I would like to upgrade my NUC7 to a NUC8i7BEH. I would keep my exisitng ram and ssd. Is it as simple as moving the ram and ssd to the new NUC8? On boot will I have my library and settings? I will have my regular backups available. Any pointers will be apreciated.
I believe that some members have done that.
Look here:
Thank you!!!
Why? (10 characters)
Why not? Faster is better, no?
Not unless you need faster. If you never drive faster than 80 mph, do you need a car that will go 200 mph? I think too often, people here get caught up in the hype and spend good money for no good reason. I’m sitting here now enjoying Roon with the core on my laptop wondering why in the world would I waste money on a Nucleus?
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The TDP and power gains of the later generation machines, plus their superior heat management make them worth considering. And if you can leverage those gains while keeping memory and SSD and selling the old machine you are not spending a lot to do it. A one generation jump isn’t a lot (I went from a 5i5 to 8i7) so I agree that the question ‘why’ has some validity. But it isn’t hard to give a good answer.
I felt it was more of a comment than an answer. But… I feel going from i3 to i7 will provide a significant performance gain in searching and DSP when required.
I’m guessing it would. But you would only notice those gains if your current NUC is slowing you down.
Before you spend any money on either later NUC generations or even i7 and i5 CPU - see List Your NUC Capabilities Here for actual benchmark comparison of an NUC5i3 vs NUC8i7 involving upconverting, downsampling, Room EQ in mutli-zones.
Simon.
Nice work and thanks for the link. I have made the upgrade? Easily. When I ordered my first NUC the ssd and ram was backordered so I got a couple locally. I have now placed those in the i3, loaded rock and am using it as a usb endpoint (wifi) to my mscaler. So far I cannot hear a difference to the Pi/DigiOne.
Thanks. Maybe others searching my question will use your findings to aid their decision.
Can your future self respond to your past self with an answer? 
Absolutely. The Roon black Friday sale for $1119 pushed me over the brink, and I’m glad it did. This Roon Nucleus works perfectly. I don’t think it sounds any different than when using my Dell laptop, but it certainly works better.
I did have some problems figuring out how to get my very limited music copied over from my laptop to the 1TB Samsung SSD I installed in the Nucleus, but that was user error. A couple people here helped me figure out what I was doing wrong.
I have the Nucleus connected to my router using ethernet and then HDMI out to my Oppo 203. When I want to listen to music, which is almost all my waking hours now, I use my Harmony 880 remote to turn on my system. The Nucleus runs 24/7. I normally use my Dell XPS 15 as the control device, but I can also use my iPad Mini 4 or iPhone 6S Plus.
This Nucleus just works perfectly. What more can I say. The music loads and plays immediately whether local, Tidal, or Qobuz. I can back up to two USB drives I have or to my Dell laptop. I tried backing up to Dropbox, but that was just too slow.
In summary, if you have been considering buying a Nucleus but are still on the fence, get off. You will be happy you did.
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