Intel NUC7I7BNHX1 for Roon Rock

Hello
Plan to use Intel NUC dedicated for Roon Rock, so, may I use model NUC7I7BNHX1 for that?
Only diffirence of recommended NUC7i7BNH is 16GB Intel Optane Memory M.2 module pre-installed on NUC7I7BNHX1
If Rock use only 8 Gb of this memory, its ok
I’ll worry about correct Rock functionality on NUC7I7BNHX1
Thanks

There are two potential issues. According to the Intel FAQs on Optane, they cannot be configured as a bootable drive, so you would need an additional drive in the 2.5" SATA slot. Even more of a concern for ROCK, the use of Optane currently requires running a piece of software that requires Windows 10 64-bit to set up the caching on the paired conventional SATA drive. While I hope Intel will eventually enable this pairing to be done in the BIOS, there is nothing on the Intel page for the NUC7i7BNHX1 that is the case.

In that case, the Optane drive in the NUC7i7BNHX1 could be used on a conventional Windows installation of Roon or RoonServer, but ROCK is linux and currently incompatible with Optane (though this may change).

More careful reading of the FAQ indicates that Win10 is only required if you want the Optane module to be configured as a cache for a primary SATA drive. It is apparently possible, though not officially supported, to use an Optane drive as a bootable device (last time I read the FAQ a few months ago, this was not the case ROCK + Intel Optane storage for Kaby Lake NUCs?). In that case a secondary SATA 2.5" drive would be unnecessary (if your Roon database is <16GB). See last item in above FAQ link. It is unclear if the standard Linux NVMe drivers would play well with Optane, but it is possible.

If you already own the NUC7i7BNHX1 and are willing to try a ROCK install, I would be interested to learn the result.

My ROCK uses a 250GB NVMe drive…its a NUC7i7BNH now ROCK itself uses next to nothing for the CORE system, the database is currently running some 150,000 tracks and ROCK web screen is indicating 97% of 227 GB available. The RoonServer folder where the database is held is ~6.7GB

If you NUC with Opthane option is not installed with any OS yet then just get ROCK and give it a try.

Hello Stas.
Did you give a try to instal Rock with the optane memory ?

Danny doesn’t think much of using Optane…

I wouldn’t go that far… I think very highly of Intel’s Xpoint technology… I just look at the current implementation (Optane as a boot drive hybrid system) and see something that doesn’t apply to this space at the moment.

As the NUC7i5BNH was not available anymore where I live, I ordered a NUC7i5BNHX1.
The NUC7i5BNHX1 is delivered with an optane 16 Go SSD M2 memory.
As I didn’t buy yet an SSD, I tried to install ROCK on the Optane.
I confirm it works perfectly. The NUC see the Optane as a normal bootable SSD M2 Memory.

I have now few lost connection issues but I guess there is no link with the optane memory.

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Neat… they must have updated the BIOS to support that… it wasn’t possible when I tried.

It’s still not a good machine… with 16gb, you get less than12gb for the Roon DB. That’s fine for pretty small libraries, but wont scale.

With a 4417 albums and 58163 tracks, Rock indicates that I have 60% of 9 GB available.

yah… for now :slight_smile: – wait until new metadata comes down, improvements flow, and images get larger.