New to Roon and ready to run on dedicated machine - assume it’s a NUC unless the answer is rasbPi 5. My requirements are super basic….I stream Tidal and stream a few radio stations. I have 8 zones with blueOS, WiiM, and Apple Airplay devices. Will probably add 1-2 zones with raspPi end points. I often plan different zones at same time and sometimes most zones grouped together. Would prefer something that doesn’t eat a lot of power in idle mode. Haven’t played with DSP options but that will be needed at some point.
Can I get away with a 7-8th generation used NUC with i3 processor or do I need to bite bullet and get the latest and greatest new machine?
I’ve been using a NUC8I7BEH for almost 6 years now. Whichever way you go pay attention to the base processing speed of the cpu as that has a lot to do with Roons overall performance.
With the exception of macOS devices, Roon server only runs on x86-64 hardware, so that rules out the Raspberry Pi.
If you want to run Roon OS, then ROCK, using a range of supported Intel NUCs is the way to go (or the Nucleus One.) Otherwise, any non-Intel NUC or equivalent with an i3 processor, 4 GB memory, and an SSD will deliver. Some use N100-based kit, too, without issues.
This specification is good for 10-12,000 albums with modest DSP and streaming to more than one zone simultaneously. So, you really don’t need a high performance machine.
The most important question to answer, is what OS the PC runs, and how hands-on you want to be building and keeping things up-to-date…
Firstly I would use ROCK as your operating system, it’s effectively maintenance free.
You might get away with it with 7-8 Gen (they are quite old now) but I personally would go as modern as possible with the fastest processor and put at least 16 Gb RAM in it if not 32. One of the biggest mistakes users make is to try and use “that old laptop that’s doing nothing in the cupboard” that been superseded by a new one.
Roon is demanding on ,RAM and network - use Ethernet for Server → Router as a minimum
I run a 10i7 with 32Gb RAM ,(but I have quite a big local library) it’s been going for 2 years and I don’t anticipate any issues soon