I decided to gamble and use a non-approved NUC kit for ROCK and it’s been working extremely well.
From the knowledge base, I sort of got the impression not using the exact components listed by Roon that it would just be an endless stream of problems but everything has been so smooth after I installed ROCK on a NUC5i5MYHE.
I had been using a Mac Mini but audio and UI performance is much improved.
ROCK pretty much will run on most modern Intel based hardware. I run my core not on a nuc at all and it runs perfectly. I just bought NUC 3 series Atom based thin client to run as an endpoint, ROCK installed in a few minutes no issues, They can’t offer support for ROCK if not on designed hardware but it it works on install without any errors there isn’t much that can go wrong. They need to support the legacy NUCs that Rock started with so if it works now its likely to work period but there is no guarantee.
I have been using a NUC5i3MYHE with 8GB and a 240GB m.SATA SSD. This the ‘Maple Canyon’ powered 5th Gen NUC with the Broadwell processors, along with the NUC5i5MYHE.
Very similar to the “Rock Canyon“ models - NUC5i5RYK/NUC5i3RYH, NUC5i5RYK/NUC5i5RYH and NUC5i7RYH
Before this model I was running ROCK on a DC3217IYE, a 2nd Gen NUC “Ice Canyon” running the Ivy Bridge processors. Again with 8GB and a 240GB m.SATA SSD. ROCK ran fine and is my spare unit, presently out on loan, as I have a NUC5i3RYH to build as spare.
All these units have no WiFi cards and were used as Dual-Head development stations, running Lunix and Docker for code development, ahead of deployment ultimately on Cloud based servers, in our five production stacks.
Once running a stripped ‘leanOS’ embedded version of Linux as an appliance, an i3 with 8GB RAM and a m.SATA SSD with 6GB/s data throughput is more than enough for a Roon Core. The bandwidth of the data connections to external disks will be a governing performance factor. Remember 2-channel HiRes music can be streamed in a 100Mbit/s Ethernet connection, which generates less noise than a Gigabit NIC.
See this thread for more tales of running ROCK on unsupported gear (MOCK).
5i5 NUCs are supported aren’t they? The caveat being that early versions (and the stand alone OEM board) were SATA only. A later gen 5 model was the test platform for NVMe M.2 and could be temperamental but stick to M.2 SATA and you should be fine.
I put an M.2 in the NUC5i5MYHE. Seemed like the thing to do.
They are supported, current list is
On the NUC5 I understand that the M.2 slot offers no advantage over a m.SATA SSD at 6GB/s. The PCI NVMe advantage is with the later NUCs.
However running ROCK browsing & searching the library on my NUC5i3 almost instantaneous, and is supports any DSP needed.
I have turned off ‘Audio’ and ‘Audio over HDMI’ in the BIOS, which tidied up the Roon configuration options. I would recommend this to anyone planning or using a NUC as a ROCK server.
Simon
I thought it was Simon. I ran a 5i5 with no problem at all and remember being gratified that when ROCK was introduced my NUC was on the support list. There was however a lot of confusion when I bought it. I was sold an NVMe M.2 card as compatible by the vendor which then blew the PCIe interface. A new board with SATA M.2 did the trick, but it was me that did the reading and revealed that my board was not compatible. Until then they were reluctant to authorise a return.
A post was merged into an existing topic: MOCK - Tell us what strange gear you’ve installed ROCK on!
