Suggested hardware

We are about to announce a lot more Roon Core partners in the upcoming weeks/months.

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Actually. I was thinking more alone the lines of a Roon branded device, that comes with Roon core and ready to go.
So it would be branded Roon, and pretty much only run Roon
But thanks though

This is awesome news. I’d love to have a Roon core only device :slight_smile:

There are going to be Roon Core only devices out there (in pretty cases), and we plan to open up the operating system (Roon OS) in case you want to DIY the machine yourself.

We don’t want to sell Roon branded hardware because:

  1. building a hardware business is very different to a software business, and we tried that 10 years ago with Sooloos… we’d like to stick to software with Roon
  2. we have more than enough partners who are willing to build great hardware
  3. we wouldn’t want to compete with our partners

That said, partnerships come and go, and some are better than others. Also, some partners build products we love and some build products that we accept. When we see hardware we love, you will see us actively pushing it. We might start to be vocal about that on our website some day…

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@Danny that is axactly what I meant and wanted. Having just the Roon OS, but in dedicated hardware (with a pretty Roon logo lol)

With the Roon OS for DIY’ers like me that is going to be awesome. I wanted to put a new PC together just for Roon and nothing else so now I’ll wait :smiley:

Perfect, now we need some pretty Roon logo stickers or padges (or a .PNG file)

I’m building a new music room and having a dedicated Roon box will be the icing on the cake as I only use Roon for file playback now.

AWESOME news mate, thanks

See the cafepress site linked in this thread for all your Roon sticker/merch needs.

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Thank you very much sir :slight_smile:

Oh and a fellow Australian too @andybob :smiley:

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Very Good News!

8 posts were split to a new topic: Roon OS (operating system)

Have anybody built a Roon Server using one of the AMD processors and Linux? I am thinking A8 or FX series +8gb RAM + 128SSD (Samsung 850EVO) + 1TB local drive.

I am also going to have a QNAP TS-251 NAS with WD red drives as I need file accessibility for other applications.

I plan on having RP3 endpoints throughout the store.

@ncpl and @brian and @danny
Finished testing of different configurations when adding two Samsung 950 Pro M.2 in RAID 0.
Headless RoonServer on single Samsung 950 Pro M.2 was fast, but I see further performance increase:

  • launch of Roon down from 4 min 50 sec to 2 min 50 sec
  • no impact of library scanning time, as it is limited by Network and NAS performance/ availability
  • first search time decrease in min case from 10 to 7 sec/ in max case 15 to 10 sec (tested on 10 different complexity search strings)
  • second search time on recently executed search string from 5 to 3 sec
  • visual browsing of Albums in ABC view almost instant flow, with 8 artworks loading in 1/4 of second (so fast, I really can’t measure), with more cover arts & photos setting on 18 artworks loading in 1/2 second
  • on 44.1k AIFF On-Demand Audio analysis down from 2 sec to 1/2 sec
  • on 192k AIFF On-Demand Audio analysis down from 8 sec to 4 sec
  • start of playback in 1/4 sec - feeling instant

On technical side:

  • for Intel NUC6i7KYK I found most optimal 32KB RAID 0 stripe
  • BIOS & Win 10 power setting to max performance
  • Intel RST set-up with Write-cash buffer flushing: Disabled and Cash mode: Write back
  • rest does’t matter, as much as no additional SW and Utilities are loaded on PC

Running ATTO Disk Benchmark, I see following performance improvements:

  • Write increase from 1500 MB/ sec to 2750 MB/ sec
  • Read increase from 2500 MB/ sec to 3050 MB/ sec

Searching on web, in some Desktop systems with 2x 512 GB Samsung 950 Pros in RAID 0 with additional cooling, I have seen Read performance reaching up to 3400 MB/ sec, but could not reach so fast on Intel NUC NUC6i7KYK.
Limitation here are DMI 3.0, mobile Motherboard+CPU performance, and no dedicated cooling of SSDs.

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@Janis

Great result. Thanks for sharing. Looks like a good benchmark to set for the higher library limits.

Let us know if you see anything change over time…and enjoy !!

Cheers

Hi, I have a AMD A10-7700K @ 3.5 GHz processor in my drawer :slight_smile: Can I use it as a component on a Server build? I was thinkning of a headless solution. I have around 12k music on my nas right now. And I would to run Roon on my server. Will the AMD be enough or do I need something else like Intel I3?

Having a look at this comparison I would think that it could run Roon Server (Windows or MacOS; Linux is compiled for x86 only) but would expect performance bottlenecks at around 1,000 albums. The thermal profile is pretty high and could present fan noise issues if the server is going to be in the same room as your music system.

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Thanks for your reply, Yes the AMD processor gets really hot and I don’t want the server to be noisy. Probably best to go for a Intel solution instead, like I3 or I5. I have the chassi (Fractal Design Node 304) and harddisks, + 1 SSD. Only need motherboard, CPU and RAM.

If you would be connecting the DAC to the server then you might look at a motherboard that has a special USB connection that allows you to de-power it, thus preventing a lot of the USB noise. Gigabyte makes a few and labels the feature “DAC UP”, I think.

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I have been running Roon Server on an A8 laptop for a while and it was absolutely fine. My library is smaller but it ran OK and there were no issues with playback via remote end points. If I had an A8 or A10 option open to me in a NUC type format I would have considered it alongside my eventual choice (i5). I needed my laptop back for normal duties but apart from that I was happy.

There was an A8 based NUC available by Gigabyte.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA6ZP3R86806&nm_mc=KNC-GoogleMKP-PC&cm_mmc=KNC-GoogleMKP-PC--pla--Barebone+Systems±+Mini+%2F+Booksize-_-9SIA6ZP3R86806&gclid=CjwKEAjw7svABRCi_KPzoPr53QoSJAABSvxfJXJdgi8Um7jo5pQuqMfH_8saLZkihGySo9JAyqcgIRoC4Nnw_wcB&gclsrc=aw.ds