Cost of repairs to a Nucleus

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1

Am I out of touch or is a quoted price from Roon for the replacement of a motherboard at £1,350 totally crazy?

That is practically the price of a new unit to replace a motherboard that bricked after their last update. I just want people to be aware of this price-gouging before they commit to a Nucleus. I can buy an Apple Mac Mini and a NAS for the price of the repair.

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2

Fellow user here, didn’t buy into nucleus …
… but a replacement NUC MB can be sourced from other suppliers, ROCK installed oneself and then upgraded remotely by support to resemble a nucleus again, saving a ton of money.

And it’s highly unlikely that a software upgrade bricked the MB - rather it’s death was very likely an unfortunate coincidence of events…

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While it is true that you can source your own replacement motherboard, as far as I understand, you HAVE to use the exact same motherboard and revision number or else it won’t fit right in the case. So, you can look at the motherboard part and version number in your search for a replacement, if you go that route.

I’d suggest, just get a new Intel NUC, load ROCK, restore your database, and enjoy. Also, forget the NAS as a location for music that is being played, it is great as a backup copy though and a location for database backups. With Roon, all music should be kept local to the server for smoothest and less head-achy operation.

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Out of touch with UK prices but that would surely buy a new NUC (while you can) and some change for an internal SSD as @Rugby suggests

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Good advice.

My suggestion for ROCK PC:

  • Get a NUC model with i5 or i7 - search the exact model here in Roon forum for people’s success reports

  • If not using HDMI audio output, you may use NUC12 or slightly older ones. NUC13 is not in the certified list but some people reported success.

  • If using HDMI audio output, no newer than NUC11 should be used.

  • (Reuse your 8GB RAM or upgrade to) 16GB RAM

  • Get the smallest capacity version of Samsung 970 (not 980 not 990) as boot drive

  • Make sure the NUC has space for a 2 .5" music drive

  • If fanless chassis is desired, check for chassis compatibility against specific NUC boards / models

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@Chris_Townsend - I’ve sent you a pm.

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