Support of Intel NUC8 (Bean Canyon)

@support,
When can we expect to get support for NUC8 (Bean Canyon)?

Are you looking for any specific support or do you want it on a list of supported devices?

If you are concerned about the latest drivers for network, I believe that was resolved with the latest update.

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General support.
I believe the NUC8 i3 version is the perfect machine for Roon. The single core performance is on the level of the i7 of the last generation. Since it only has 2 cores, the heat generation is low, so fan noise should not be an big issue

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Isnā€™t the biggest hold back uefi boot on some of the newer models?. As ROCK does not support it yet.

As noted by Martin_Webster, above, itā€™s working okay for me so far, though I havenā€™t done all possible things with Roon. I believe it is not ā€œofficially supportedā€ as yet. I have done 2 channel stereo outputs of FLAC files to:

  • the local NUC USB port (Benchmark DAC3-HGC, DoP and up to 24-bit 192 KHz);
  • the local NUC HDMI port (OPPO UDP-205 and Denon AVR-X6200W up to 24-bit 192 KHz);
  • over the network by AirPlay (Denon AVR-X3400H and Denon AVR-X6200) sometimes
    (AirPlay connections are mostly not available - something to resolve, later - maybe); and
  • over the network to RoonReady endpoints (OPPO UDP-203 and -205 up to 24-bit 192KHz and out their HDMI outputs up to 24-bit 192KHz).

Also with real-time DSD64 conversions to PCM at up to 24-bit 176 KHz to any output when wanted/needed (ā€œProcessingā€ ~ 6x).

The BIOS certainly has the option to support legacy boot interfacing (not UEFI). The standard install instructions for ROCK address this setting and it applies for the NUC8, as well.

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Bought a Intel NUC8i3BEK installed ROCK on it and it works like a breeze. If you follow the instructies from Room itself, there are no problems.

It may not be supported yet, but let it not hamper your decision to buy it!

Itā€™s cheaper than the old NUC7i7 and almost on par with the speed of that processor.

So far so good and enjoying the musicā€¦

Iā€™ve ordered a NUC8i7BEH from Amazon ā€” will see how it goes and then make use of the generous return policy to send back my NUC7i7BNH. Figured it made sense to upgrade to the newer generation (essentially for 5 bucks :blush:) now that they are available and supported functional. Will report back here how it goes.

Iā€™ve bought exactly the same NUC, placed the m2 data drive from my old NUC and everything runs as a charm with no problems what so ever.

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Thatā€™s fantastic. Thanks for chiming in!

Hi Jan, how is your perception of the usage of the fan end fan noice level compared to your old NUC?

  • and what NUC version did you have roon installed on before?
    BR

Hi,

My ā€œoldā€ NUC was a NUC7i3BNH with 8gb memory and 120 Gb WD m2 sata drive. 49000 tracks on a external 4Tb USB HDD directly connected to my NUC.

My DAC is a Devialet D400. The first thing the Devialet does is processing files to 32/384 WAV. Because of this I donā€™t use DSP etc. at the ROCK side. Resource usage of my NUC stays very low this way, accordingly temperatures stay low and the fan doesnā€™t get involved.

Involvement of a fan and accompanying noise is very much a result of your individual set-up, in mine itā€™s not an issue.

Next to all this above the NUC resides in a cupboard making fan noise even harder to hear.

Conclusion from me should be ā€œno commentā€

Thank you for sharing. Iā€™m currently running with a 4 years old NUC D54250WYK based on an i5 CPU.
It have been running with JRiver and Kodi (XBMC) just as long, but getting to know Roon recently made me consider buying a NUC8i7BEH and installing ROCK on it.

6 posts were split to a new topic: NUC8i7BEH Not ready indicator on Roon Database & Settings

Iā€™d really like to see a proper Roon supported NUC8 model or similar new hardware listed soon. Iā€™m a lifetime subscriber and Iā€™m very happy with Roon progress and really love the product. Iā€™m ready to devote a proper core to it. I just used a spare computer initially to test and although itā€™s i5 8GB running on Win10, it lags and seems slow intermittently. But I really canā€™t buy a new ā€˜oldā€™ NUC7 in Jan 2019. Hope some updated guidelines for hardware will surface soon. I want to setup my new core as an appliance and trust it will be supported well by Roon for some time.

Yes, NUC8 official support would be nice. However, NUC7i7DNHE has a TDP of only 15W, lower than 28W TDP of NUC8i7BEH, for those who care about fanless or LPS.

But you can! And like @wklie i agree, the series 8 NUCs may be too power consuming for an appliance. And Roon will not cease to support 7-series NUCs for ROCK anytime soon. Hell, i am running a 6-series i5 along with a 7i3 and they both are excellent appliances, running very cool, stable, quiet, and bloody fast as ROCK servers.
(Actually the NUC7i3 is the quickest of its feet of all of my Roon cores, must be down to its slightly higher clock freq. and no speed stepping and still a low, nice 15W TDP)
My lib is about 120K tracks locally and about 4-500 albums from Todal and Qobuz. No issues upsampling to DsD128 if i feel like it.

Bench testing showed some/all of the 28 W TDP NUC8 units to consume less power than the 15 W TDP NUC7 units. Any NUC8 power/thermal profile concerns seem overblown. Also, that DNHE model is/was not part of the regular consumer NUC lineup.

Basically, I do not get all of the hand wringing over NUC8 support. Plenty of ROCK users have been running NUC8 units for several months now.

AJ

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Hi, can you explain a bit more?

These figures are highly theoretical and likely a NUC8 will be as quiet and cool as a NUC7 in a low processing situation. But occasionally they will max out. Based of the power consumption of my i7-8700 Hexacore in normal circumstances which is vanishingly lowā€¦
Some real world figures can be seen (and added) here!