Thank you
I guess the best thing is to inquire and ask the provider. I am looking at Cirrus from Germany (if they ship to the States)
Hi all,
I am also planning to buy an intel nuc for roon core (Rock OS will be used). Likely will go to the NUC8I7BEH.
How many ram should I buy? 8G or 16G?
For the m2 SSD, I planned to buy a 256Gb.
As all my music files were saved in a NAS (Synology DS218+), should I additionally buy a harddisk for this intel nuc?
8GB unless you are approaching 300k tracks or more.
Thank you. Can I only install a m2 SSD for database? and not installing a harddisk as all my music files are saved in a NAS.
Yes I believe so. You can buy a m.2 128GB SSD.
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I have the NUC8I7BEH with 16GB ram, Samsung 250 GB m.2 and 1 TB Sata internal SSD.
I’ve read on this site that it’s best to use an internal Sata drive in the NUC for your music and the NAS for backups.
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And why an i7 - what’s your requirement re library size, required DSP etc.
Have you read through this thread? List Your NUC Capabilities Here
Hello!
I have to buy an Intel Nuc, I am undecided whether to buy a NUC8i5BEH or a NUC10. How long is the normal timing for supporting a new NUC?
Thank you
Just because I am planning to use the DSP re-sampler to up-sample to DSD256 and also the head room management. Is it over powered if using i7?
It sort of depends on what you mean by ‘support’.
People have already installed Roon on a 10th Generation NUC.
If you are installing it with Windows it will almost certainly work. But you will be something of a guinea pig.
Even though Roon first ‘supported’ the 8th Generation Nuc, it was suspended for a while because people were having difficulties installing ROCK. Even though it is again supported, the documentation for installing ROCK on an 8th Generation Nuc is pretty spotty. It doesn’t seem to fit with a user’s experience with that generation of BIOS. But it runs just fine and always have.
If you will worry about having problems on a 10th Gen Nuc before Roon blesses it, it could be a while (months). If you are comfortable with a small amount if Risk, it’s probably safe to get it now.
Frankly, I doubt you’ll get any useful performance gain with the 10th Gen Nuc. 8th Gen is way more than capable for 90+% of uses. Based on what I’ve learned, I’d save some money and get an 8th Gen machine.
Not really over-powered. An i3 can probably do that too, and it’s questionable how much of a difference an i7 would have, if any.
For sure, the time the CPU is stressed the most is when you are doing DSD upsampling AND DSP at the same time. That is what you are talking about doing. In Simon’s test, his i3 did everything my i7 could do. Both will crap out with a high degree of DSD upsampling with DSP added. I’m sure there is a place where the performance of the i3 and i7 will separate, but we could not find it.
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May I know what kind of difficulties will come across if I want to use the Intel NUC 8th generation to install Rock OS?
I think the difference between the I3, I5 and I7 probably shows up most during the Roon upgrades. With the ones I’ve done on the NUC8I7BEH the upgrades completed almost in the blink of an eye. Or just a few seconds start to finish. It was surprisingly quick. Don’t know about the I3/I5 in that regard. You probably won’t notice any difference with normal Roon activity, as others have indicated.
I don’t recall any issues with the 8th gen setup, but I did have an issue with the sata drive not showing up initially. That was a cable seating issue, small connectors, small space, old fingers.
Read the install guide completely before you start, there are several documents for that as I recall, and go over it several times, if need be, to make sure you know in advance what the outcome of each step is. I’ve never done one before, was very nervous about it. I took my time and got it done on the first try.
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The update performance is limited by the I/O performance mostly by SSD and internet. It’s fast everywhere regardless of NUC.
As listed in my benchmark tests, I upconverted to DSD128 as this was the max for my endpoint.
However this was possible on a NUC5i3, when serving other zones also undertaking DSP.
In terms of core processing, there is very little different in the Intel Generations for the CPU chips used in the NUCs, given they are the low TDP versions - check out the table in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_CPU_microarchitectures
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I thought everything was pretty easy except for the part where you configure BIOS for ROCK:
https://kb.roonlabs.com/ROCK:_Updating_and_Configuring_BIOS_On_Your_NUC
My recollection was that the steps involved in enabling USB boot did not reflect what the instructions said would happen. However, everyone eventually gets through that process. The Roon Community and this forum also have information to help you through this.
Other than those specific steps (about 15% of the overall process, at most), everything else was simple, even if you don’t know what the instructions mean!
I don’t read that anyone installed Rock on NUC10. I understand that they installed Roon on a NUC10 pc with Windows.
I would like nuc10i5fnh or nuc10i5fnk because it is newer in case of resale, it heats up less and with 4 cores instead of 2. I would like to buy a Akasa fanless chassis.
By buying a NUC10 I could use it as a Plex server for video transcoding and bittorrent servers.
NUC10 supports 64GB ram, usb-c, DDR4-2666, faster video card.
If you make sure that I can install both ROCK and Windows + roon I buy the NUC10, and then I’ll think about how to use it later.
If instead ROCK can be installed only on NUC8 then I buy that and then if I want I will put Windows.
From what I have read, Rock is better than Windows 10 (no windows server core) for audio because it is more optimized and has less active processia and perhaps better performing USB drivers I think.
In terms of sound quality, it would be very hard to distinguish ROCK from Windows. I’ve run both and don’t recall a sonic difference. There are innumerable other things that could make as much (or as little) a difference here, like moving your listening position up or back 10 inches. It’s minor.
The primary advantage of ROCK is it’s simplicity. It only runs Roon. It updates automatically and just about never has to be interacted with. Mine is in my basement and I almost never see or touch it. Roon performance is very snappy, especially with an internal drive for music. It’s free, too.
The primary disadvantage of ROCK is it’s simplicity, It only runs Roon. Nothing else. In some cases a DAC may require a specific USB driver that runs on Windows and isn’t part of the Linux build in Roon. This is not common, but for those people ROCK isn’t an option.
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If this is what you want to do, why are you asking about ROCK? ROCK is closed, you can’t install/run any other programs on it.
Maybe you don’t read what I write or maybe I explained myself wrong. It is clear that if I can I want to have everything! (win + roon).
But if I have to choose, I prefer to have the highest possible audio quality. And I understand that rock is the right way. If it is the same, I evaluate. If I have a nuc that supports Rock, then I can always decide in the future to install Win + Roon. If I buy a nuc10, I install Win + roon and I see that I don’t like it, from what I understand I can’t install Rock, but I will have to wait for it to be supported. So I have to understand if the audio quality is the same with Rock or with Windows, and if I choose a nuc10, how long is it expected Rock will work in case I change my mind. Otherwise I choose the shortest way, a NUC8 and then decide whether Win or Rock and I can change my mind over time, but I think Nuc8 will not go well for 4k HDR with Plex, that’s why I would prefer to go on nuc10. But my top priority right now is roon, sound quality and stability.
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