I have the opportunity to pick up a used Nucleus and was wondering if there would be any performance enhancement versus the Synology DS 1019+ that I’ve been using with Roon for over three years.
TIA
PS - also price range for a used Nucleus?
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What level nucleus are you getting?
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Nucleus. Not plus i3.
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Not the same but, I run a Nuc i7 and it destroys the performance of my Synology NAS. Truth be told, it’s an older NAS.
Plus it relieves the processing burden from the Synology. I wouldn’t go back for that reason alone
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I’m in the opposite camp - RS3617xs + RX1217.
Have no need for a Nucleus.
As to @Jerry_Zigmont’s original question, I don’t expect an i3 Nucleus (Roon is tight lipped about which model of CPU is in there) has phenomenally greater processing power than the Celeron J3455 equipped DS1019+. Also with a Nucleus, it depends on whether you want to keep your music on the NAS or store it locally. If you want to keep your music on the NAS (Roon doesn’t recommend this with a Nucleus), I’d stick with the NAS. If you’re considering keeping your music also on the Nucleus, then you need a solid backup strategy (assuming you already have one with the NAS).
It’s not a straight forward question. Also, with a used unit, how hard has it been used, and how much of the internal SSD’s potential lifespan is left?
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Solid advice, Graeme. This is what I was hoping for. I will stay where I am since I have had no trouble with the Synology.
Just looking on the other side of the fence.
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You’d be wrong. The J3455 is about 30-50% of the speed in single-core performance compared to the i3 we use in the N rev B (i3-7100U).
The first Celeron we’ve seen that makes sense for most people with Roon is the J4125, and that barely makes the cut.
I’m not saying you can’t make it work, but the J3455 is not something we would recommend.
I’d go with the used Nucleus (we make no $ from that) or something equivalent.
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Thanks @danny. I couldn’t find the CPU spec for the Nucleus anywhere.
BTW, I wasn’t dissing the Nucleus in any way, just that for my use case, it wouldn’t make any sense.
My Synology is always running, hosting IP cams and doing other stuff, seems to always run at very low CPU utilisation (even running convolution filters), makes library and database on- and off-site back up easy, has 32GB of RAM, and 20 Gbit/s of fibre network bandwidth on tap. Complete overkill, I know, but it was cheap and easy to do.
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I have some experience with running Roon on Celeron-based NAS and I would agree to what Danny was writing. The aforementioned Celeron J3455 in the Synology 1019+ would be able to run Roon more or less smoothly if the library is not crazy big or complicated, but do not expect it to be that snappy compared to an i3-Gen7.
That is especially true to bigger libraries. If your track count exceeds 100k tracks and growing, you will come to a point the Celeron will slow down Roon to an annoying level. That is exactly what happened to me when using a similarly outdated Celeron.
How big is your Roon library? Did you ever monitor the CPU usage level when executing CPU-intensive operations in Roon? I have seen it jumping to 100% and staying there for 5 or 10 seconds.
@Danny i have made excellent experience with later Celerons such as the 5105 or 5095. Did you test any of these?
Thank you, @Arindal ! Very helpful information.
My library is under 2K and the Synology 1019+ handles that with ease. Also running cameras and a Plex server. No issues with CPU utilization.
Welcome! One question: Are we talking about 2K album count or 2K tracks? In any case, I would say it should be absolutely fine with the Celeron J3455 or alike. If you handle just 2K tracks you have lots of reserves even when expanding the library but even 20K tracks should work if you do not do crazy things like DSP-on-native-DSD or 10 hires-streams at the same time.
Switching to a considerably faster CPU would probably make the system more reactive i.e. complicated operations such as compiling composition lists, coverflow and alike would appear instantly. Not much of an advantage in my opinion.
When comparing NAS and NUCs equipped with different CPUs I noticed that especially Celerons seem to be driven to some kind of natural barrier of performance by Roon when exceeding a certain level of library size, library complication and number of interdependencies (such as albums per artist and compositions per composer). As mentioned for usual libraries I found this threshold to be somewhere in the region of 100K tracks for a Celeron comparable to yours. If you have lots of classical music or complicated folder structure you might notice it earlier, let us say beyond 50K tracks.
Both are good for most people and in the same ballpark to the 7th gen i3.
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Well that is interesting.There are some interesting N5105 fanless boxes (e.g., the QuieterHD3) that I wouldn’t have considered for a core. Something to think about.
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I use a synology nas. Not too much dsp usage, but never had any problems. Can stream high bitrate video at the same time.
Ive got about 15k albums on it.
Roon Nucleus used would be my preference. I have a System76 i3 Gen11 Meerkat (private labeled NUC) that has been an absolute joy since it has been here. Roon did an excellent job tailoring Linux and Roon Core to run on NUC hardware. It is happy as a clam to be headless and is managed entirely through your Roon Controller. No worries about updating a Linux distribution, maintaining virtual machines or containers. The Roon Core update shows up and you restart it. On ROCK and Nucleus, the Core update also contains any. Linux patches and updates needed.
The Gen11 i3 NUC is plenty fast. Searches are quick, even for artists new to my library and for Qobuz new record day titles. The $600 for the Meerkat was money well spent. The NUC is connected directly to the network core switch rather to a rack switch as we were getting some stalls. Cox cable plant is getting shop-worn in Norfolk VA.
Before the NUC, I had Roon Core in a VM on a TrueNAS Atom-based NAS. And on a Xeon E5 1225 NAS. The NUC is much quicker courtesy of SSDs for Linux system volume (WD Black) and Roon Library (Crucial USB-3 SSD)
Jerry, I began my Roon journey on a Synology NAS. When I switched the core to Roon ROCK, which was an easy fun, economic build, I had a leap in performance, but also a big leap in SQ. Can’t say why…only reporting what my ears reported to my brain. No snake oil debate required. Just trying to be helpful!
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There is no such thing as ´THE Synology NAS´ or ´THE i3 NUC´. Everything depends on the actual generation or type of CPU as well as on your library.
I see some people getting into Roon using an affordable Synology NAS as a first step. Unfortunately most of them come with truly underpowered CPUs (and insufficient RAM as a factory standard). And it is no surprise the Roon experience from a NUC Gen 7 is much better.
But that does not mean you cannot have fun with a better equipped Synology especially if your library is not too big.
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