Replacing Dell i5 laptop running Win10 and Roon core only with Roon Nucleus, good move?

Yes (10 characters)

Certainly there is no need to run the nucleus remote from the router. But if you network is all wired and no Ethernet over power runs you should be fine No matter where you put things. WiFi perhaps not so great.

Getting ROCK running on a NUC is as simple as plugging in a USB stick thatā€™s been flashed when the ROCK installation files and plugging it in to your network.

If youā€™ve managed to get Roon server running on Windows you can install ROCK on a NUC.

The flashing the USB stick is really easy and the step by step instructions provided by Roon are dead straightforward.

As above youā€™ll save $$$$$ and have the same end result just about than buying a Nucleus.

Yes network is all hard wired.
Only my two Chromecast units are wifi as no other options with them.
My router is upstairs next to my main PC and the Dell.
Then there is a 75ft cat7 cable runs down to a 4 port unmanaged switch in my music room.
This feeds the microrendu and my smart TV .
So the Nucleus could really be up or downstairs as I see it?

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Any placement thatā€™s convenient when itā€™s all wired is fine.

More brain ache here now so bear with me please.
As suggested by some, just been perusing NUC on fleabay and probably even more confused right now.
Most of the ones I see already have WIN10 installed on them, surely that would be pointless?
And if so what need I be looking for on a NUC in the way of a basic OS if not WIN10?

Which then leads me to my next wave of thoughts.

As I already have my Dell laptop, what is to stop one stripping WIN10 off it and using that instead? If so what OS would that need on it to run Roon ROCK?
Thanks in advance.

Roon only provide support for ROCK installed on a NUC of appropriate specification. Youā€™re right - you donā€™t need W10 so most people but whatā€™s known as a barebones NUC and stick some memory in it and an SSD. Roon provide full details of how to do this

Installing ROCK on anything else is affectionately known as MOCK. I went this route and bought a mini PC and a Ryzen 3 3200G, stuck some Ram in it and ac spare SSD I had lying around and had it up and running with ROCK in 30 mins or so. But as I say itā€™s important to understand that if mine went wrong I wouldnā€™t get any support. So far though itā€™s been utterly reliable.

Yes I did largely although whilst building PCā€™s is something Iā€™ve done for years Iā€™ve never installed ROCK before so that was a bit of a shot in the dark.

Your right though-not recommended for beginners.

Iā€™d recommend the Proper NUC route to anyone though as itā€™s a) very easy and b) supported.

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Thanks Danny

I think my Dell is best left unmolested rather than converted into a brick!

Have been looking through the article that Jim provided a link to and it does seem straight forward enough and best to stick to one of the Roon supported NUC units.
But you are right as it is a very large saving on the Nucleus and as it seems it does not have to be on display in my case then who cares if it does not look quite as spiffy as the Nucleus.

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I guess I decided not to decide for now.
Dell is working just fine, its on manual Windows updates which I will look at once every couple weeks.
Instead I went an upgraded the microrendu to an unltrarendu and an Audioquest Carbon USB cable.
Now this I can hear a difference with.
Enjoy the music!
Stay safe!

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I will be doing something kind of similar later today when my new laptop shows up.

My current Dell laptop decided it no longer likes its own monitor, randomly flickering on and off and different speeds like a crazed out strobe light, sometimes going out completely, to where the only way of getting it to come back on is hard rebooting it (pulling power and battery). Itā€™s been doing this for a couple of months now and I just had enough of it, especially when I literally fought with the darn thing for nearly an hour the other night to try and get it working again. A royal pain in theā€¦

Anyway, Iā€™m going to strip this laptop down of just about all of the programs, disable all of the Windows updates, scheduled weekly maintenance, etc, etc and only have Windows and Roon Core up and running. Itā€™s going to live its new life in the spare room (office) wired directly to the router instead of via wifi.

Itā€™s running Win10 Home 64, has a AMD quad core 2.3 GHz processor, 1 TB HD, and 8 Gb of RAM. It barely runs above idle running Roon and only uses about 700 Mb of RAM. Iā€™ll connect a nice spare 24" monitor to it that we have laying around and call it a day.

I have an old Apple iPod 2 mini that I control it with, and will also control it with the new laptop as well.

Oddly enough, as much of a pain as this laptop has been, it had always worked perfectly fine over wifi with Roon and the Raspberry Pi 4. No issues at all. So I guess thatā€™s one good thing about it. LOL

Roon does recommend that you use an SSD for the system boot drive for any CORE setup. Otherwise core performance might suffer.

That seems like a lot of work. Before doing that, see if you can acquire Windows Enterprise. Everything is already stripped out and there are no feature updates.

Itā€™s been working perfectly fine this entire time, the past few months. I donā€™t think I have to worry about swapping out to a SSD.

Itā€™s not too much work at all. Iā€™ve done it a million times with other PCā€™s. Plus there are a few files and programs I still want to keep on that laptop, so this is the better option. And itā€™s totally free.

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