I have an opportunity to purchase a used Nucleus Plus for a reasonable price. Would it still be a good choice considering the new Nucleus One model? Is it still fully supported and able to run the current version of the Roon software?
I currently host Roon on my Macbook Air M1, which has generally worked well, but it can sometimes be frustrating to handle frequent IOS updates. A turnkey set and forget device would be a welcome improvement.
Appreciate any guidance!
The Nucleus Plus can run the latest Roon Server application and has more memory (8GByte) than a Nucleus One (4 GByte) so should cope better with large libraries.
With smaller libraries, I would imagine that performance would be similar. The processor is a much older generation but, within that generation, it is a more premium device with a better memory and cache architecture than the processor in the Nucleus One (the Titan is a different story).
However, unlike the Nucleus One, the Nucleus Plus is limited to build 259 of RoonOS (the minimal Linux employed by Nucleus and Rock devices). This means that there is no way to run Tailscale on the Nucleus Plus in order to allow the use of Roon ARC when your ISP service is provisioned using CG-NAT which can complicate such scenarios. By contrast, the Nucleus One and the Nucleus Titan fully support the latest versions of RoonOS and so can run Tailscale directly.
Also, the newest Nucleus Plus device is likely to be at least two years old now with many being considerably older. As a consequence, unless you know the age of the one you are purchasing, I would assume that it is old enough (about 6 years) that the thermal paste bonding the processor to the heatsink may be starting to break down. Therefore, for continued long term reliable service, I would seriously consider, disassembling any purchased Nucleus Plus device and reassembling it with a fresh, good quality thermal paste in order to ensure that the processor and system SSD continue to run without overheating - especially as RoonOS does not provide any way of monitoring processor temperatures during operation.
All of your advice is good Wade, but this is actually wrong. The component Roon Software which is deployed separate from Roon Os to Nuclei devices does perform thermal control and throttling.
So, if thermal paste does dry out and loose efficiency the software would throttle CPU to avoid overheating.
RoonOS does indeed allow thermal throttling to occur. But that is not what I meant. RoonOS provides no way for the user to monitor temperatures or even, indeed, the state of thermal throttling. Thus, a RoonOS device, if left unmaintained over a long period can have its performance degraded (possibly quite dramatically in extreme cases) due to thermal throttling without the cause being brought to the users attention.
For devices with forced air cooling (fans) including the Nucleus One, the maintenance required is, for the most part, simply making sure, periodically, that the fans and ducts are clear of dust. For fanless devices, like the Nucleus, Nucleus Plus and the Nucleus Titan, there is less regular maintenance but, as they get older, the thermal performance will still degrade due to the ageing of the thermal compound used to conduct heat away from the processor.
Modern thermal compounds (and pads) are typically good for between 5 and 8 years. Thus, one rather hopes that Nucleus One and Titan devices will not yet need any significant attention. The Nucleus and Nucleus Plus devices, have, however, been around for much longer and the older devices will definitely benefit from having their thermal compound replaced. Even if no performance gain is seen immediately, it will allow them to continue working at their best for years to come.
Before you start using the 2nd hand Nucleus+ you could upgrade the memory (SODIMM DDR4 RAM Up to 3200MHz CL22-22-22-53 1.2V) to 16GB (2x8GB) (or even 32GB (2x16GB), but 32GB is overkill with the recent Roon Server releases which has significantly improved RAM usage).
Then replace the fitted SSD with a faster NVMe (PCIe Gen 3.0 x 4, NVMe 1.3) which will improve the use of RoonOS database. No need to be bigger than 250GB.
You will then have a Roon Server which will be very capable in a nice premium fanless case.
If you reinstall the OS from scratch via usb stick and also make sure you enable UEFI then the Nucleus + is fully capable of running Tailscale.
Following this method will install the ROCK version of RoonOS 2.x on a Nucleus. It is then necessary to have the Roon Labs RMA team upgrade this to the Nucleus version by opening a Technical Support Request.
Many thanks to all who have responded to this question.
I’m a heavy user of Tailscale so losing it would be an unfortunate outcome. I also know my limitations when it comes to electronic modifications.
The new Nucleus One might be a better choice, but it seems to be somewhat limited in terms of library size. I currently have about 3Tb of music files in an attached SSD with extensive metadata.
Given all this information I believe that this Nucleus Plus is not for me. The Macbook M1 handles my needs pretty well, and Roon runs snappily. Perhaps better to leave well enough alone.
I know this can be done but I have seen no official word on whether it is or is not supported by the Roon team and thus the degree to which help would be available should anyone encounter problems during the install procedure. Consequently, I steer clear of suggesting it at present.
With a Nucleus Plus running RoonOS build 259 (and thus without Tailscale on the Roon Server) you can still run Tailscale on a separate computer (such as a Raspberry Pi) and set it (Tailscale) up as a Subnet Router:
Granted, this is a little more pfaff than just running Tailscale on the Roon Server and it does also require the additional computer to be left on when ARC use is wanted (hence the suggestion of a very low power consumption computer like the Raspberry Pi).
The Nucleus One can hold an 8Tb SSD. That’s about 10 000 albums and 100 000 tracks. Beyond this the One can get sluggish. Track count is more important as even one track from an album counts in the album tally. I have a One and love it. I don’t stream but it holds all my CDs and downloads (a measly 1500 “albums” and 15 000 tracks. It has reinvigorated my enthusiasm for music! I don’t know what Tailscale is but I have used ARC quite a bit. And with an SSD for iternal storage I don’t think the fans have ever come on in over a year of fault-free use (touches wood).
You could consider a nuc like mini pc…