Being relatively new to Roon, I need a Roon Server and having some DDR4 memory around I figured my options are either a ROCK using a NUC 13 (Core i3-1315U), or potentially the more cost efficient machine, the Beelink EQR5 (Ryzen 7 5825U).
The main difference between the two machines apart from the CPU (and the price) is that the NUC 13 features a 2.5 SATA port for your music, while the EQR5 has a M.2 NVME slot for your music.
At the moment I only have about 500GB of music, therefore I was thinking of using a WD Blue SN5000 (1TB) for my music. Can anyone foresee any problems using this drive for music or this build in general? I appreciate its a MOCK and there a bound to be some risks involved in that it may not work as a Roon Server.
I don’t see why it should not work as Roon Server, the question is your choice of OS. ROCK is a minimalistic Linux OS designed to work on a selected few NUC computers. Your chosen hardware is not only not a NUC, it isn’t even Intel. AMD has its own chipset and ROCK likely misses necessary drivers – maybe so much that you can’t even make it run. You’re probably better off using a standard Linux distribution or Windows instead of ROCK on that platform.
The (supported) NUC’s network chip is from Intel IIRC and they come with only one port. If you insist on installing ROCK on an unsupported platform:
Your platform features two ports and I couldn’t spot what chip drives them. Be prepared that you might have to provide some alternative (external USB) network solution. The built-in WiFi and Bluetooth may also not function (properly) in lack of a fitting driver.
PS: I personally don’t see the point in buying new hardware that is not supported for the use with ROCK and would either buy supported hardware or use another OS instead. Especially when going for my own hardware I would go for a platform that supports ECC RAM.
I’ve been running Roon ROCK on a small little NUC. It is not officially supported by Roon, but it works perfectly fine.
It does not have an internal bay to hold an additional SSD. But I’ve placed my own library on a 3 tb USB powered harddrive. It is more than quick enough to play music from, an SSD really is overkill.
My current library sits at 100k tracks. About 85k locally stored files and the other 15k are my Qobuz favorites.
3 streamers (Roon RAAT) and 1 soundbar system (Chromecast) connect to it. But I usually play 1 or 2 endpoints at the same time. The only DSP that I am using is volume leveling. Roon ARC works great as well.
The tiny little NUC has a fan, but I’ve never heard it using it. And it happily sits hidden behind my TV in the living room. Connected to Ethernet.
I’ll give it a reboot about once a month or so. But otherwise it has been running non stop since March when I bought it.
IMHO, there are a number of good reasons to want to build a MOCK system including performance, aesthetics, cost, availability and acoustics (or a combination thereof - depending upon the chosen device).
However, I don’t think that the ability to support 2 or more NVME SSD’s within the case is a particularly valid one.
There are two reasons for this:
As already explained the performance (with associated extra cost) of an NVME SSD is not required for ROCK library storage. A SATA SSD is more than adequate and is cheaper and (currently) avaliable in larger capacities should that be important. An external USB connected SATA SSD will also be more than good enough.
Many small form factor computers (NUCs) that support multiple NVME SSDs, employ M.2 slots with a lesser number of PCIe lanes available - even as low as a single PCIe 3 lane which would result in SSD performance only a little bit better than SATA. This doesn’t apply to all such small form factor PCs with multiple NVME M.2 slots but it does apply to many so you have to be careful and read the specs in full.
So maybe I would not choose that device to run ROCK. Or not choose to run ROCK on that device.
Four lanes is the maximum that M.2 NVME supports so that is fine.
M.2 NVME SSDs can be found with PCIe3, PCIe4 and PCIe5 support. Any of these will work in those PCIe4 M.2 slots but will be limited to the performance of the lowest. Ie. A PCIe3 SSD will work at PCIe3 speeds whilst a PCIe5 SSD will work at PCIe4 speeds. However, this really does not matter because any of them will give more than adequate performance for a Roon Server.
Case in point: Both my daughter an I use the same Samsung 990 Pro 2TB SSD in our respective desktop PC’s. Her PC has PCIe4.0 M.2 slots and she achieves close to the advertised read/write speeds. By contrast, my PC only has PCIe3.0 M.2 slots. In this slot the same SSD gives dramatically less performance - but still more than good enough for all intended uses, the most demanding of which is probably editing 8K RAW video in Davinchi Resolve.
I wouldn’t. Just not for ROCK. You are more likely to have issues with ROCK on a 2 x NVME system because it is not what ROCK is designed for.
In addition, NVME SSD’s are more expensive than SATA SSDs for a given capacity and are more restrictive in terms of maximum capacity. The largest M.2 NVME SSD is 4TB whereas you can get an 8TB SATA SSD. Since the additional performance is not required, I would prefer to go the SATA route for the library storage SSD. That or use an external HDD/SSD.
As it happens, my Roon Server is a NUC with a single 2TB NVME SSD - but it runs DietPi not RoonOS (as installed by ROCK) although my reasons for this setup have everything to do with history and spare part availability and nothing to do with technical need or performance.
If I wanted to run RoonOS, I would stick to the 1 NVME and 1 SATA arrangement that RoonOS is designed explicitly to support.
If you run a different OS (Debian and DietPi have both been suggested), you can use whatever disks/SSD’s you wish - but you will not see a performance benefit to using NVME for library storage.