I’m planning to buy a NUC for Roon, see link. I will add 16gig of memory and an ssd of 250, will this be enough for running Roon?
8gb of ram is ample and the 250gb SSD is more than enough. You will need to store your music somewhere though and can’t use the SSD rock i# installed on for that.
Memory depends on library size, 300k tracks or more and you may want 16gb, if you are locating the NUC where some occasional fan size is not a problem I would consider the NUC7i7BNH in case you want to play with upsampling and eq.
300k tracks will want an i7 nuc too
The first question is if you are planning on running ROCK
If you are, the above posts cover the considerations.
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From posts I’ve read here it seems the i7 NUC can run hotter under quiescent or light load than the i5 version, making for more fan noise.
I built my Roon install on a NUC7 i5, 8 Gigs of RAM, which is plenty of horse power for streaming with DSP (only could use more on initial music scan). 256 m2 ssd for the OS, Roon Software & DB, and ripping software, 2TB 7200 rpm 2.5" spinning disk for music (started with 1T & it wasn’t enough after I ripped all my RedBook to FLACs then I ripped my DVD-A disks and started to buy DSDs).
Whether i7 ot i5 NUC I highly recommend you go into the bios and alter the fan profile. Mine came using the Fixed profile, which makes for audible noise. You can switch to Quiet (but only after initial scan of all music), or make a custom profile that runs fanless normally under most conditiond to say 45C, but ramps the fan up quickly under high load.
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Okay, so Rock should be the way to go… I think I’ll give it a try.
I wonder, can I still use my SOtM Sms 200 with NUC/Rock?
As far as I see the Sotm is a roon endpoint connected via ethernet, so it should still work with Rock without any issues.
The Roon experience should be seamless between the various ways of hosting it. Where ROCK will differ is the fact it is single purpose and the ease with which you can run it once it is properly set up.
The following has been ordered:
Intel Baby Canyon NUC 7i7BNH
Crucial 8BG SODIMM DDR4-2400
Kingston A400 SSD 120 GB
Total €590/$691
I have two external 4Tb usb (spinning)hd. One is Fat and the other is OSX format. What is best to use with Rock? FAT, MacOS or EXT4 Linux?
All my files are ALAC/AIFF. Do I have to convert them to FLAC?
If you can run EXT4, do that because it’ll perform the best.
If not EXT4, then use exFAT for best compatibility.
Received the NUC, Memory and SSD. Installing the hardware was easy. Then I installed the new BIOS and ROCK. Took me no more then 5 minutes. Roon is now running! I’m a happy man!
Thanks for the tips and help.
When not playing music or at night, can I leave the NUC on or better shut it down?
I leave mine on 24x7 like the rest of my audio equipment
Hi, Johan. How loud the fan is? Are you using DSP features?
The NUC is less than 4m away from my listening position and I barely hear the fan. I’m using convolver.
Do what you want. It takes seconds to boot up and shut down but mine has stayed up, error free for weeks if not months left on once I placed it with the rest of my networked gear.
Concerning about sound quality. I run RoonRock on a Nuc7i5 and before that I run Roon on a external ssd connected to a Synology 218+ ith 4 extra gb. Sometimes I have the feeling that the sound with Roon on the ssd-nas combination sounds slightly better
