David. This just isn’t true. It uses multiple cores for audio analysis, parallelized upscaling, multiple zone support, etc. if you have a single audio zone and don’t use dsp, than a single beefier core is probably better but is certainly not when using these other functions.
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Maybe one day if I have a dedicated cupboard in a hallway or something I’ll use one of our old servers at work. I have a spare dual 12 core with HT (48 logical processors) and 392gb of RAM… I think roon will just about run on that 
I think 12 cores and 392G of ram will just about do it! 
On a more serious note I will add that my nucleus+ works better for Roon in my setup than my 12 core Mac Pro. It speaks to the utility of a dedicated music appliance vs a multi purpose computer doing many different and unrelated tasks.
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I find Roon runs much better on my Nucleus than on my Dell XPS 15 laptop with 6 core i7 and 32 GB of RAM. It is flawless on the Nucleus.
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Believe it or not, I’ll wager that most of the NUC/Nucleus price differential is due to the distribution chain. Roon retains some profit for sure, but it’s the cost of putting it in the hands of retailers that matters most.
That’s obviously some of the cost, but I’d be surprised if it is “most” of the differential. A NUC includes distribution cost and dealer mark-up also. The cost it does not include are assembly labor and Roon fixed cost and profit margin.
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Here’s a slightly more reliable source – the Internet:
What is the typical retail markup for a consumer electronics product? Different stores will have their own requirements, and make their own pricing decisions, but a rule of thumb for many retail categories is about 100% markup (50% margin).Oct 30, 2014
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I wonder how much of the perceived advantage of nucleus is the fact that it runs roon OS which is super lean.
Rock on these machines should close the gap a little as it consumes very little resources and Linux typically manages memory better than windows.
I know nothing about a NUC and ROCK. I merely said that Roon runs much better on my Nucleus than on my Dell XPS 15 laptop. And, it’s not a perceived advantage, it’s a very much real advantage. I have no experience with a NUC and ROCK.
You can rock most things. Any my point is that the hardware of your laptop running ROCK would likely close the gap
Sure it would. But it’s my everyday laptop running Windows 10. I bought a Nucleus.
Not trying to do other work on the machine is the key.
I don’t know about Windows, but ROCK vs any other Linux makes very little difference. Here is the CPU usage on my Odroid H2 running Ubuntu 19.10. Midway through the graph, I start to play a track to two zones.
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Full CPU usage would be 400% of a core. As you can see, total CPU usage is more like 10% of a core, with Roon comprising 6% and netdata around 4%. Everything else is negligible.
FWIW, I’m doing volume-leveling, but no other DSP.
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My experience on Mac OS (admittedly an older version last time I tried roon) was similar. 4-5% playing to three zones of different types
Right. The point I was emphasizing was that the Operating System overhead, running a stock Linux distro is completely negligible. So switching that out for a “streamlined” ROCK distro will have no discernible impact on performance.
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It will if the alternative is windows 10!
Especially from a memory standpoint
Very few domestic users on this site sill be running Linux by default. So you’re dealing with Mac OS (BSD/Linux variant anyway) ir windows, the latter of which is much more resource hungry
So going rock on a wintel system has benefits (including better usb audio drivers)!
I have a NUC 7…no noise
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Some people complain about fan noise, others don’t.
In brief, I personally configured an i7 with 16GB of RAM, installed a stripped-down Arch Linux and Roon server in a fanless chassis.
I can tell you the following, I have made AB testing against Zenith MK2, auralic, Innuos and none of them bested the DIY server.
Cost wise, less than 650$ without the external linear power supply for the server and the SSD storage.
Config time, 2h top.
I also use the roon server for DSP to transform music to DSD 128.
Have fun
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What linear power supply did you use for the NUC8I7BEH? Did it make a SQ difference in your set up? Thanks
I do not know if you are addressing the question to me, but personally I am using a JCAT 400W PC Linear Power Supply. And yes it does make big difference.
All digital audio signal is impacted by power quality and to a lesser extent the analogue part of the chain.