I started using Roon about 3 months ago after visiting a friends house and have found it to be great. My initial Roon server was installed on an extra Mac Mini M1 that i had on the network. It was ok, but would started to lag every once in a while and was not as “snappy” on the network as I liked.
Now- as an AMD employee- I fought hard against being forced to buy an Intel based NUC (you know- Ford vs. Chevy, when you work for Chevy :-). So I bought an AMD Ryzen-7 based Mini-PC from Beelink, hoping for the best. The installation using the Roon ROC installer, was flawless and the machine has been performing Flawlessly! The Beelink GTR5 (Amazon) has a Ryzen 9 Processor, 512G NVME, 32Gb Memory, 2x 2.5Gb Ethernet ports, 2x NVME slots and a 2.5" HD mount for <$600. I have it connected to the 2.5G port on my router (why not :-)? and it handles my rather large library very nicely! There was no tweaking or tinkering necessary to get it to run using the standard Rock install from Roon.
The Ryzen based platforms run cooler, are fast and you can get a them cheaper then equivelent Intel based platforms on Amazon
Go Chevy!
I totally agree. Did you notice any SQ difference compared to the M1. I am using a Ryzen 7600 and find a significantly improved SQ even compared to the Nucleus+. Just seems more natural and not so bright.
It’s a computer, there are no audio signals anywhere, just digital data that is always the same if you run the same DSP settings
Hi Dan,
I am using the Unraid server as my core, but recently the docker has been giving me issues, I was thinking of getting the ser7 from bee link. I just want to confirm that you could install ROCK on the AMD NUC. Like you, I am not an Intel fanboy. But I considered installing W11 on the Ser7 and just in the Windows core.
Hello Kumar.
Yes I simply downloaded the rock core and imaged one of the M.2 ssd drives with the image, installed it in a gtr5 from Beelink, set that drive as a boot drive in the bios and it booted up flawlessly!
Good luck!
Just checking whether this is still working for you on the BeeLink. I’ve been reading the reviews and it seems there are some issues with the mobo on some of their builds. I’d like to run ROCK on one as well, they seem like a great bargain.
Still roc-solid! I have had no issues at all and I just loaded up an additional 4tb of music!
Highly recommended.