NUC7i5BNK (Kaby Lake i5-7260U, M.2 only, 15 W TDP)
HyperX Impact 4 GB DDR4 2133 MHz DIMM x 2
Samsung 250 GB 970 EVO NVMe M.2 SSD
Listed for sale is the Intel NUC seventh generation i5 variant that Roon officially supports for ROCK installation. This is the slimline M.2 SSD only chassis – no 2.5" drive SATA slot. The NUC has been running ROCK or Windows 10 for the past 18 months. Condition is like new with protective film still on face and top plates.
I am retaining my previous WD 128 GB SSD with ROCK install for future usage, and as new 64-128 GB SSDs have become difficult to source, the buyer benefits from a brand new Samsung 250 GB SSD upgrade. That additional storage headroom greatly opens the possibility of using the NUC as a multipurpose PC, so the NUC will come preinstalled with the buyer’s choice of ROCK or Windows 10. If Windows 10, the OS does not require activation – continuing to run unactivated or obtaining an activation key will be left up to the buyer.
If the buyer is not computer inclined, I can configure the BIOS to suit preferences – high performance or low power, quiet fan or best cooling, etc.
Yes, I routinely ran 96 kHz upsampling with headroom adjustment, parametric EQ, and volume leveling. No DSD upsampling, though, only DSD64 downsampling. I kept notes of some Roon processing speeds and will post them when I return home this evening.
When I tested Roon core processing speeds across several computers that I had on hand, the following were the notes that I logged for the NUC7i5:
DSD64 -> 44.1 kHz with volume leveling: 9x
96 kHz -> 44.1 kHz with volume leveling: 16x
44.1kHz -> 96 kHz with headroom adjustment, volume leveling, and parametric EQ: 17x
DSD64 -> 88.2 kHz with headroom adjustment, volume leveling, and parametric EQ: 11x
All of the above were the lowest steady state baseline figures that I observed. Roon processing speeds actually increased when other processor intensive activities – such as audio analysis – were running in the background. Presumably, this was due to variable CPU clock frequency increases as loading increases.
And if I recall correctly, all of the above observations took place with the power profile set to balanced or low power. At the cost of energy consumption, the high performance setting likely could increase processing speeds.
NUC7i5 is still available. $350. But not for long. If no buyer by the end of the month, then the NUC will get repurposed as a desktop computer or shipped off to a relative.
