This discussion needs to be prefaced by the words from the Roon KB:
Will ROCK run on my existing hardware? How about this other hardware?
We have only tested with the above mentioned NUCs. It may work with other machines, but the drivers needed may not exist there. Try it out and let us know. We can not comment on whether any different hardware will work, as we have not tested it. We will not make any guesses, educated as they might be.
If you do manage to get it to run, that’s great, but we can not guarantee it will continue to work with future builds. Consider yourself warned.
Tinkerers, of course, read such warnings and say “Challenge accepted” so this thread is to tell others exactly how you installed ROCK on your garage door controller, thereby turning it into a MOCK (credit to @Ludwig, ).
Just a quick FYI. I downloaded ROCK and successfully installed it on a fitlet-i, with no hacking involved. Just booted from USB that the ROCK installer was burnt on using Etcher, and followed the prompts.
Obviously not a powerful machine, but impressed that the installer just worked.
Well, I’ve got a MOCK! And all the risks that come with that.
I bought a new NUC for ROCK, since my old NUC is a 4th Gen D54250WYK (i5 4250 CPU). And the list of tested/approved NUCs are all 5th & 6th Gen. But I tried the old 4th gen anyway - it is after all an i5, so seemed worth a shot.
Works like a charm. And plenty fast with my small < 1,500 album library. And got to use my faster NUC for a desktop. I guess all that comes with the risk of using a MOCK - someday and update may brick my ROCK… I mean MOCK!
I’ve got a Mock as well: I installed it on an Udoo X86 Advanced Plus.
I could not use the internal 32 GB eMMC storage. But the M.2 storage worked.
Have not imported music yet, so I can’t say anything about the performance.
Running on a ASRock Deskmini 110 here. As System-Drive works a 256GB SAMSUNG EVO and for music i have a build-in 2TB FireCuda Drive. This all works on a Kaby Lake i3-7100@3,9GHz with 8GB of DDR4 RAM.
This configuration should be comparable to the best recommended NUC on Roon’s List. It works beautifully, haven’t tested DSP yet. There is place for a second HD in this thing and i can replace the CPU with an even better one if needed. I hope Roon supports this a long time…
Well, you know… if they don’t, that’s kinda the cool thing. Sure, our illegitimate toys will stop working. But if we’ve been doing backups, a full working replacement ROCK should only be one NUC purchase, one 10 minute install process, and one restore away.
Ahh… put you used the word “support”. I don’t think we get any support. That’s kinda the point. It’s not a ROCK. It’s a MOCK.
This week I’m going to try ROCK in a VM, running under Ubuntu server, on a dual Xeon motherboard. Definitely inappropriate; just for laughs. Stay tuned.
Tried it already in a Parallels VM. Was working there. But I had to connect an external USB keyboard and (virtually pass it to the VM). The macbook keyboard was not working, when I tried.
It’s a GigByte GA-MA78GPM-DS2H with an AM2+ dual core processor and 8Gb of memory using an old Hitachi 300Gb drive all housed in a DELL inspiron chassis donated by my brother-in-law.
ROCK installed with no drama or problems (though it did suggest going and buying an SSD drive).
All running and playing fine - handles my 2000 odd albums fine and streams nicely to the SqueezeBox.
Just ordered a quiter fan and an SSD drive - this MOCK is staying put.
My guess is that certain drivers will be missing and that there may be issues with Apple’s hybrid EFI BIOS.
Beyond that the fans are not controlled in the same way as they are on traditional intel platforms. Under a normal Linux install this requires installation of additional software to control the fans. This code isn’t present in ROCK so the fans will not behave correctly. It’s been a while since I installed Linux on a mini but if I recall correctly the fans don’t run without the additional code.
It might install and work…then it might overheat. Be careful with this one!
I am surprised that so few have discovered how good and cost effective the Asrock Deskmini 110 is.
It is more silent than a NUC and it uses the same power while idle/doing very little as the new gen 7. i5/i7 NUC.
You can go very cheap but still get the same performance at the i5/i7 NUC for much less.
For very cheap but still close to the top NUC Intel Pentium G4560 for about $60 or much faster i7-7700.
I use one right now for main windows desktop. it uses 13W idle and normaly about 15-17W while browsing and is completely silent with a i5-7600 with stock cooler set to silent profile in the BIOS.
The i5-7600 is as fast as a Skull trail and much cheaper and way more silent.
I’m running Rock inside Docker with a fanless mini pc made by ATLAST out of Great Britain.
Rocking with my Dock out! It’s sporting an. ASUS ROG MINI-ITX MOBO, 32gb of DDR4X3000MHZ RAM, 256GB Samsung NVME DRIVE, 2X4TB RAID 2.5" 5400RPM HDDS, and a I7-KABYLAKE 2.9-3.7GHZ Intel proc.
).
And all the risks that come with that.
