Latest roon nucleus and nucleus plus Full Specifications

Hello folks
does any one have details or link to full hardware spec on the latest nucleus and nucleus plus models
things like what gen and cpu model, how much ram & speed.how much ssd and what type etc

The base model Nucleus has an i3 CPU with 4GB of RAM. The Nucleus+ has an i7 CPU with 8GB of RAM. I believe they both have a 64GB SSD for the OS (no music storage on this drive!). Beyond that, this page covers most of the basic specs:

https://roonlabs.com/nucleus

Edit: changed internal SSD size from 128GB to 64GB - I believe my original post was in error.

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the roon nucleus product spec page is so opaque.
it has no mention to what kind of cpu or what generation is used.
how much is the RAM
would be good to know if there is any specific motherboard or low noise features incorporated

You need to click into the Nucleus white paper on the Nucleus Webpage to get the info you‘r after. Indeed very well hidden. Totally user-unfriendly.

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We change the hardware once in a while while keeping the specs listed on the page stable. Those specs are the ones that matter. Also, competing on hardware spec is not something we care to do because it doesn’t take into account software.

For example, if you have server A and server B (both for running Roon) for the same price and mostly the same specs, but one has 16GB RAM and the other has 8GB RAM. Which is better? The answer is: neither, they are both the same because Roon won’t use the extra RAM.

Another reason is the mismatching of specs. The Nucleus would hit CPU limits if you increased RAM. The Nucleus+ could use a bit more RAM without hitting CPU limits, but less than 1% of our users have libraries so big that they can benefit from it.

Another example from a different world: for years, Samsung phones have out-spec’d all Apple iPhones, but anyone (including me, an avid Android user) will tell you that the iPhones all feel like they have better specs. It’s because iOS is tuned to make it feel great. Software decisions in iOS, like little-to-zero processing of backgrounded apps is the big reason why RAM is far lower than on all iPhones compared to flagship Samsungs.

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@danny
Thank You Danny for elegantly explaining it. Appreciate it.

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Was there a newer model of the nucleus plus introduced last year–which is larger in size with a different power button?

yes, “revB” – it’s a mostly cosmetic change, but it does include 2 differences that impact the product:

  1. support for 15mm tall 2.5" drives
  2. a second HDMI port which can be used for digital audio output (or multichannel to an AVR)

They’ve shipped with both 64GB and 128GB boot drives. I don’t think anyone has come close to crossing 64GB. It was just hard to source 64GB components that met the performance requirements at some point, so we went to 128GB.

Again, another reason why the “technical specs” are irrelevant. The important spec is the performance of the SSD for random reads/writes, yet that’s not what anyone looks for nor do others advertise it. The focus is incorrectly placed on capacity.

Thanks for your reply. Was there a new power button on it too?

yes.

The old one used to match the body and have a reflective LED setup. It blended in so well, a common problem with the Nucleus was that people weren’t turning it on!

The new power button is much more obvious and has a LED-lit power icon on it.

A post was split to a new topic: Upgrading Nucleus

2 posts were split to a new topic: Is it possible to upgrade Nucleus to Nucleus+?

Hi @danny
“HDMI port which can be used for digital audio output” could you elaborate more for this? Does it output for I2S connection?

HDMI is for multi channel audio to a receiver. It doesn’t support i2s.