Is the NUC7PJYHN2 good enough to operate as a Roon Core?

Roon Software Discussion ROCK
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Hi - I see some good offers on the Intel NUC BOXNUC7PJYHN2.

I’m new to this. I currently use an old MacBook Pro (MBP) as the core, but it’s awkward and I would like to replace it with a small, low power NUC. I have around 12TB of music on an external HDD which will attach to the unit, much of it in Quad and 5.1.

I currently attach the MBP to my amp by HDMI, but I expect with a NUC it is better to connect to the amp by Ethernet? I don’t have a hi-end amp at this stage (I am using a Yamaha AV Receiver RX-A680), and assume from the fact that Roon doesn’t recognise it that it doesn’t approve (:slight_smile:) but I won’t be changing that in the short term.

My question is, is this NUC7PJYHN2 a good enough NUC for this size of library, does it have the right slots for the RAM and the SSD for ROCK, is it OK for surround etc?

Many thanks in advance - Neil

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How many tracks in your library. Do you use any DSP?

Is a pentium processor, the minimum for Roon is an i3, depending of course on how many tracks you have and DSP use.

So, I’d say no, especially since you want to use ROCK. ROCK is only supported on the specific model NUCs listed, if you put it on anything else you are using hardware which the software is not tested against, so… forewarned. And, lastly, ROCK has to have legacy boot. So, no matter what you choose to do, verify that the hardware can do legacy boot, lately everything has just been UEFI boot with no option for legacy boot.

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12tb has to be well over 100k tracks.

To not suffer slow loading and lag etc you really need something with plenty of horsepower and a decent amount of RAM to help speed things up.

As @Rugby said, that particular model is not really ideal from any aspect.

Sure it might work just fine but you would be pretty much on your own if you did have issues running ROCK.

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Hi - thanks so much for this and you’re confirming what I suspected. There are about 102k tracks in my library. Based on what you’re saying I think I’ll hold out for the NUC8i7BEH as recommended by the Roon guys themselves.

Thanks a lot for the fast replies! Much appreciated - Neil

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Thanks again for the help, Daniel. On DSP, it’s something I haven’t dug into too much yet but I expect I will, and I expect from your question that if I do want to do this, you’re saying I should go for more power.
Cheers - Neil

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Hello Neil and welcome to the community.

I have the NUC8I7BEH you mentioned connected to my Denon receiver via HDMI. You will need HDMI to play hi-res multi-channel files. Doesn’t matter if it is recognized. Ethernet to receiver will probably be 2 ch airplay.

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Many thanks Mike, much appreciated! Hadn’t appreciated that Ethernet doesn’t handle multichannel. Very helpful!

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Minor correction,

Ethernet can handle multichannel but, at least in my case, the receiver Airplay is only 2 channel.

I have a MC Streaming DAC that is Roon Ready and does receive the MC signal from Roon via Ethernet.

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Multichannel over ethernet (or wifi) requires multichannel support on the Roon Ready endpoint. Examples of Roon Ready endpoints that support this: Trinnov Altitude16 and Trinnov Altitude32. Alternatively HDMI connection against surround processor or receiver from Roon Core will also support this (but then you loose the benefit of Roon Ready).

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In the past I have used a NUC7PJYH as Roon Core. As ROCK does not run on UEFI Boot, I installed dietpi and Roon Server on the NUC. My library is around 20k tracks.
This setup just about works if you do not do fancy DSP of try to transcode DSD256 to DSD128.
I then moved on to an asrock Deskmini 310 with a Pentium G5600. This runs ROCK and has enough power for all my needs. The Pentium G5600 has quite a high single core performance. Definitely sufficient for Roon Server