ROCK server taken out by a lightening strike

Yup, the strike blew up an outside weather-proof box that held cables for a security camera … then missed a houseful of electronics, and took out my modem and ROCK server. Interestingly, both devices were plugged into a high-quality surge protector strip that was plugged into a Jackery power station, along with my computer and router. Nothing else was damaged.

I had no issues with my old ROCK server that ran on an Intel NUC 10 with 8 GB of RAM. It was utterly trouble-free. I never had to fiddle with it or log into it. I took the upgrades when they came around, and it just worked. My kind of technology.

I considered getting a Nucleus One, as it’s comparably priced to the ROCK hardware, but from what I’ve gathered by poking around this forum, it wouldn’t perform as well or have the longevity of the ROCK solution. I’m ready to order an i7 Asus NUC 13 Pro with 16 GB of RAM and a 256 GB SSD. The Titan looks swell, but $4K is not in my budget right now. If I could buy a comparably performing turnkey solution for anywhere near the price of the ROCK server, I would, but from what I can see, that is not possible. Before I hit BUY, am I missing something?

I just set up a NUC13i7 as a ROCK server, replacing a NUC8i7. It wasn’t inexpensive since I went with 32GB ram, 1GB OS drive, and a fanless Akasa Maxwell case. Even so it was about 1/3 the price of a Titan. The CPU in the NUC13 is just slightly faster than the Titan’s single core, but the NUC13 has more cores and higher max TDP which is not really helpfull.

I don’t see the value in the Nucleus One, and especially the Titan. Depends how you feel about the turnkey aspect though. I also didn’t think the Pro version NUC offered anything I needed..