Lenovo Thinkcentre M720q MOCK

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I have grown tired of using Roon in Windows and have successfully experimented with a used Lenovo Thinkcentre M720q, i5 (8th generation), 16 Gig ram.

Several issues with Windows 10, now forced into Win 11, but my hardware won’t allow the upgrade. Also tired of having to run Windows updates when all I really wanted to do was listen to music. Besides, after investigating the (M)ROCK option, I felt it would be nice to get rid of all the Windows overhead and just run ROON as simply as possible.

My first goal was to keep cost of change to a minimum, hence the use of an older machine. Also, did not wish to have to purchase new storage and just use the 3.5" drives I already had. In order to use those drives, I purchased a CENMATE HD enclosure from Amazon and hoped it would work on the MOCK. The enclosure turned out to be totally plug and play. Installed both drives in a two bay box, plugged it into the MOCK and it immediately made both drives visible in the Library. I have approximately 10 Tb of music files in various formats on those drives and they are being imported as I post this.

The Lenovo and drive bays pull about 40 watts while importing, so very little electrical drain from a very compact system.

Install of ROCK on the Lenovo was super simple following the provided instructions on the ROON site.

Should I find any issues with the build, I will report them here. My main HT room system will use HDMI for transport to my pre/pro. I tested that setup and seems to work perfectly. I also have a Topping DAC at another location and hope that will also work easily with this setup.

So far, very impressed with the (M)ROCK setup.

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I have one of these doing nothing right now, but with 8Gb instead of 16 Gb. Interesting thought…

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I suspect the difference in Ram is not a big deal. Certainly a worthwhile experiment. I am aware that machine has a SATA onboard slot for a 2.5" drive. However, in my case it was cheaper to buy the 3.5" HDD dock than to buy a new large drive to be used internally. My database is still conducting audio analysis so it will be a while before I can test the various files on my sound system.

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Finally was able to set up the second MOCK using a Topping E50 DAC. Absolutely no issues thus far. DAC was immediately recognized and Roon works as designed. Hopefully the two MOCK’s will continue to work after future ROON and ROCK upgrades are processed.