Thinking of building my own dedicated Core. Fairly big library, 125k+ tracks.
First: What about this box?
Intel NUC 13 PRO NUC13ANHi5 Arena Canyon, 13TH Gen CPU, 16GB RAM 1TB SSD, Intel Core i5-1340P
Second: Is installation pretty straightforward? I’ve seen a lot of posts about deleting Windows, flashing the BIOS, etc. I’m pretty geeky when it comes to this stuff but not really a Linux nerd.
Rock is Linux, no?
Third: Why the big add-on heat sink case? Just to make it “silent?” (Not a problem for me, box will be hidden away in a remote closet.)
Oh, music is stored on a QNAP SSD NAS in raid 5 and music will stream either through an old Meridian DAC (for HD) or a Sonos amp for casual listening. Not sure if I can stream directly to my Datasat LS10 (that would be ideal.) Anyone have any experience? What are people streaming to for HD nowadays?
The NUC 13 is not (yet?) officially a supported NUC platform but several people used some 13 model successfully. A forum search will find posts.
Follow the ROCK installation instructions with some imagination if everything in the BIOS description is not 100% consistent with yours and you should be fine.
Yes ROCK uses Linux but isn’t based on any distribution
If this is meant for the ROCK OS and not the music files, then this is real overkill. If they were still readily available then a 64GB or 128GB is enough. Get a 256GB M.2 and you’re GTG.
You understand that only ROCK OS can be on the M.2, i.e. no music files, right?
Having such a large collection on network storage plus a nuc is likely to be less than optimal for Roon. For this size of library a desktop cpu will serve you better and will be able to cope more if your collection is still growing. For Roon it is far better performance wise if the music is stored local. It will work but it will drag performance down overall if kept on a nas. Roon is a lot more active has far more disk access than a lot of apps and may stop the nas from sleeping and having downtime.
This is accurate, but for my use the NAS is more convenient and a lot more secure than local storage, regardless of backup protocols. This is because I actually store the music on TWO raid-5 NAS’s mirrored over the 'net, one in my home and one in my office. So either could burn to the ground and I wouldn’t lose a byte of data (I use these NAS’s for work files, too.) Back in the day, I had a dedicated NAS (Synology) just for music storage, but the cost of storage has dropped so much I’ve now switched to having just one NAS (all SSD) in each location for everything. That way I can simply switch from working at home to the office and back and always be working on the latest version of the file.
I guess this recommendation originated from the times of a 7th Gen NUC when i3 and i5 models have not been particularly fast. We are talking about a 13th Gen i5 now which should be multiple times faster than anything bearing an i7 tag inside a Nucleus+.
I do not have really vast experience with Intel Core CPUs but what I experienced so far with roon I would always favor a newer generation i3 or i5 compared to an i7 of an outdated gen.
When I purchased a Gen12 I5 NUC, for my daughter, I was suprised to see how much quicker it was than my wifes Gen11 I7 NUC on benchmarks. I run Rock on a Gen13 NUC I7 and absolutely love it. I used Roon Server on a Dual 16 Core Xeon server and my current Rock server is way quicker and more responsive.
Regards
Andrew
Has anyone tried running Rock on a NUC Extreme Gen13 I9?
Having your files on network storage should have no impact on performance unless it is terribly high latency, which I highly doubt based on your equipment description. Having a well-spec’ed machine with plenty of RAM in 2 banks and a fast SSD is all you need.
Roon´s performance is according to my experience not necessarily going hand in hand with benchmark results. But I can absolutely confirm what you are writing about increasing performance by switching to a different generation of Intel Cores.
Switching to any Gen12 or Gen13 (or even Gen11 i5) is boosting performance much more than stepping up from i3 to i7 of the same outdated generation (especially the popular gens 7, 8 or 9). I never tried an Extreme Gen13 i9 but I would guess that a suitable Gen13 i5 already is so snappy that it would be hard to notice the difference. Maybe with >250k classical tracks compiling a composition list of a very productive composer such as J.S.Bach.
Wel I found overal speed improved on local storage over network attached from my QNAP, just more snappy, also library auto updates instantly unlike over the network were your relying on the OS to poll any changes which some are really bad at. I dont have isssues with same NAS to other servers such as my Plex one (updates still have same issues but its speedy)
It’s very fast and I only hear the fan occasionally (when it’s doing a scan for new tracks for example) and even then it’s quiet.
I have my library mounted from my Mac over the network (easier to rip CDs etc if it’s local to the Mac).
I have 230K tracks…
in a related question, I note that NUC’s come with either Win. 11 pre-installed or “naked” (no OS.) So what happens with a naked NUC? How does one boot into the BIOS? How would one install Rock on a naked NUC? Sorry if this is a noob question. Thanks.
