Upon replacing the power supply with a linear one, my NUC (ROCK) doesnt start at all. No blue light, no startup process. I opened the lid, there is a green light working in it, and my network still sees it as a “ROCK”.
Obvious question first: Have you tried going back to the original power supply?
Have you connected a monitor or a TV to the HDMI port? If so, what do you see on the display? Post a photo of the display if there is any message.
If there is a message on the display about ‘can’ t find boot disk’ or similar, can you connect a USB keyboard and enter the BIOS setup by pressing F2 as it boots?
If you can get into the BIOS setup, can you see the Nvme SSD listed in the storage section?
Please report back with answers.
Hi @Acen_Grigorov
What are the ratings of your linear power supply (voltage and amperage of the secondary), and what are the ratings of the original power supply (voltage and amperage of the secondary)?
Kind regards, Frank.
The Audiophonics LPSU100 is a 19V / 5.25A linear power supply , specifically designed for Intel NUCs — including your NUC8i3BEK2 .
This is the power supply.
I have no monitor, but a bit later will connect it to the tv via HDMI. I downloaded a BIOS recovery flash drive, and will also try that. BUT no signs of life for now
This is what I have inside. If I just tranfer the OS module on another NUC - will it work? Or this is not that simple:)
Hi @Acen_Grigorov,
This seems to be a good power supply for your NUC.
But you never know if yours is not DOA.
So please insert your memeory and M.2 again in your NUC, and power it up with the original power supply. Does it start up than?
Kind regards, Frank.
Thanks Frank,
tried, didn’t work with the original either.
So now you know that the problem is not related to the linear power supply.
Or the linear power supply has blown up you NUC. That is also possible.
Moving the M.2 to another NUC can be possible, if it is the same type of NUC.
Best is always now to first connect a screen to the HDMI-port of your NUC and see what is prompted.
Good luck, Frank.
Can I refer you back to my first reply:
So far, of all the questions I asked, you have answered the first but the remaining quiestions are unanswered.
As I said in that first post, and has been repeated by @Frank_M since, you need to connect a monitor or TV and a keyboard in order to better determine what is going on.
For now, go back to the original power supply - just in case the new LPS is faulty. You don’t want to make things even worse.
OK. I connected it in the TV via HDMI and the original power supply.
Totally dead. The power button doesn’t react at all.
This is the End?
Any chance that the BIOS Recovery can initiate a reboot?
Can something be done to fix whatever it is in the NUC?
Hi @Acen_Grigorov,
I am afraid that your NUC is gone.
Was it working correctly before you connected your linear power supply? If so, perhaps the power supply is defect and puts out more than 19V, and so destroyed you NUC.
If possible, use a volt-meter and check what your linear power supply is delivering.
Kind regards, Frank.
Hello @Acen_Grigorov,
Thank you for reaching out to Roon Support.
Regrettably, our ability to diagnose hardware failures is limited. Since a NUC is essentially a compact PC, we recommend reaching out to a local repair technician who can help assess the condition of the motherboard, RAM, and power supply.
Please let us know if there’s anything else we can assist with in the meantime.
Not much. You could try completely flush the CMOS memory - there may be a jumper on the motherboard inside the NUC to do this when the NUC is not connected to power. If not, you will have to disconnect the power, remove any button battery (often a 2032 type battery or similar) and then press the power button (so that the attempt to power with no power lead attached draws any remaining charge out of the board).
Not much. They are not designed to be serviced below board level. You may be able to salvage the memory and SSD (that you removed and posted images of earlier) but there is no guarantee that they have not also been damaged.
You could put the SSD into a cheap USB attached M.2 NVME enclosure and connect it to another computer to see if it is working to some degree - even if you can’t read the contents (the ext4 file system is not supported by default on Windows - i’m not sure about MACs).
There is no way to test whether or not the RAM is working other than to put it into a different system and see if it is recognised and working.
If you get another NUC or mini PC (there are active threads somewhere on the Roon forums about MOCK installations (ROCK on unsupported hardware), you may be able to put the SSD in to get a bootable system. However, you will almost certainly need to set the BIOS to use MBT (BIOS) boot rather than UEFI boot which is the modern default - assuming your 8th Gen NUC was put together before ROCK installs started supporting UEFI boot in November 2022 (see: RoonOS (Nucleus / ROCK) build 254 production is live!)
If you can get a new system to boot from the old SSD, it may not be correctly/optimallly configured so I would be inclined to use the system just to create a Roon Database backup (if you don’t have one already) and then re-install using UEFI boot.
Note: Many of the mini PC’s available these days use DDR5 memory whereas the memory from your NUC is DDR4 so it will not fit some of these more modern systems.
Note also. If you buy one of the systems used for MOCK installs, then they often have only one memory slot. Since the memory from your NUC8 is in two modules, you will only be able to use one of them at most, so you will only have 8GByte of memory (your NUC had 16GBytes). If you are in this positions and you need more than 8GByte of memory (huge library and database), then you will need to buy a new 16GByte SODIMM anyway.
Personally, memory and NVME SSD’s (of the capacity required for ROCK) are cheap these days so I would be inclined to just replace them anyway since, even if not dead, their lifetime and reliability may have been degraded by whatever event killed the NUC8.
Well, Wade,
that was a very insightful advice. Thanks a lot. I’ll probably save some headakes and buy a Nucleus.
Thanks to everyone who participated in this thread.
Just to let you know that probably the new LPSU was faulty, I just finished measuring the original NUC PSU - shows 19.33v everytime, and the Linear (New One), which constantly shows 1. I don’t know waht 1. is
I presume the 1. means Overload.
So put your multi-meter in 200V DC and read then the output.
Kind regards, Frank.
It gets even more interesting. Thanks for the advice @Frank_M 
An electronics repair shop “might” be able to replace a fuse (or other power input/handling components) on the motherboard…but it might not be worth the cost or risk of other damage that may have occurred…YMMV
So now you know that your fancy Linear Power Supply just blew up your precious NUC. That is a pity.
I am afraid that your NUC will not be repairable.
But you can still find other NUC second-handed. Or you can go for a cheap GMKtec N150, in which you can have 2 M.2: one is a M.2 2242 SATA (on which you can install ROCK OS, and the other is a M.2 2280 PCIe, that one can be found in big capacities to put your internal music on.
Success with the replacement of your NUC.
Kind regards, Frank.
If your LPS powered up the NUC with 30V or more, I would hope that fuses, if present, and the voltage regulators that are present on any computer board would fail. This being the case, the RAM and SSD may have survived. However, I would not count on it. They may have been severely compromised it they were subjected to any overvoltage.
As I said earlier, I would be inclined to replace both as part of a new Roon Server build.
Of course, if you go the Nucleus route, RAM and SSD will be supplied - but only 4Gbyte in the Nucleus One or 8Gbyte in the Nucleus Titan. The RAM in either can be upgraded. I believe the One has one SODIMM slot and the Titan has two. I don’t, offhand, know what memory specs are required for either.
