MOCK - Tell us what strange gear you've installed ROCK on!

This sort of thing?

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Biggest difference is probably that mine is a bit older - it has still one of those laptop optical drives.

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Cheap way of doing it.

I run Roon Core now on my Core i5 2017 Macbook Pro, streaming to a Bluesound Node 2i and it runs FINE. I can do all DSP that I need to do and there are no issues with dropouts, delays, or other problems.

My library is currently 600 CDs but I am ripping more. I also use Tidal/Qobuz a lot so I’m not sure I’ll ever exceed 2000 CDs.

It might be nice to have a dedicated machine, since I use the laptop for general purposes and I thought there might be some benefit to a dedicated Roon server machine. Also, I could leave it running all the time. It would be downstairs (where the laptop is) while my listening room is upstairs, so PC appearance and fan noise are of no concern.

Mainly I am asking the community: Can ROCK be installed on something like this as opposed to a NUC? This is cheaper, and a little easier.

Or just use Windows 10 on the PC and don’t worry about it? This PC would never ever be used for anything else other than Roon Core.

Hi @Doug_Hannah,

This thread is the most likely place to find out if anyone knows.

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Yes, no issues. I did a ROCK install on a Dell Optiplex 7010 a while back. You can find performance figures and power consumption in the Performance Matrix thread, link in the top post:

(The performance spreadsheet also shows almost identical performance using Win10, only a few watts more)

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Extremely helpful, and I did not know about this spreadsheet. Thank you for the assist!

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If the performance is essentially the same, I may just opt to run the core on Win 10 and enjoy it rather than try to make a “MOCK”

Try to run ROCK if at all possible. It will take a bit of time and effort but it is effort at the front end rather than the effort needed to maintain Windows on what will essentially be a dedicated server.

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Yes, that has some advantages, as well as disadvantages.

ROCK ~ Maintenance free, high performance appliance, dedicated and unflexible.

Win10 ~ Relatively high maintenance, but you could automate CD ripping with automatic injection into your Roon library, as an example.
Or run other music server software simultaneously, such as Minim Server or so. Similar performance though, only slightly slower and more power consuming.

A third option could be Vortexbox as a base on this machine? It’s easy to install Roon Server via the terminal and you would have the Linux stability and speed as well as CD ripping.

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How do you all measure the watts that the ROCK uses?
What gear is used?

I use a simple energymeter, costs around 15$.


It not exact, but gives a hint.

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Oke, thanks for the hint.

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Thank you for the tips!

Just thought I would resurrect an old macmini2012 i7 server 2.6ghz iirc. This was an old server and had I had installed 2 x 265gb raid 1 ssd’s back in 2013. I thought why not split the rad and do a dual install…one ssd with Mojave and the other with Catalina…so I installed Mojave and that took a while off of Usb3 flash drive. Done.

Then I was looking for another usb3 flash drive to create the Catalina media and I found my ROCK installer usb…so I wondered what that would do in a macmini…

So held down option and rebooted…there was the Mojave bootable and a windows option. A min or so later I have a ROCK install done…one issue was I had to use a unitek usba lan interface dongle as the internal lan didn’t get an IP address. Other issue is it can’t select to restart using that drive as default, so restarts need to be holding option and selecting the windows option…but it can run headless after that.

Maybe if I removed the format on the ssd for mojave it could boot as a rock only, and maybe I could format the other disk for storage…or maybe ripping cds

You get cd ripping with ROCK to. I was using Vortexbox for Roon for a few years as I had switched from LMS and used it as my server for that prior. I decided to go ROCK on the same system but still kept Vortexbox for automatic ripping running in a VM on my NAS. Since they added this to RoonOS I ditched Vortexbox completely and use ROCK for everything. Yes I have the add metadata for use not in Roon but I am not ripping hundreds of CD any more.

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So an update on this one as I haven’t posted in this thread since I tried the last bit of kit.

I’m using an HP 620 G3 as my ROCK host at the moment. This works flawlessly in every way, but then that’s probably because its spec (chipset, ram, drive layout etc) are identical to an official NUC.

The only difference being my I3 is a 7130U rather than a 7100U so it has a tiny little bit more horsepower.

Spec is:

-I3 7130U
-8GB DDR4 2133
-256gb M.2. PCIe SSD
-2TB External USB

Runs like a charm, doesn’t bat an eyelid when running DSP to two zones and is very compact.

HP actually sell a dedicated add-on module with a CD drive inside it, that bolts to the bottom of the chassis. Meaning you have an all in one mini PC that actually incorporates a CD drive. So I have this connected for ripping via ROCK as well.

All in pretty perfect.

My only criticism, is that in the listening room, with very quiet music, you can just about make out the fan whirring. When I move home, i’ll shove the HP into another room, and use a little HP thin client as an end point (fanless device).

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Sir
Have you got an Apple Watch as well hint hint wink wink?

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Not very strange, but I have installed ROCK on my SonicTransporter i5 (bought about 3 years ago). I was having issues with STi5 not booting. Attaching a monitor I saw all sorts of errors. Rather than send back to Small Green Computer, I simply installed ROCK on it. (I only used the STi5 for Roon, not the other programs it also allowed.) I ignored the “BIOS” instructions, installed ROCK and copied the CODEC file and everything went well. STi5 connected via ethernet.

p.s. I restored a roon backup (1.7) and all was picked up OK in terms of my library, except Roon reanalyzed all my files.

Running Roon on my old IBM3650 M3 which is also running my Plex server under Linux. Cost me £200 with 2x3GHz hex core Xeon X5675’s and with the graphics card and RAID expansion to expand to 16 drives cost me less than £400.

IMG_5028|666x500

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