Does Nucleus+ work equally well at any voltage between 12 V and 19 V?
I don’t think anyone on the Roon team has ever tried anything but 19v.
It may work at 12V but the current draw is going to be higher If more devices are attached to the USB such as USB-HDD. It is advisable to stick at 19V.
It doesn’t matter. Current requirements rise as voltage drops so at 12 volts you need up to 5.5 amps but other than that it should just work.
I measured my NUC7i5 today it has M.2 SSD for ROCK OS and second SSD for music.
This is with regular 44.1/16 no DSP
19Vdc average 0.57A (10.83W) and peak 1.5A
15Vdc average 0.69A (10.35W) and peak 2.1A
12Vdc average 0.81A (9.72W) and peak 2.8A
Average is during play to Roon endpoint. Peak was during start up.
I have not measured amp usage during a scan for example but if all cores are being used during a library scan I suppose we can see constant use high as peak is in my test.
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Looks like peak current is almost doubled when the voltage is reduced to 12V. It is not a big concern here as most SMPS has large output capacitors to absorb this peak current needed by the NUC during full throttle.
OK, to be safe a Nucleus or NUC PSU should be rated around 65 Watts. Perhaps a bit less on a Nucleus because it has two less USB ports exposed. But the 65 Watt figure is safe. It can be considered overkill but better to have an overrated PSU than an underrated one for obvious reasons. So no matter what voltage you choose to use it is the Wattage that is important and it should be the same no matter the voltage chosen. This means the PSU should be able to run a Nucleus or NUC at maximum demand for extended periods without overheating or shutting down. That means a M2, SSD or HDD and all exposed USB ports used and drawing power with 100% processor utilisation. That is the safe benchmark to apply, even if you’ll never use it under those circumstances. Finally consider how using a third party PSU affects warranty and home insurance.