My NUC7i7BNH ran flawlessly for 4 years . . . until the fan died and the NUC got nuked. I always worried about the forced air cooling. Maybe I jinxed it? I know of many users that have NUCs that are still running and not nuked. I’m just special and lucky.
Still, I might opt for a Nucleus, because my time is limited and at a premium. I work in infrastructure engineering for a global enterprise ecommerce entity, so skills are not an issue. I built a ROCK core on a NUC once already. Doing the same thing and expecting different results is well . . . . Plus, the Zen of it is gone. I’m not a fan (no pun) of rinse and repeat.
Any cons out there for a Nucleus Plus vs. wasting my time on a NUC again ($$$$ is not an issue, but time is)?
You can get fanless NUCs which are considerably cheaper and installing ROCK takes a minute if you have the tools and skills, but if you don’t want to bother and don’t care about the money, I can’t see a con for the Nucleus
Akasa do great fanless cases for NUCs, and with your background, installing it (and putting the supplied thermal paste in the right place) will be easy.
You’ll likely need to source a used NUC, so just make sure the appropriate Akasa case is available first (the older ones are getting hard to fine).
I expect you’re in the US, but if you’re in the UK I have a couple for sale (including two 8i5s in Akasa cases) in the Sales and Trades forum.
I found a number of i5 NUCs for sale, and thought they might make good ROCKs for people here.
Thanks much, Suedkiez.
Yeah. I already built a NUC that worked for 4 years, then died yesterday because the fan failed. On inspection one of the main insulators for the SATA SSD had started to soften in the early stages of melting. I concluded that building yet another NUC is doing the same thing and expecting different results, and I am not the definition of that.
I well and truly have the skills, but the Zen in doing a NUC again is gone. For example, I used work on my car a lot, when I had a single car. Now? With 3 cars I don’t have the time nor inclination.
My career is decades (since 1992) in global enterprise online service data centers and still doing it. Funny how we in tech think about technology–we don’t want to bring our jobs home and work on tech stuff continuously. With the NUC a run once experience is good enough for me. And to that end it served me well for 4 years. OTOH, a real pro for buying a Nucleus “appliance” is having a single throat to choke, when things go wrong. “Here you go roon. Your turn. You fix it. I have bigger fish to fry.”.
Thanks GregD
Actually, I am originally from the UK, but live now in the Puget Sound area. When I built the NUC7i7BNH four years ago, at that time I looked at Akasa cases and they did not have a case for that NUC model. Thanks for the suggestions.
Thanks again everyone. Keep being awesome. Let’s see how long the Nucleus Plus lasts?
I am currently looking for a device for a new roon core (previously was using my gaming pc). Is there any significant downside to building a fanless pc in a chassis over a nuc? Like will the fanless pc hardware be more ‘noisy’ than the nuc?
How can a fanless PC be more noisy? Losing the fan noise is the whole point of being fanless.
Is your Core going to be near where you will be listening to music?
If not then you don’t need a fanless PC, which will run hotter than a PC with a fan.
I started with a NUC as my core having been a die-hard NUC user for years. I use them as media PCS attached to the two TVs in the house.
Anyway, one drawback of a NUC with a fan is brought home when it overheats, starts to erratically shut down, and you realize the fan is choked with dust. Getting at the fan to clean it is a bugger.
It was that, and the many zones available to me that convinced me to migrate to a Nucleus+. It resides on a wall mounted rack in the basement along with the cable modem, the LinkSys Mesh router, 8TB share drive, various IOT controllers, all connected to a 24 port switch. Internet, Roon, the data share drive etc. are all available throughout the house via CAT 6 to each room and two wired LinkSys mesh nodes on the other floors and one in the garage.
While the Nucleus looks stylish I have no desire so see it and knowing it can ‘live’ on the rack in the basement from one year to the next without worries of dust in the fans is perfect for my network topology. Obviously, overkill for the one room installation I started with as a Roon early adopter migrating from Sooloos.
The Nucleus has a 4TB SSD inside for the music. I have an external USB3 4TB HDD attached to it that I use to back up the music every month. I have another backup drive (8TB) in the detached garage (with wired LinkSys mesh node) that acts as fire protected store for the music and business data.
I can control the backups from the two NUC media PCS attached to the TVs in the living room and basement, and my office Desktop.
I mention all of this because I saw the Nucleus not only as a good music server solution, but as a durable, low maintenance, low risk, component part of a networked home/place of work.
6 months ago I went from a desktop to a NUC 10i7 32Gb , 256 gb SSD, then a 4Tb SSD for content .
Even though its a fanned version its completely silent in normal play mode. The only noise happens when I add content or boot it when the fan comes in.
It sits on my desk not near my HiFi but unless you thrash it with lots of DSP (maybe) etc its going to be silent.
Maybe try the progression of NUC then if its not quite enough transfer the internals to a fanless case. I suspect you will stick at a simple NUC. It significantly cheaper then a Nucleus unless you are really hung up on a Nucleus.
It behaves exactly as an appliance in everyday use.
PS several users have reported the “dust on the fan issue”, some even schedule 65 monthly dust cleans !!
This is a great suggestion, and exactly what I did. Though, if one isn’t comfortable transplanting the NUC innards, perhaps then move to a Nucleus instead.
You might hear a fan on your gaming PC at nine feet, but you won’t hear a NUC’s fan at that distance.
For a long time, I had my Core NUC on my desk at about a foot away and couldn’t hear the fan.
Doesn’t matter, either hassle putting a NUC in a fanless case or spend 3 times as much and get a Nucleus. As to your original question, the noise level will be the same
There is also the physics of a large case can use large fans which can then rotate at a much slower speed, which in turn, produces less sound. The smaller the fan, the faster the spin, the usually louder the whine.
I have an i7 NUC and was thinking of getting an Akasa fanless case. But I gotta say, the current fan has no noise, so I figured why bother with the hassle and extra 150 bucks? I’ll dust it once a year to make sure it doesn’t overheat.
