I just set up a NUC8i7 with 256MB SSD and a 1TB secondary SSD with 8GB of RAM for less than $700. Spec seems the same or better than the Nucleus+ albeit without the fanless case. I haven’t heard a nucleus+ but is there any way one can justify the price difference other than convenience? It took me less than two hours to set up the NUC and I don’t have any technical skills, just followed the instructions on ROON’s website. I have the unit set up away from my listening room so fan noise is not an issue. Playing though a RP3 with Allo DigiOne into my Benchmark DAC 1 HDR it sounds great and is completely reliable. Thank you ROON for offering this as a low cost option.
Congratulations on getting your NUC setup and welcome. It sounds like you have the same setup as mine except for the memory. I went with 16GB ram. Just personal choice.
When I was trying to decide on NUC vs Nucleus + I read in a review somewhere that the CPU in the Nucleus + was a dual core I7. I didn’t know there was a dual core I7 and I don’t know if that is true or a misprint. But dual core vs quad core, price and the desire to build my own was the deciding factor for me.
My background is working with really fast mainframe computers and I suffer from the Tim Allen “More Power” mentality.
I highly recommend installing it alongside RoonServer, to get some actual performance data on Roon, rather than relying on hunches as to what you need hardware-wise.
Some things in Roon (e.g. DSP) are strongly dependent on single-core performance. Other things (e.g. database manipulation) are heavily multi-threaded and benefit from multiple cores. What’s the best price/performance mix for you may depend on how you use Roon.
Alas, I don’t think you can install netdata on ROCK.
That was just me making fun of me, my choice of a platform for Roon and the reasons behind the decision. Right or wrong it works for me. I doubt if I’ll ever learn to use all of the Roon Software’s fabulous features or push it or the NUC to is limits. I just love it, excited about it, having fun with it and enjoying the music.
A bit off-topic, but I have certainly done something wrong. My NUC 7i7 is totally silent. It runs cool and quiet. Even with your ear against it, there is no noise.
No not wrong. I would suspect that for a majority of users, NUCs run pretty quiet. There could be some difference in fan noise depending upon NUC generation and that gen’s particular Intel Chip and it’s power use/cooling needs.
I have been confused by the expressed concern for noise. People talking about putting it a closet etc. Thought of returning mine for a noisier one; do not want to be cheated. Perhaps the noise is not a defect at all but a feature available at extra cost.
On a more serious note, the NUC was a fun build. It is a cool little thing. For us, it went very smoothly.
I haven’t noticed any heat or heard any sound at all from my NUC8I7BEH, but then my hearing is not as good as most folks. I have the NUC in a media closet so any sound would not be noticeable in my listening area. I do go into the closet to rip cd’s with the attached USB cd player and I can hear the player spinning up. If the NUC is making any noise it is covered up by the AV cooling systems.
I know there are folks with exceptional hearing and I guess any sound invading their listening space would be objectionable. Sometimes I wish I could hear that well but most of the time I’m happy with what I have.
Mike, as I understand it roon really uses more single core performance, hence the choice in the nucleus to go with a gutsy dual core rather than several slower cores.
My i3 based server seems very comfortable with roon as it has fairly decent single and dual core performance
I could be wrong, but I think those are logical, rather than physical cores. Most i7s have 4 physical cores and 8 logical cores (AKA “hyperthreading”).
Well. I have a 2nd instance of Roon on my 12 core (physical) Mac Pro and I can assign 12 cores to audio analysis. I don’t know why the nucleus+ would be different.
I have 12 audio zones in my house and at times I’ve run all 12 at the same time with convolution running on 2 zones and upscaling running on 4 others. I may be wrong, but I can’t fathom that a 2 core processor could handle this.