Would this run Roon Rock and make a good core?
Yes. The only things are that the 32GB of RAM is way more than is necessary. For all but the largest libraries 8GB is more than enough.
The i7 is probably more CPU than you need. It depends on how heavy DSP you are going to use and how many simultaneous end points you are going to play to.
The hard drive is a PCI bus type. Most NUCs use an M.2, but a PCI bus drive to hold the OS performs just as well and that’s all that counts.
None of these impact whether you can run ROCK. This device will run ROCK, but you can probably find something cheaper that is not so overbuilt for the purpose.
Obviously, since you’re going to use ROCK, you don’t need a pre-installed Windows.
Also, you don’t need the latest and greatest NUC11. If you can find an older model that’s cheaper, it will be just as good.
Woah. It’s been a while since I’ve visited this page. Wonderful to see all of the recent (as of 2022) NUC models listed. Does that mean Roon OS now supports UEFI boot (no more dependency on Legacy Boot support)? If so, that’s tremendous progress!
Have a look here:
Torben
1 Like
So this would be better?
Intel NUC 7 Mainstream Mini PC (NUC7i5BNHXF) - Core i5, 4GB RAM, 16GB Optane Memory, 1TB HDD
Roll over image to zoom in
Intel NUC 7 Mainstream Mini PC (NUC7i5BNHXF) - Core i5, 4GB RAM, 16GB Optane Memory, 1TB HDD
It all depends on the size of you library, how many endpoints, how heavy the DSP, etc.
For comparison check out the Nucleus and Nucleus+ specs here.
I’m a little hazy on Optane memory concept. Reading the specs from Intel, it seems like the device will take an M.2 and a PCI SSD. You need at least a 64GB drive to put ROCK on, 128GB M.2s are dirt cheap
It seems like you should get a small M.2 for ROCK and then, if you want, you could put your music on the 1TB drive.
I notice in the Nucleus specs I linked to, it doesn’t tell that the Nucleus uses an i3 and the Nucleus+ uses an i7.