Most energy efficient way/machine to serve Roon Core

Hi Tekl, thanks for your response! I am also very interested in the M1 (or future Apple Silicon) due to the energy efficiency. However, that would be running Roon on a Mac, not a single use turnkey machine running ROCK or something similar, right?
Which exact NUC model are you using?

Lattepanda V1, 2W TDP Atom Z8350, can order with original passive case, if no DSP/Upsampling should be good for streaming/less than 50k track small core machine

https://www.dfrobot.com/product-1404.html

https://www.dfrobot.com/product-2336.html

Please bear in mind that, although this may work with Roon, particularly in the non-DSP small library environment that you mention, it almost certainly does not meet the Roon recommended minimum spec.

Have you looked at your audio equipment?
Some class A, A/B amplifiers waste more energy than you will ever save with an energy efficient Core.

I’m using the NUC7i3BNH.

On a Mac the Roon Server will run on macOS, that’s right. ROCK is only intended for Intel NUC at the moment. As ROCK does not have Power Managment features and also will loose Wi-Fi in the future I’ll switch to a Linux Server anyway – or maybe macOS with an M1 mini. :wink:

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Base your potential build on a 2 core NUC that doesn’t have a turbo mode. They are best suited to passive operation, no big step up in heat when they go to turbo. This may be at the cost of a little efficiency at idle compared to the latest models but I think it is worth it. A 5 i5 or 7 i3 are good options. I bought a passive case for a 5 i3 last week so they may still be out there.

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Thank you for all your suggestions! NUC7, ideally one without turbo mode, sounds like the way to go if I can still find one here in Japan. NUC5 is a bit old in case I ever want to repurpose the NUC for something else (no Thunderbolt, only HDMI 1.4, only PCIE 2.0).

As for the point about the energy consumption of my other audio devices: I understand that in general that is a valid concern, but in my case I do most of my listening over headphones with an iPhone or iPad Pro via USB DAC (Dragonfly Cobalt) as my endpoint, so my main concern is with always-on devices like the NUC.

was just about to post about the latest LattePanda 3 Delta hardware and found this older thread … anyone have any thoughts on this one?

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/lattepanda3delta/lattepanda-3-delta-faster-than-ever-still-pocket-sized

I was thinking it would be a cool server possibly also running plex. The touchscreen would make for a sleek tabletop piece potentially as well.