Cirrus7 fanless i7, will it work?

[mikeb]

Supported NUCs, and how the naming works: https://kb.roonlabs.com/Roon_Optimized_Core_Kit

[ScreenMachine (James)]

Thanks, that’s useful for how the naming works. It’s slightly confusing/out of date for supported NUCs, though -

The Best NUC for ROCK?

To be partly fair to the Knowledge Base it lists NUC7i7XXX as supported. So this includes NUC7i7DN*. [57%20am] In the other thread I linked above, @Katun rightly mentioned the KB was last updated before the 8th Gen NUC7i7DN* came on sale. So I asked Danny for confirmation, but never got a reply. Nice to have @brian confirm support though. I’m very very confident that’s not a NUC7i7BNH horse-power related issue. I’m sure if you raise it with @support they’ll look into it and sort it out…

[dabassgoesboomboom]

Hi James

Yes the NUC7i7DN** is supported.

The Best NUC for ROCK?

Yes, the NUC7i7DN* is supported. It’s what I’ve been using for my personal system for the past few months, too, and it has been trouble-free. Intel did a great job–4 cores/8 threads, but also great single-threaded performance (up to 4.2GHz IIRC), and all of that in a 15W TDP for the CPU. Incredible performance/watt.

I’m not in the UK but from a quick and dirty Google search it looks like it may be BLKNUC7I7DNH3E for the UK?

https://www.scan.co.uk/products/intel-nuc-7-kit-nuc7i7dnhe-i7-8650u-vpro-ddr4-so-dimm-m2-pcie-25-sata3-bay-intel-uhd-620-2x-hdmi-20

I’m not 100% sure so please do a look around at other authorised UK sellers to confirm.

Did you transplant the motherboard from the original case into the Akasa?

Yes that’s really all that’s involved. Taking the motherboard out of the original NUC case and putting it into the Akasa case, and just connecting the plugs etc. Instructions of what to connect to what come with the Akasa case.

By the way, Quiet PC UK (where I bought the Akasa case from) can build the entire thing for you, with the correct NUC… Just contact them. You would just need to do the software (ROCK) install yourself.

Hope that helps.

[ScreenMachine (James)]

Sean,

Thanks, very helpful - it looks like it was the 4 in the product code which was messing up the search in the U.K. - maybe the number part is regional? I searched for just NUC7i7DNHE and got a good number of results.

That’s good to know the case company can build it, would be great to just have to install ROCK!

[dabassgoesboomboom]

No problems James. Happy to be of help.

[ScreenMachine (James)]

Sean, did you put an internal music storage drive in your fanless build, or are you using an external HDD or NAS? I’m toying with the idea of a 1tb internal storage drive, if it won’t increase cooling requirements…?

[dabassgoesboomboom]

Hi James,

No I don’t use an internal drive for music storage.

I just use an external USB3.0 4TB Western Digital Passport for actual music storage.

I have a Synology DS918+ NAS but it’s only for offline backup, so it’s off and unplugged from mains power most of the time. When my NAS is on, it’s only to add any new files and to do health scans of the drives and to data integrity scans (Btrfs file system).

[ScreenMachine (James)]

Thanks. I’ve been running core on an old Windows laptop and using a Synology DS415play as my music store, but I don’t have a huge local library (mainly using Tidal for new music these days) so I was thinking of putting in a 1tb m.2 SSD - was just wondering if there were any heat implications, with this being a fanless build…

[wklie (Peter Lie)]

I don’t have a huge local library (mainly using Tidal for new music these days) so I was thinking of putting in a 1tb m.2 SSD

In case you run ROCK the m.2 is used for ROCK system only, cannot be used for storage of music.

[dabassgoesboomboom]

Good catch. I missed this part.

[ScreenMachine (James)]

Thanks Peter, I didn’t know there was only one m.2 slot in these. So I would just use an ordinary SATA III SSD for the storage drive?

[wklie (Peter Lie)]

Yes use SATA for music storage.

[Geoff_Coupe]

It doesn’t have to be an SSD for music storage; an ordinary SATA HDD will do equally well. The advantages of using SSD are a) silent operation and b) greater storage capacity in the same physical form factor. The disadvantage is that you pay a premium for SSD over HDD…

[ScreenMachine (James)]

Thanks geoff - I was looking at an SSD for storage to keep everything nice and silent.

[dabassgoesboomboom]

Something like this will work. Prices have come down a little the last few years (not as much as I thought but a little).

Samsung 860 Evo 1TB 2.5" SATA III 6GB/s V-NAND SSD MZ-76E1T0BW

It’s a larger capacity version of what I installed too:

The Best NUC for ROCK?

While I prefer to have my Roon Server outside of the listening room (like I had in my previous house), my current setup in my apartment needs to have my Roon Core inside my listening room unfortunately. So I’ve picked up the NUC7i7DNHE with an Akasa Plato X7D fanless case. It took a few hours to put together because I’m extremely slow but also because I triple checked all connections because I never want to open it again. The beauty with this is not just the fanless case with no moving parts …

[dabassgoesboomboom]

Ahh the Samsung price drops I’ve been waiting for the last few years are finally coming with the QVO line - coming soon.

Samsung 860 QVO 2TB 2.5" SATA III 6GB/s 4-Bit MLC V-NAND SSD MZ-76Q2T0BW

[ScreenMachine (James)]

Thanks, the first drive is a great price in the UK. The QVO doesn’t appear to be available in a 2TB in the UK yet.

[Katun (Сергей Михайлов)]

What is CPU frequency during playback?

[dabassgoesboomboom]

I don’t have it anymore so I can’t check.

[Stefan_Woll (Stefan Wöll)]

Anyone now really using a cirrus device? Can you recommend it? Or would you suggest something else?