Is a Nucleus One better than a Nucleus Rev B

Roon Software Discussion Nucleus
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Is a Nucleus One better than a Nucleus Rev B (which I find slow even with 16GB ram/16K tracks.) ? Thanks!

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I don’t have a direct answer to your question, but one limitation on the speed of the Nucleus Rev A and B is the SSDs they use, which you can upgrade. See this thread: Tested the Nucleus factory SSD vs latest Samsung 980 Pro

I run ROCK on 6i5 and 11i3 NUCs with Samsung NVMe SSDs (6k albums / 115k tracks). The user experience is snappy on both.

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I use a SAMSUNG 870 EVO SATA III SSD 2TB 2.5" SSD (R/W Speed up to 560/530 MB/s, MZ-77E2T0B/AM) with Crucial RAM 8GB DDR4 2666 MHz CL19 Laptop Memory.
Will check around to see what improvements can be made with the SDD.

Thanks for your note!

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The Rev B has a 8th gen i3 I believe. Its single core performance is now outmatched by newer, lower power CPU’s when compared to the current i3 range.

So a 8th gen i3 could have similar performance to a N100 for example.

16gb RAM for 16K tracks will not give a faster performance. For 16k tracks 4gb RAM is suffice.

In my early days of exploring Roon I ran it on a J series CPU. It work and was usable to a point.

I have ran Roon on a N100 device with 8gb RAM. Its performance with some DSP was ok and that was with 100k tracks.

Known things that can slow down Roon, which could make you think the hardware is the issue can be;
• unidentified albums/tracks
• corrupt albums/tracks

Unidentifiable albums/tracks has been known to cause a single CPU core to max out at a 100%. Obviously on a Nucleus you cannot see this occurring, but running Roon Server on a lightweight Linux OS like DietPi you can.

With a tablet or desktop client you can check for corrupt files via library > slipped files in the settings.

If I run Roon on my 8th gen i5 (slightly better single core performance to an i3) with all albums/tracks identified and no corrupted files, then Roon runs perfectly fine and I can apply 10+ band PEQ and volume levelling without a hitch.

So what else could affect a fanless computer? Potentially dried out thermal paste. Maybe worth getting it serviced.

But to answer your question I shall answer in a different way. Don’t buy a Nucleus One. Buy something of equivalent spec for far less, or buy something with a better spec similar to the Titan but not for Titan money.

Depends on your preference and needs. A little tinkering can get Roon Rock running very quickly and will be like having a Nucleus device.

A bit more tinkering and you could install DietPi and install Roon Server on it. This opens doors to other possibilities.

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Whether you run with an SSD or a mechanical HDD, this will not give greater performance. Reading music files from either type of storage will not present a speed issue.

The 870 Evo might be a few years old now, but unless it has faults it will be perfectly fine. Corrupt files may indicate a fault, but corrupt files is something Roon can get wrong.

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Sure thing.

The thread I linked is about upgrading the system drive. The speed of the drive that holds your music files won’t affect the user experience.

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Thanks very much for this note. I will check for corrupted files first.
Much appreciate the time and input.
~P

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Totally agree, a better capable m.2 for the OS will help :+1:

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