Having built and sold a few fanless NUCs suitable for ROCK here (as well as building a couple to order) - I’m now in the process of building two more and I wanted give any potential UK buyers give a heads up in case anyone is looking for a particular spec.
There are options over cases (the normal Akasa Turing - or the low profile Akasa Plato), CPU (I have an 8i7 and an 8i5), memory (8, 16 or 32G - in 2 cards for optimum performances) and internal media storage (an additional SSD of up to 8Tb).
They will have correct power supplies (from Intel’s UK distributer) - as well as new SSDs and memory as needed).
The 8th generation NUCs are particularly well suited for Roon - they have faster cpus that the later 10th generation - and are now well priced compared to current models. The 8i5 performs at the same level as the 7i7 in the Roon Nucleus plus - and the 8i7 used to be described by Roon as the best NUC they’d tested.
Costs will be in the region of GBP 550-700 (excluding media storage) depending on spec (plus £20 shipping).
So if you’ve looking for a specific spec - please send me a message.
Otherwise I will post once I’ve build and tested what I think makes sense.
I’m building these as an enthusiast - but I take it seriously - and do everything I can to make these great machines.
I’m also happy to help the buyers get these installed and working if needed.
This is not entirely true. There are a lot of assumptions in these statements.
The CPU performance stats that can be found online shows that single core performance is pretty similar, so the decision is more of a “how many zone’s are you planning” and then decide between 4 or 6 CPU Cores.
And when it comes to transplanting these into a fanless chassi, the 15w TDP of the Gen 10 CPU’s are very welcome, and will be a better fit in all aspects. The Gen10 are significantly leaner on heat for a similar performance.
Still, real life ROCK performance does not display any advantage for the Gen8 i7 whatsoever, rather the other way around.