Intel® NUC Board NUC5i3MYBE

Roon Software Discussion ROCK
1

I acquired a fanless intel nuc with a Intel® NUC Board NUC5i3MYBE does anyone know if it is compatible with Roon ROCK?

2

Yes it is (https://kb.roonlabs.com/Roon_Optimized_Core_Kit#More_about_ROCK_39_s_hardware_support_).

3

Beware that you cannot use NVMe to boot ROCK on NUC5.

You’ll have to use SATA.

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4

I have a NUC5i3MYBE as a ROCK server, with 8GB RAM and 240GB SATA SSD.
Runs flawlessly with a library of 86k tracks/6.5k albums, playing into upto 5 zones/endpoints.

I even benchmarked it, with a Convolution file for DSP on all zones, where it was upsampling one zone to PCM to DSD254, Upsampling another Zone to 24/192, another was downconverting DSD256 to DSD64, another was downconverting 24/352 all simultaneously.
The processing speed factors while doing this compared to a NUC7i7, and other NUC6 products (there is a matrix of these results in another thread)
But you have to remember that the single thread processing from Intel hasn’t really improved between the 5th Gen CPUs, 6th & 7th (See chart below comparing the i3 in a NUC5, NUC6, NUC7 & NUC8.
The NUCs can‘t run the higher clock speeds due to limited cooling and power supplies, hence a 15W TPW (sacrificed in the NUC8 as they had to deliver some performance gain until they could deliver the 10th Gen CPUs), and for ROCK you don’t need the onboard WiFi or Bluetooth, or increased GPU for dual 4K displays etc. added in the 6th & 7th Generations.

So you have a good platform for a ROCK server there, as good any NUC6 or NUC7 unit.

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5

Just got it today 256gb m.2 ssd and 16gb ram. Runs ROCK well. Thanks for the info.

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6

I’ve just ordered a NUC5i3RYH which I assume to be the same hardware.

Is there still an issue with NVMe on 5th gen NUCs?

Is there any benefit to running RAM in dual-channel or will 1 8Gb stick do?

7

Assume NVMe doesn’t work. Use SATA instead, the performance is no different. Dual channel doesn’t make much difference but I did it anyway on both my machines.

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For ROCK, I suggest using 1 stick of 8GB, so you have room for upgrade to 16GB if your music library becomes very large in the future, or if you decide to switch to Windows (and use it for other purposes).