I have a Roon Nucleus + from mid-2021 which went u/s towards the end of last year and having sent it to be repaired (at my cost) I am told it needs a new motherboard at a cost of £1000. I think that gets me a 6 month warranty on the repair.
Does anyone have any advice on whether I should just ditch it and buy a Mac Mini instead and use that as my Roon core? Or is there a good reason for getting the Roon Nucleus + repaired?
It connects to my Meridian M218.
Thanks in advance for any advice.
I’ll start by saying I’ve never seen or used a Nucleus, this response is just my opinion based what I’ve read in this forum.
I would not spend any more money to have the Nucleus + repaired, I have no idea what the problems are but I’ve read about repeated SSD and MB failures over the years. So it could happen again.
They have been discontinued and Roon is coming out with the new model Nucleus Titan with upgraded more powerful components.
The new Titan is more expensive and probably out of my price range so I’d go with a home build, NUC/ROCK or the MAC Mini.
I’m sure other opinions will vary.
I can’t comment on the Nucleus either, but I’m more than happy with my Mac Mini M1 (16GB). At the end of the day they’re both just ways to get the digital data from A to B.
£1000 is outrageous.
The motherboard is likely to be a NUC board, I would take it to a local computer store to see if they can repair it by adding a generic NUC board.
Or ask the same store to build you a NUC and install ROCK which will be substantially less than £1000.
Or get the Mac mini, many people use them.
I run a NUC.
I had an old 2012 Mac mini with 16gb RAM. Loaded Unbuntu (OSX no longer supported) and Roon server and it sits there working perfectly - haven’t touched it in a year. Cost £200 
I run a 7th gen i7 NUC as a headless ROCK. It’s been going for nearly 2 years, solid as … The M1s are great, but probably overkill for the task unless you have a gigantic library, which you very well may given you have a Nucleus. Good luck.
I replaced my Nucleus with a 2012 mini which worked fine. I purchased a new-in-box 2018 mini and mopped the 2012 to a Roon bridge. Never had a problem. If you are familiar with the Apple OS, the mini is a fine choice.
Roon hardware’s quality and reliability are horrendous. My Nucleus Plus bricked after a Roon software update 2 weeks past the 2 year warranty. The unit is placed in an A/V rack with good ventilation and clean power. The motherboard had to be replaced. Roon gave me a discount but still cost $500 to replace the board, and my dealer charged $200 for tech supports.
The replacement board bricked after 20 months, also after a Roon update. I’ve asked their tech to escalate to their top management. They only gave me lip service, told me that’s within “industry standard”, and no special considerations for such premature failures. Roon charged $800 to replace the motherboard with only a 90 day warranty. 2 motherboard failures in less than 4 years under normal operating conditions. ! I’d not touch Roon hardware with a 10 ft. pole.
I have 2 friends running Roon on Mac Mini, works great and don’t have the reliability problems of the Nucleus. I’ve also run Roon Sever on my Mac Studio while the Nucleus was in the shop. It actually runs smoother and faster than the Nucleus+.
Thanks everyone! After reading all the useful advice, I’ve gone with a Mac Mini with settings suggested by forum users from another discussion thread and it is running perfectly! It is disappointing that the Nucleus+ has these issues.
Greg, I’ll reply to you separately. Thanks.
This doesn’t really help you with your problem, but it seems to me 1K to replace a NUC motherboard is intended to prevent you from getting your motherboard replaced. Amazon sells NUC I7 boards for less than $500. It shouldn’t take more than a half hour to replace. So we’re looking at $550 or $600 as a realistic cost to repair. Seems like a competent computer repair shop could do it.
Sure, or, use the money to get a new PC. In the face of those repair costs, I’d opt to get a new PC (or in my case build my own).
I’ve run Roon Core on both my iMac (Mac OS) and Intel NUC (Windows 10) for many years without issues. When spending quite a bit of money on computer hardware, I always prefer if it can serve other functions as well. I use my NUC for Roon, Plex, and as a HTPC. More importantly, I also find these machines easier to troubleshoot and get warranty repair.
For $1000, I’d 100% get a Mac mini and run it for Roon or just about anything.
You can always save a bit and get a mini PC and use it with Windows or ROCK if you want a purpose built device exclusively for just Roon. However, my cheap NUC runs my 40,000+ library just fine with all of my endpoints with DSP and ARC when traveling. Never had performance issues for my use case.