Morning all. I managed to get my new 11th Gen i5 Nuc up and running. I have an Akasa Turing TN but in two minds as to save money and send it back, or use it.
Is there a consensus as to when the Nuc fans become intolerable or can they be managed to stay quiet for years? The Turing TN May be unavailable so this makes the decision tricky.
I installed my i5 in August 2015 and it literally runs 24/7. Iāve blown out the dust on maybe 2 occasions, but otherwise still good, still quiet. I run ROCK, usually only 1 zone, and little or no dsp. All media is external, so it doesnāt really get warm.
Thanks and I think my experience will be similar. One zone and no DSP. Small library (10000 tracks) too. Iāll probably change a couple of bios settings for the fan and make sure roon only scans manually.
I have a NUC11TNHi7 in the standard case running RoonOS and Roon Server (ROCK). The device sits in my lounge located close to my lounge HiFi (so that I can connect it and my streamer to the same ethernet switch).
I usually use 2 or 3 - very occaisionally 4 - Roon endpoints with minimal DSP (No DSD, no upsampling - just, on some endpoints, some headphone/room correction.
I have occaisionally experimented with heavier DSP operations (DSD256 conversion, PCM upsampling) for some extended periods but only on one endpoint at a time.
Apart from the brief burst of fan when the device powers on, I have never heard the fan turn on. It sits quite happily in my lounge. In fact it was sitting there for about 5 months before my wife realised it was there 
- and then only because I was explained how the Roon elements worked together when she realised that shutting down the phone did not stop the audio playing to the lounge hifi.
Caviat: I have background analysis set to āthrottledā - so Roonās audio file analysis does not normally load the system heavily.
JADP - I have a NUC7I7BNH running 24/7 since 2017 and as others have said just occasionally blow out the dust. Only time I notice it is when everything is quiet in the house AND itās time to blow out the dust. If you let it go too long it may start shut down due to overheating, but that is rare.
I have set-up a reminder on my phone to clean it every six months.
B.S. JADP=Just another data pointā¦ 
Also worth mentioning that the Akasa fanless case would not make it any less necessary to periodically perform some dusting.
It should mean that you would only need to dust the exterior which is much easier than cleaning out the stock case.
As a downside, you would not have the fans turning on to tell you that it was time to do the dusting 
Mine have been whisper quiet since I built my ROCK NUC in 2017. So Iād say, the need for āfanlessā is vastly overstated.
Thanks for all your replies. Very helpful and Iāll be sending the Akasa back.
I just got the same NUC you have. Iām new to ROCK so Iām curious how long it can last without being turned off. I have 2 zones (1 used at a time). Also external files.
I have not turned mine off since I got it - 8 months ago. When I find out, Iāll let you know 
Iāve had a NUC 7i7BNH 16GB (running 24/7 on Windows 11 & rebooting every morning @ 05:00) since ~2018 and to be honest it was quite whiny.
I use it to run Roon, Plex Server & a couple of other Media-related programmes - but nothing particularly heavy.
After a couple of years Iād had enough of the noise (and yes, I cleaned the fan & even replaced it once) & invested in an AKASA case.
Everything was fine until a couple of months ago when the thermal-paste completely dried out & the CPU started to overheat & shut-down far too often.
I rebuilt it, new paste, a couple of additional heatsinks inside including on the RAM chips, and fingers-crossed itās now running fine again.
This is a good point. Thermal paste does often degrade after a set time period. I think, from memory, that if you look at the instructions on the paste that I use, it says to replace the paste every 4 years or less.
Iām also running a NUC 11 i5, but on the Newton case.
I wouldnāt ever consider going back to the original fan case.
The Akasa itās an investment for years, and in return you get no noise, no dust (at least in the internal components), and the peace of mind that you donāt have fans to break and cause overheating.
I keep mine running 24/7.
My NUC died after about 4 years of service. Just replaced with a new one. Due to my listening habits (often several days between sessions), and the appliance - like nature of ROCK, I modified the BIOS settings to āboot after power restoredā, and installed a smart plug. Now Google turns on ROCK when I am going to use Roon, and it automatically powers off at midnight each day if I happen to forget to shut it down. Backups set for 11:50 pm. I suspect that it should last indefinitely with drastically reduced hours nowā¦ I have noticed no issues with this strategy to date.
How does the smart plug turn it off, by simply cutting the power?
Just a thought but, depending on your library size and other factors you might want to give it more than 10 minutes to do the backup. Would hate to have it cut the power before it finishes??
I wondered about this as well.
Roon Os works, for the most part, from RAM (from reading other post on this forum) so from an OS point of view, this is probably not too unsafe (but I wouldnāt do it).
However, changes to the Roon database (as done, for example, by background analysis of added albums/tracks) would result in the database changes being written to the SSD. If this is interrupted by an abrupt power off, this could well leave the database in a very poor condition.
I donāt know if it would be kinder, but you can turn ROCK off via an http rest call, and turn it on via a WOL packet.
I do this from Home Assistant to turn mine off overnight (if no zones are playing).
I have a NUC8i7BEH which I have been using as a Roon ROCK server since July 2020. Over the last 6 months or so Iāve noticed some noise, though itās intermittent. It does sound like fan noise - I donāt think there are any other component in it that could make noise? There is an SSD inside which stores my music. I tried opening it up to clean the fan, though the fan seems impossibly hidden away?
The fan is underneath the motherboard; you need to take that out to get to the fan.