I’m sure there are many factors coming into it. They price isn’t the hardware alone, either.
Anyway, if the CPU info is correct, it’s roughly comparable to and probably a bit faster than the old Nucleus.
Thanks for the comparisons, @Suedkiez - looks like I don’t need to scratch that itch…
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I ordered a Nucleus One as a replacement for my Nucleus+ (16GB RAM) 4 years old! Let’s see how it compares!
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My Lenovo laptop running my Roon Server has the Core i7-8650U CPU and 16 gb of RAM. So the Nucleus One has been scrapped from my “wanted” list.
The Nucleus One has an inferior CPU and like 4 gb of RAM. So I am confident that my Lenovo/Linux combination is far better suited for running Roon.
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I don’t think CPU and RAM are that important! With nucleus you should take into account that only processes that are absolutely necessary are running! With notebook PCs etc. there are so many processes running that cannot be switched off and that also put a strain on the CPU! That’s why I think dedicated systems are better! I spent a lot of time tuning PCs for audio, it cost more money than a nucleus+ and was never as trouble-free.
You could measure how many percent of CPU power you save on a PC/NB if you disable all unnecessary services! For this reason, the performance of a PC/NB is not comparable to that of a dedicated system!
My personal experience😀
Oh yes they are, in particular with a very large database. This is why the official documentation says precisely this:
Yes, that’s the case. However:
- At least desktop PCs (not so much laptops) have many more CPU cores, so the other process can always be moved to unused cores.
- As for the RAM, the official specifications do already caution that on general-purpose computers the RAM for Roon must be added to the RAM requirements of other processes that run on the machine. If one follows this advice, there should be sufficient RAM for everything so that the operating system doesn’t swap.
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I’m very excited to see what the comparison between Nucleus+ (16GB/RAM) and Nucleus one will bring! Everything else is just speculation. Let’s wait and see😉
CPU isn’t that much of an issue. RAM however is. CPU usage on my i7 is only a few % at max. However the whole interface is much snappier on my 16 gb 8th gen i7, compared to my 8 gb 2020 M1 MacBook Pro. As Linux and Roon sit around 7 gb of RAM usage with my 7,5k album and 86.7k track library.
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CPU is getting important at least when it’s about resampling, multichannel, DSD in combination with DSP/MUSE.
That’s also mentioned on their page comparing One and Titan. Maybe not relevant for the average customer but for those who want to push it to the limit.
Have this, your max. signal path/processing, in mind, before going for a particular gear.
That’s a good question, what do you want to do! The equipment depends on that! 
My NUC8I7BEH/Rock with 32GB ram runs most everything EXCEPT:
I have DSD256 5.1 files in my library that I play over the network to an S88 MKII. With the Roon Ready DAC for playback the processing speed is not displayed so over 100x.
Howerever, Roon has selected those DSD256 5.1 files for Radio followup when I’m using the HDMI connection to AVR. The conversion to PCM drags the processing speed down to 1x causing dropouts and skipping. So my case requires more CPU power.
Not an issue for everyone but I use that scenario for testing the power required to run Roon now. My next server will have to pass that test or Roon needs to have the smarts not to cause issues for itself.
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Both CPU and Ram are important to Roon given it uses one core for most of its activities and loads the database into ram due to inefficiencies of the chosen database they decided to use. Good single core performance is paramount if you want it to do several things at the same time.
Plenty of other os that don’t run much at all. ROCK really isn’t exclusive here, but Roon is a resource hungry app that is currently using 35% of my system ram of 16GB even when idle. This continues to grow the more I use it, do searches add new music etc. The two other server apps I have running just reach a tad over 3% between them. Both have same library and one has video two yet is benign for most of its time. System is taking about 4.5% very small footprint.
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I replaced the 4GB RAM in the Nucleus One with a 16GB stick I had. Much snappier.
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I think “modern” Celeron based processors are more than capable to handle what you throw at them, including ROCK. I’m running ROCK on a Beelink U59 Mini PC (Intel N5105, 16 GB RAM) and have had no issues. The processor does get a little warm when you slam a new library at it (20,000+ tracks on a new NVME for me) but once loaded everything has been running fine for me.
I don’t doubt that, apparently the Nucleus One has an N5105 as discussed in detail above. The question was if specifically the N100 is a good fit.
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In a number of benchmark tests, the N100 does better than the N5105. I think the differences have a lot to do with improved caching on the N100 (L1: 384KB, L2: 2.0MB, L3: 6MB) compared to the N5105 (L1: 256KB, L2: 1.5MB, L3: 4MB).
That’s the thing, it always depends on the benchmark vs the specific app. Some software gets great gains from larger caches, other software (that has access patterns that mean that the cache is often stale) don’t. As I noted above, the N100 has a low base clock and a very big jump to turbo mode, so I was wondering how it would do on sustained load (think DSP that goes on for hours) where turbo mode can’t be used.
I don’t know if the 100 does better with Roon, I’m just curious, but generic benchmarks never tell the whole story. I believe, though, that Roon developers probably have a good idea what their code needs from a CPU - but then other factors like price and availability, cooling, and many others come into play, too.
The N100 is only 6 W TDP, which makes it especially well suited to battery powered mobile devices but perhaps a bit conservative for desktop usage.
The N5105 is a 10 W TDP part, arguably more appropriate for desktop machines.
But also of note, both the N100 and N5105 have 15 W TDP counterparts, the N95 and N5095, respectively. Specs otherwise appear to be exactly the same, just with expanded power and thermal envelopes. These two could be even better processors for Roon usage.
AJ
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The question is which DSP load you are imagining from roon that would be putting multiple cores of an N100 under stress for hours. If you play 3 or 4 simultaneous streams of PCM768>DSD512 with convolution and heavy DSP, maybe this would bring an N100 to thermal limits on the long run.
Does not sound like a realistic scenario for the majority of roon users. Usual DSP operations and all the conventional resolutions (PCM192 or DSD128) eat up very little of one core’s capacity and I am not sure many people run more than 4 ´bold´ stream simultaneously.
In case of the N100 there might be another factor: It is a relatively new CPU model, and appropriate motherboards for that one might have hit the market a bit late.
How big is your library and are you sure the 4GB bar was of same quality and speed compared to the 16GB?
When I upgraded RAM in my previous machine I did not feel any improvement in snappiness if only roon´s RAM consumption stayed within the limits of what I had installed.
I am surprised you haven’t seen the “drop-outs when upsampling to DSD512” posts. Some Roon users always try crazy thing (a stochastic necessity when the user base is large enough, I suppose). People bring faster processes to their knees.
As one would expect: