It is very tempting to get more horsepower.
Get the biggest processor you can get, or can afford.
It’s a long tradition, partially because those of us who have grown up with PCs always complained that they were underpowered.
And now we have phones instead, and eagerly await the next super-duper phone.
And hey, let’s admit it’s a guy thing. I drive a ridiculously overpowered car. And Tesla has its “ludicrous mode” acceleration. Vroom!
But for our music players, I think it is unwise. I like to get the smallest, lowest powered device that will do the job, for the Roon core, and for the endpoints. (And for everything else, as I discussed here.)
I remember reading about a super-fancy music server, with multiple copper shielded internal boxes, and multiple isolated LPS and a thick front panel, everything just so, cost more than a Hyundai — and then they put four 7200 rpm RAIDed spinning drives in there!
This horsepower problem is widespread. Ten years ago, at Microsoft, we did an investigation of the utilization level of corporate computers, both desktops and servers, and found it was less than 10%. Part reason is that people don’t know what the app will need so they over-provision, and in those days it took many months to budget and order and build and deliver and install and provision a server so you don’t want to risk undershooting. Virtualization, and now Docker style containers have improved things.
We shouldn’t fall in that trap, either over-provisioning-to-be-safe, or watch-this-vroom.
I had an i5 NUC. I replaced it with a Nucleus. It’s fine. Hi-res with a 131k convolution shows a power factor of 20X. Quiet and small and cool.
Ludicrous power would not be an improvement.
