Starter NUC for Roon

[Simon_Camsell]

Hi folks, my first post so go easy!

I’m looking to set up a roon server using Rock and an Intel NUC. Funds are limited and I notice on my local auction site there are numerous NUC generations at varying prices. £400 would be my limit.

What minimum spec would I need ? I’ve got around 400gb of FLAC on my old buffalo NAS and use Qobuz. Some dsp would be interesting in one room.

Using raspberry pi 2 and Volumio on Allo digione in one room and pi 3 and hifiberry in another. Thinking of using Ropiee to set these as endpoints.

Any thoughts would be most welcome

Cheers

Simon

[Mike_LC (Mike)]

Hello Simon and welcome aboard. You might want to take a look at the link listed below. There is a lot of discussion on the subject.

List Your NUC Capabilities Here

People are often asking for NUC suggestions without knowing how much capability they need, and Roon Guidelines are limited. Please list your NUC setup, how it’s being used, and some indication of performance (for example, Signal Path Processing Speed) during intensive use. Here is an example from @ged_hickman1 I bought a second hand NUC 7i5 and it handles my 40k library and does DSP to multiple zones fine. Currently showing 60x processing speed streaming to 5 zones doing DSP on 3 of them. Plea…

[Martin_Webster]

It’s all in the knowledge base … including the shopping list. You’ll get what you need including a 1TB SSD for media files for a little over £400 from Amazon.

[Simon_Camsell]

Thanks Guys. Just out of interest why the 1Tb drive if I’ve got my music on a NAS?

Is an i3 up to the job?

[Henry_McLeod (Henry)]

An i3 is OK for that sort of size collection. A very large collection and/or heavy DSP use justifies something bigger.

[grossmsj (Scott G)]

Just out of interest why the 1Tb drive if I’ve got my music on a NAS?

The NAS would work just fine. If you are short on cash, start with the NAS.
There can be some advantages to having the internal drive, or even an attached USB drive. The responsiveness is just a tiny bit snappier and there is no lag between when you add new music to a NAS and when it shows up in Roon. I used my Synology NAS for years before I got my NUC and I never had any issues.