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

I presume this is with the parallelise Sigma Delta function active?

Sadly, yes. This is on Windows 10. If I can get my hands on a spare NVMe drive, I may try Linux or ROCK to see if I have better luck, but I think the CPU is the source of the limitation.

My i7-7700 can just do itā€¦but I didnā€™t like the upsampling results so now just leave everything native now and enjoy what I have.

So, just downloaded 1.8 to my MOCK and I have to say that it is running even faster and smoother than before! Exciting. Itā€™s a Lenovo M600 Tiny running an Intel Celeron N3010 Processor with 4GB RAM. Very happy with that.

Sorry; I know there are a 100 threads, and a million posts on the subject; but thatā€™s part of the problem. The information is sooo scatteredā€¦not 100% what the answer to my question is.

When I saw Johnā€™s video, my FIRST question wasā€¦of courseā€¦does it HAVE to be on a NUC? Iā€™ve got plenty of small-form PCs lying aroundā€¦including an old C.A.P.S. build, if any of you ā€œcomputer audiophilesā€ remember that. Besidesā€¦this will serve, out of the room; so form isnā€™t even really a question.

Soā€¦as I understand it: of course you can run this OS, on something other than a NUC; ROON just canā€™t predict the results, and wonā€™t support it if you run into problems?? Any reason, not to try itā€¦and it works until it works; as opposed to the $300+ for a NUC I donā€™t need?

Out of curiosity: if I went with an i3ā€¦can the CPUs be upgraded on these boards?

Thanks,

Running Rock on something else makes it a MOCK.
Iā€™ll move this post to the Main MOCK thread #tinkering section where it will get the appropriate attention

Well if you want to play with ROCK on a non supported NUC or other device, you can, probably. Check out the MOCK threads under Tinkering.

If you want to run a ROON Core on pretty much any PC, then simply install the Windows or Linux versions and play from there. Cannot upgrade CPU on a NUC, I suspect.

Well it looks like my post to @Chris_Lehner was moved to MOCK thread as I typed!

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Iā€™ve run ROCK on quite a few older i6/i7 motherboards and even on a macmini (but the lan chipset wasnā€™t detected on that)

I would suggest using something with intel chipsets for at least the lan

Rock is free to tryā€¦for now I run my core on windows on the same i7-7700 that I used to run rock onā€¦I needed windows to run some other things and this was the best system I had for that.

Yesā€¦the Mods were nice enough, to move me into the MOCK thread.

I already have CORE running, on an unSERVER Docker. I just assumed, ROCK/MOCK would be ā€œbetterā€?

Only you would be able to judge! :slight_smile:
I have a few MOCKā€™s (And officially supported ROCKā€™s also) and they have been more than reliable so far. My current main Roon Server is running Roon OS on an Asus ROG Strix B360 mb in a Streacom FC5 Alpha chassi. Core i3-8100 and 16Gb of DDR4 and 250Gb NVMe PCIe in an m.2 socket is the dynamic RAM and HD. Media on an 8Tb Samsung SSD. All passively cooled of course, and with a slot in ripper for occasional use. :slight_smile:

Hi Guys,

Iā€™ve previously run ROCK on an old Celeron NUC, and it works quite nicely. As I want to repurpose this old machine to another project, I tried running the Roon Core on the QNAP TS-251 (with 8G RAM). This works fine, but it keeps dropping the USB3 connected SSD which holds the Roon database.

So, I have just freed up my old i7-2600 desktop, and want to move my Roon Core to it.

Of course, I could leave Win10 on it and life would be easy, but Iā€™d rather slim it down a bit.
I tried Ubuntu and Roon Core, but just canā€™t get it to work. The machines can see each other, but the Roon Controls canā€™t talk to the Ubuntu machine to set up the Core properly.

Anyhow, I thought Iā€™d try to MOCK it. The problem is thereā€™s no LAN connection due to ROCK not having Broadcom ethernet drivers.

Does anyone know how I can get a Broadcom driver in to ROCK?

Thanks,
Jason.

you cantā€¦but maybe try a plug in Nic card or usb ethernet dongle. I had this issue MOCKing an MacMini along with not wanting to boot without Option key selection.

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Hi all,

Iā€™m new to Roon and have had great results installing ROCK on my repurposed (and now fanless) NUC8i7BEH.

Itā€™s got me thinking of getting a couple of family members up-and-running with a cheap NUC off eBay, stick ROCK on it and hide a Raspberry Pi behind their posh looking HiFi kit for streaming.

But I do like a bargain. If I didnā€™t already have a spare machine ready to go I definitely would have done some testing on some low-end devices.

So the question is this - who has the best ā€˜shedā€™? The best low-end, bargain basement ROCK? Whoā€™s salvaged an old Optiplex from a skip and is using it to serve them multi-room streaming? Whoā€™s repurposed Grandmaā€™s old cream desktop for some DSD goodness? Whoā€™s that guy whoā€™s answer to every computer question is ā€˜Old ThinkPadā€™ (guilty).

Let the shed posting commence!

I popped rock on an old HP desktop 6300 i5 4gb ram and a small ssd. Worked a treat only pulled like 25watts idle and had a dvd drive for ripping that worked well too. With an extra 500gb for local storage.

Machine with dvd ram and 50.GF hdd was ~us$50 and the 120gb ssd like $30

New Roon user here.

MOCK running on an old MSI a78M board with AMD Athlon X4 760K Quad Core. 250GB SSD, 8GB Ram with 2TB spinning disk for files.

1000 albums, TIDAL and Qobuz

Works fine. Worse performance factor is 1.4-1.5X with upscale on one to DSD512 and every filter on on 4-6 zones. Was curious to see if I could crash it. It did not.

I never run filters or upsampling in normal use. No performance factor visible in normal use.

My music major kids who are in college VPN in and run Roon from their dorms. They love the search capability and metadata.

Nagging feeling that itā€™s too good to be true and Iā€™ll have to spend $500 on a real Intel NUC after a future upgradeā€¦ or Iā€™m ā€˜missing outā€™ on not being on a bona-fide NUC.

OTOHā€¦ If it works, donā€™t fix it, as they say.

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ROCK installed without a hitch on an HP T530 thin client.

AMD GX-215JJ x86 dual core 1.5-2.0 ghz
8GB DDR4
32GB SSD

Only using it as a bridge. Completely overkill as a bridge, but old thin clients are far cheaper used than a Raspberry Pi 4 (which seem to hold their value like crazy). My RPi4 needs a decent case to keep it cool. This thin client is so much better - all the cables come out the back of the unit and itā€™s heavy enough not to be pulled around by the cables. Might sell the RPi4, get another thin client and bank the change.

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Oh shoot. Just tried using the thin client above as the core and the speed of the user interface is so much faster than my headless Windows 10 setup.

So,

ROCK/MOCK
AMD GX-215JJ x86 dual core 1.5-2.0 ghz
8GB DDR4
32GB SSD

is beating the pants of

Roon Server / Windows 10 Pro
Intel(R) Coreā„¢ i5-4460 CPU @ 3.20GHz
8GB DDR3
128GB SSD

I might have to MOCK the i5 nowā€¦

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I used rock on an i7-7700 Fanless setup but went to win10 as I needed a system that could also test other windows applications. My i5-6500 ran mock too pretty wellā€¦maybe I should swap them back.

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You are right these things are cheap as chips!
$60 to $100 on ebay right now, might be worth buying one just for the fun of trying it.
Thank you

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