M4 Mac Mini vs. ASUS NUC 13 Pro

Roon Software Discussion
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Hey everyone,

I’m trying to decide between an M4 Mac Mini and an ASUS NUC for running Roon Core, and I’d love to get your input.

Mac Mini I like the M4 Mac Mini for its design and performance, but being stuck with fixed configurations (or paying a lot to upgrade to 32GB RAM or a 1TB SSD) is a bit of a turn-off for me. Plus, I’m not thrilled about being locked into the same setup forever.

ASUS NUC: I’m looking at the ASUS NUC 13 Pro. I’d have gone for the NUC 14 Pro, but it doesn’t look like Roon ROCK supports it yet. I really like the flexibility of NUCs—you can upgrade RAM and storage down the line, which feels like a smarter option in the long run.

Right now, I’m running Roon on my Synology 1019+ NAS, with my library on NAS HDDs. I’m looking to upgrade to something better, ideally with the database on an M.2 NVMe SSD and my music library on a separate SSD or NVMe drive itself (if running Roon app on Windows or Linux directly) for better performance.

Appreciate any advice or experiences you can share—thanks!

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There are three NUC13 Pro, with i3, i5, and i7. The single thread rating doesn’t differ between them. This is the most important thing for Roon UI and database performance. The i5 and i7 have more cores, which helps with playing to many simultaneous Roon zones (like if you live in a castle), some very heavy-duty DSP (though an i3 should suffice for anything reasonable), and a bit with search. The effect of cache size depends a lot on the specific software, I doubt that it does much for Roon.

Therefore, you should be fine with an i3 for most uses. 8 GB RAM for up to 100k tracks, 16 should be more than you will ever need.

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From: Intel i3-1315U vs i5-1340P vs i7-1360P vs Apple M4 Pro 12 [cpubenchmark.net] by PassMark Software

As you can see, the M4 is faster in single thread performance. (Though it’s not as if a NUC13 is slow).

The smallest SDD in the M4 is more than enough for Roon and its database. If you don’t mind the cable, for local music you can attach an external SSD for much less money than the internal 1TB.

You should be just fine with 16 GB RAM unless your library size is enormous (like 500k+ tracks or so). The RAM size is less critical on macOS because it swaps, so you will never run out of RAM and just crash like the Roon OS in ROCK does. And the SSD is fast, so swapping to disk doesn’t incur a big speed penalty.

I think it mostly comes down to what you are most comfortable with. You can run other stuff on the Mac (like Roon extensions, HQPlayer or entirely different programs). You need to change some settings and do some (minimal) maintenance on the Mac. macOS isn’t very annoying IMO but as we have seen in the many recent threads about macOS 15, there is potential for complications with Roon after OS updates.

The ROCK takes care of itself more or less but you can only run Roon and have no insight into activity and performance metrics. (On the other hand, I never needed to have it on my ROCK)

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Depends on what’s your plan for future upgrade. I’d vote for NUC. As I have something similiar with 32 GB RAM and 512 GB for SSD for database. Haven’t had problem running at all running 24/7.

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Thanks, has anyone used both and/or moved from one to the other?

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There is one ongoing thread about the M4 as a Roon Server and several older ones of ROCK vs Mini. The search will turn them up. You’ll probably find that performance-wise one can be happy with either and it ends up being a preference for the other things.

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Then go for it. Use linux or windows.

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I have Rock running on a Nuc713BNH with 6315 albums and 161.000 tracks which is driving me nuts. Also depending on the time of day - it works ok, or is horrendously slow for search etc.

I am now considering getting the Mac Mini M4 in the basic config.
Will this make a big difference? Are you running that setup?

All I want is Roon to be sort of snappy. Loading an artists discography takes so long, I sometimes wonder if it will show up, as long as I am still alive…

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What is that model? An i7 13th Gen or a 7th Gen?

I run a 10th gen i5 (where the 10th gen have the worst single core speed of the lot) with 4.5k albums and it generally works fine nearly always. (Occasionally there are still slowdowns with navigating or editing when it does things in the background, but this is much better than a year ago and if it happens I drink a cup of coffee and it’s fine after that).

If yours is an i7 13th Gen, then the behavior you are seeing is not normal (unless the library is pathological) and I‘d suggest opening a proper Support ticket.

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It is a 7th Gen.
so obviously pretty old. So you are saying you have your pretty gigantic library and you do a search and get results moreless immediately? Also discography?
Then maybe the upgrade would be a good idea the M4 is on my list. I had moreless given up on Roon, since whenever I want to sit down and listen to music - there is always something going on.

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I see. The 7th gen is significantly slower than the 13th gen that I compared in the above picture.

I believe yours is probably comparable to the original Nucleus, and 161k tracks is simply significantly beyond the recommended library size for such a device.

Not gigantic at all. As I wrote, 4.5k albums. About 45k tracks, so one third size of yours. But yeah, search is pretty instant (a few seconds at most) and so is Discography loading.

Most importantly, you have to choose hardware appropriate for your library size. A modern 13th gen NUC should normally be fine, but the same goes for an M4 Mini with sufficient RAM.

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Thanks, classical music - more tracks per album :wink: From what it states the M4 with 16 Gig Ram should suffice.
Strange thing is my library has not grown significantly in the past years, yet at some point Roon was ok - until it wasn’t. Strangely it can be ok in the morning and in the evening that same day, be horrible.

Guess it is time for the upgrade and a Xmas present for myself.

Thanks for your help

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I just ordered a Nuc with i3-1315U, it was on sale - that should be the cheapest Upgrade. Fingers crossed

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I am so happy with my base m4 mac mini. The performance for Roon is great, the system is rock solid. It’s on 24/7 and I have yet to restart it due to some issue, only for system updates. It’s massively efficient in terms of power consumption, that’s why I mainly got it. On idle it sips just 4W, less than an LED bulb.

Ordered an expansion docking station for it from Ugreen that has expandable storage with an M2 NVME and loaded it up with a 4TB drive so all music access is super fast.

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If your original was an 7th gen i3, then yes, that is likely under-speced for a library your size. You might want to consider an i5 or i7 version of the 13th gen NUCs.

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Hooray!Got the new hardware and it works.
Roon is much more responsive now.

Amazing, the horsepower of the Nucleus Titan for a fraction of the cost.

Guess through the years my library exceeded my hardware.

I would not say it is blazingly fast, but now it is fun to search and look at discographies again.

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Great, have nice holidays with it :slight_smile:

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Hi, I use an old Intel MacMini (late 2012; 16Gb memory; 4Tb SSD; Catalina) and have done so for many years now. They are relatively cheap and best of all, they let you install a ssd of your own, which is what I did. Since I set this up oh so many years ago it has worked flawlessly.

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