to 4K @ 60 Hz with HDCP 2.2

  • Video – AVE-10 engine with 4K UHD H.265/VP9/AVS2 video decoding up to 60 fps, Dolby Vision, Advanced HDR10, HDR10+, HLG, and PRIME HDR high-dynamic range support

  • Audio

    • 2x ESS9018 audio DACs, 4x Ricor RT6862 audio amplifiers
    • 3.5mm headphone jack
    • Stereo audio via RCA jacks and 6.35mm balanced output jacks
    • Digital audio via HDMI
    • Stereo analog audio via 3.5mm AV jack
    • Optical S/PDIF
    • DTS Listen + Dolby Audio

  • Connectivity – Gigabit Ethernet, dual-band 802.11 b/g/n/ac 2×2 MIMO WiFi 5, Bluetooth 4.1

  • USB – 3x USB 3.0 ports, 1x USB 2.0 OTG port (Type-A Blue)

  • Misc – Power button; the Skull eyes are LEDs that change color from Green to Blue depending on status.

  • Power Supply – 19V DC / 3A power barrel jack

  • Dimensions – 16.5 x 11.8 x 10.6 cm

  • Weight – 1.073 kg

The price seems decent too at around 250 dollars compared to what I would spend if I get new components for my pc so this seems like an attractive option but I wanted to make sure that roon would run well on it first since I have no experience with NAS, android boxes, or Arm SoC

2

There is no Roon Server software package for ARM Chips available.

3

It needs to have an Intel (or AMD) x86 processor. Minimum i3 or equivalent but personally I think you can get away with a Pentium processor. That should bring the price down.

4

Thanks for the info guys. I guess it won’t be a viable option after all. I’m curious though because it seems from the forums that others are able to run roon from their NAS. Are they using a separate pc for their roon core or is there some different hardware in the other NAS brands that allow them to run it as a roon core?

5

Roon Server on NAS

6

Those have Intel processors not ARM and are generally still under powered for big libraries and if you want to run dsp or a lot of endpoints. You don’t get the best performance but they work. Not sure it will save much in power over a small pc like a NuC.

7

I had a different BeeLink mini PC and it ran a version of Windows 10 with proprietary Beelink drivers - so every time there was a Windows upate, you had to get a special version from Beelink for the ethernet and audio to work. Thsi wasn’t mentioned pre purchase. Total pain in the butt. Then it bricked during one update.
Won’t buy from them again.

8

Thanks a lot everyone. You guys saved me 250 bucks