All this setting does is to tell the motherboard to stop powering the fan ports.
Untrue.
RoonOS, which ROCK and Nucleus are both built on, has no thermal management.
ROCK relies on the BIOS and CPU fan. Nucleus’s BIOS is configured to not power any fans using the setting @Geoff_Coupe mentioned above, and then there are custom modifications for the Nucleus to do thermal management. ROCK is not Nucleus, even though they are very similar.
There are both physical and software mechanisms. Some of the software mechanisms are active, but many are passive (for example, turning off various heat generating components).
The temperature sensor is actually inside the CPU, and is very very fast and lightweight to access. We do not do any active thermal management for the RAM or SSD on the Nucleus/+, because we found it unnecessary with the components we use.
Correct, no M.2 wireless, no antennae. Many onboard components we don’t use are disabled and unpowered.
It’s just software, it’s never “hard”. ROCK is meant for devices that can cool themselves, Nucleus is not. Options related to ROCK and Nucleus:
- use Nucleus/+
- use NUC+ROCK with our recommended hardware configuration (with fan)
- use ROCK with your own hardware configuration and rely on physical passive cooling
- build your own custom Linux based OS with whatever software power management you desire