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

[Patrick_Navin (Paddy Navin)]

Aliexpress fanless N100 running MOCK here with 16gb and a 128mb NVME. Copes very well with DSD 512 upsampling on one zone.

[Johnny_Ooooops (Listener in Chief)]

With many thanks to @David_Snyder for finding this, a dirt cheap option for a basic well-performing MOCK with absolutely no hassle. If I had to talk my grandma through building a dedicated core over the phone, this would be what I’d use!

Sub-$150 "easier than a ROCK": no hardware to mess with no BIOS to mess with NUCbox - it should be supported for ROCK!

Hi- I’m making a pitch that the GMKtec N97 should be supported as ROCK hardware (vs very easy inexpensive MOCK). First, it’s $137 on Amazon right now, and second it’s an easier install than any of the 3 ROCKs that I’ve built. Why? I didn’t have to build this - didn’t have to touch the hardware at all other than to plug it in; I’ve never opened it. To be honest, I didn’t even have to touch the BIOS, still haven’t. Even though it’s a MOCK, this is a better experience for someone who wants to…

[andybob (Andrew Cox)]

Thanks @Johnny_Ooooops and @David_Snyder for posting about this. It’s a really interesting little unit for people with a basic use case. Plus pink!

[Johnny_Ooooops (Listener in Chief)]

@andybob

It’s a really interesting little unit for people with a basic use case. Plus pink!

You’re most welcome! While the “Grandma’s Core” use case might be a little overstated, it’s really an amazing cost/benefit ratio. @David_Snyder is really the champion and explorer here, I’m just doing a bit of ‘rah-rah’.

My N150 (with limited edition blue top) is way better than my old 7i5 was as a Roon core. And now my 7i5 is working as a Ubuntu machine with HQPlayer Desktop running on it, happily doing PCM upsampling in my second home which doesn’t have any DSD DACs. And my pink N97 core is now on my way to my brother in law to try out Roon in his house. Repurposing hardware is great fun.

[MCMXC (Tinkering)]

ROCK VM on ProxMox in my HomeLab (45Drives HL15 NAS with a Xeon)

Nice way to carve a little bit of power off an overpowered NAS box, that’s always on.

This set up has a ton of fans, maybe a GPU coming. I hear chatter about the benefits of running roon in fan-less slimmed down boxes (eg the ROON products). Anyone have any experience with sound quality changes running roon in a hot busy box?

[Nils-Elling_Stubberu (Nils-Elling S)]

Hi,

I run a HP Prodesk 600 G3 with all Intel inside and Roon OS 2.1. 16GB RAM (with max 32GB if needed), i5 Intel CPU, a 256GB M2 local SSD from Samsung. It’s been up for more than 2.5 years, and with no problems.

I’ve removed the bracket ment for the 2.5" HD to have better cooling. To be sure, I bought an extra fan to have in spare. It’s still unopened.

As for my library I use 2 external SSDs, one for the music and one for backup. I use DSP (sample rate conversion, upsampling). The Prodesk have no problem with the higher CPU usage.

This gear might not be strange, but better than any NUC, if you ask me. It cost me $200 for the HP unit and $150 for the two hard drives (one is 2TB and the other is 1TB). Quite cheap, wouldn’t you agree?