It will work (it’s on Roon’s list of supported hardware), and it will support a modicum of DSP. Whether it will be sufficient to meet your DSP requirements, I have no way of telling.
FWIW, I’m thinking of going the same route. I currently have a 6th gen i3 - which is sufficient for my modest (1,000+) albums, and DSP with FLAC files. However, it struggles with DSP for DSD64 files. While I could get a 7i7 NUC, I thought that if I went for a 7i5, then I could always transfer the motherboard into an Asaka Newton S7 fanless case if the noise got on my nerves…
I am encouraged that more detailed information is coming out. I am officially ready to ROCK as all my NUC hardware arrived today. As others have found, 64GB drives are virtually obsolete, so had to get a 120GB drive. Will wait for the ROCK release before plugging anything in as I want to do the BIOS update and ROCK install in one go.
Rock on Gigabyte Brix GB-BXi3H is running great!!!, excellent sound, as good as Audiolinux, i remove the original WiFi card, i’m using the internal LAN
I just purchased an i3 NUC on Amazon using the links Roon provided. I purchased both the 4GB and 8GB memory sticks since I couldn’t decide yet which one I’ll want. I’ll return the other. All that stuff will arrive this weekend via Amazon Prime, but the SSD drive won’t arrive until middle of June which seems like an eternity. Does anyone know where you can find one of these via Amazon Prime or at a big box store? I tried Staples and OfficeMax where I live in Washington DC but they don’t have it. The specific item is: Transcend 64GB SATA III 6Gb/s MTS400 42 mm M.2 SSD Solid State Drive (TS64GMTS400)
Opinions vary! Mine is that it depends what you were using before. If your system is already compartmentalized in a server - remote - bridge configuration, then not really. There may be incremental gains comparing a setup with a cluttered desktop machine going direct to DAC vs ROCK in the same configuration (lower noise floor due to reduced electrical “noise,” lower resource use, fewer background processes etc?) but rationalists would probably argue against that as well.
Do I need to consider the Endurance value (TBW-TeraBytes Written) when chosing a SSD or is the Roon Core mainly about performing read and not write operations?
I am about to downsize my current NUC6i5SYH for the purpose of ROCK replacing my current Samsung SSD 950 Pro 256GB (300 TBW) with an Intel 600p 128GB (72 TBW).
And yes, I have another purpose for the replaced SSD:-)
Don’t worry about endurance, you will not even be filling half of the 128 GB drive. God choice to use your 950 pro for something else the Intel will be more than adequate.