So my Nucleus has worked mostly fine for the 26 months I have owned it, only needing to reboot or restore backup a handful of times over the two years.
Then last week, it told me to restore a backup, which I was unable to do and so I switched the unit off and on again. Except it never switched on again.
My dealer has had a look and said that the motherboard is dead and needs replacing at a cost of $700 which I have to eat as I am a couple of months over my two year warranty.
Has anyone else had this happen? I have no idea what caused it. There was no surge as my other electronics are fine and the Nucleus has sat untouched on a shelf the entire time.
Do I have any options other than basically paying 50% of the unit´s entire value to get it fixed…?
I’d get a second opinion from a computer repair shop rather than a Hi-Fi dealer. It may be the motherboard, but equally, it could be the PCIe SSD which will cost less than $100 to replace.
I note that you haven’t previously posted about the Nucleus failing; can you describe the symptoms?
It´s never really failed. I occasionally get the message that I have to re-install a backup, which I do and it works again.
Another few times it has been unresponsive and so I switch off, leave a minute and switch on again and it´s fine.
Last week I got the message to use a backup but it refused to complete the operation and so I switched off the box via the on/ off button. It has refused to switch back on since. The problem is not with the power cable, the AD tells me the motherboard is dead and needs a complete replacement. I don‘t know more than that. I don‘t think think they‘re trying to uncharged me, they asked me for more time to see if they could arrange a cheaper fix or upgrade to a plus at discount.
Be very careful about this. I’ve never had a motherboard fail in all the years I’ve been building my own computers. If by dealer you mean HiFi dealer, they are the last people I would take Nucleus advice from.
Rather than spend $700 on a repair, get an Intel Nuc, install ROCK and never think about it again.
Feel compelled to echo the sentiments here…My disability has rendered my hands not quite as useful as they once may have been, but, I built my own PCs and repaired them for others for years, and, a motherboard failure in two years, while not an impossibility, would definitely be on the extreme end of the spectrum.
The fact that you encountered database issues prior to this immediately throws up red flags of a storage I/O issue with your SSD. If Roon’s SSDs have historically shown to be problematic, they need to potentially re-examine their supplier relationships. Higher than average SSD failure rates were perhaps a slight issue when they were initially introduced to market, though, haven’t realistically been much of a problem for a decade or so now.
Also…much as I would not go to dentist to get my back adjusted, I wouldn’t bring what is essentially a computer in a fancy case to a hi-fi dealer.
I did hear you mention earlier that it is currently in their possession. If that is still the case, please retrieve it from them, tell them to stop conducting themselves like a mechanic and to show more respect for their customers, and either buy an older NUC, or else, buy a new SSD and transfer the DB over to see if that does the trick.
If the DB transfer happens, and the Nucleus still doesn’t work, at least you have a ready-made backup for your next machine.
As someone else has already said, plug it in to a Tv from the hdmi out power on and see if it gives any messages up on the screen iand post on here. It might give some hints as to what’s wrong. If nothing then it might be more seriously broken as they say. But best to try it first.
I agree. Only then will you know what options are available.
I’ve also moved the thread to Nucleus Support, so Roon support see this. If it’s powered on and connected to your home network, they may be able to access the logs.
Furthermore, it’d be helpful if you stated the model and revision of the Nucleus.
If you contact support, you can likely arrange to send it in to them for diagnostics. They can tell you exactly what is wrong with it and how they (or you) can fix it. A new motherboard through them could be $800, but they know their own gear. I recommend having Roon do the analysis and work.
Not sure where you live but in Australia if this happened even if it’s a couple of months out of warranty it would still be fixed. We have very strong consumer laws here that would oblige the retailer to fix it as it’s just out of warranty.
I run it on a QNAP NAS / Movies and Music - I have Raid disk mirroring and another Backup for the files too… QNAP runs on Linux and was designed to be turned on 24/7 and run for years, I got a used one for $150 / 6 bay system and each 4GB disk is about $40 now, cheap!
Here the deal. It is simpler just to say that it is the motherboard than trying to fix it, because they don’t know how to fix it. Plus, they want to make money off that motherboard as does Roon. One more thing I would put dollars to donuts that that motherboard is off the shelf. It makes no sense to develop something like that on their own. They are a small company and doing something like that would be a huge distraction. Just make your own and put it in the Nucleus case. I am running a used I5 that is smaller than my notebook and it works great.
