Don’t try to save money when buying a Roon core device. Save money somewhere else. Get the power you need plus a good margin.
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I used an M1 mini as a core for sometime and I ended up leaving Roon at the end of my year due to constant issues with live radio cutting off.
Latter I took another offer and used my NAS thinking it was a way of having a test core with no outlay, I had sold the mini.
The NAS has been perfect, live radio and music never misses a beat and will play all day.
For that reason i’d not suggest a mini, other people may have better luck.
I have around 150 k tracks , little DSP
I went 10i7 , 32 gb RAM 256 M.2 4tb SSD. r
ROCK ethernet all round
That was 6 months ago. Other than loading and analyzing its silent and idling
Maybe 32 is OTT but RAM is cheap
BTW its tiny , easily hid if you feel that way
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I haven’t seen that one yet
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It’s an option but adds a macOS to manage, which some may or may not like. One will want a monitor and keyboard attached or a remote connection from another computer.
On the other hand it gives you a computer as well, which some will find a good thing.
ROCK is an appliance that takes care of itself and needs no monitor+keyboard after initial setup. On the other hand it does nothing else.
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I keep advertising that I‘m using a NUC 5i3RYK.
It’s from 2016, I guess, and I got it off eBay for around $90 three years ago. It has 16GB RAM and a 128GB SDD.
I have ROCK installed and I am using my Synology DS418play as a database, so I don‘t really care about the NUC‘s SDD. This also gives me a good backup, since I’m using a proper RAID 5 on the NAS and this is also fully backed up. The NUC is not in my listening room and connected via wired gigabit ethernet to my network player (a fine Cambridge Audio 851N). From what I am reading, I’d avoid the NUC’s USB-ports, but personally, I have never tried them and simply followed Roon’s advice to use ethernet. I can say that the NUC is very quiet and I‘d be happy to use it in my listening room, if there was a need for it. I mainly use an iPad for selecting music.
The whole thing works flawless and fast and in the three years I have never had any issues. Using all sorts of DSP is no problem as well. I have about 28.000 titles and also Qobuz.
All I‘m saying is, that I think it would be totally worth it buying a used older NUC and spec it with SDD any way you like, used also, if you like, and you‘re good to go.
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The answer requires a little more background…what is your experience with computers and what might you also want to use the NUC for in the future?
For example, I just recently moved to a ROCK-based system after 2+ years of attempting to use a M1 Mini, a 2018 MacBook Pro running macOS and the same system running Windows 10. The three “non-Rock” versions of Roon were always problematic and ended up crashing the system or crashing Roon after some time. I put up with it because I really, really like Roon and restarting a computer is NBD.
Finally, I decided to go the ROCK route and purchased a NUC12WSHi5 with a 500GB SSD and 16GB RAM (more on this later). While I was waiting for my NUC12 to arrive, I thought I’d attempt to use an old NUC5i7RYH, which I’ve had since 2015. It runs and has run a variety of operating systems depending on my mood that month…
Its great! When it originally starts up and scans my Library, its fans are at full speed and it is quite noisy. As the system is a full room away from where I listen to music, this makes no difference to me. It is slightly slower than my NUC12, however, not even worth concern. (My music is on a Synology DS218+ NAS.)
I did install ROCK on the NUC12 and its great! Slightly faster in showing images, however, we’re talking fractions of a second, not seconds. I ran the NUC12 for about a week to burn it in and to make sure that it works.
This morning I switched back to the NUC5 as it works quite well and it seems like a shame to use the power of a NUC12 for ROCK when a NUC5 will do. I have all sorts of projects, for which I could use the NUC12.
So what does this mean to “what matters most…for Roon Rock?”
If you are experienced with computers and might want to use the NUC for a future project, then by all means, go ahead and get the latest NUC12. I paid $650 in the US for mine with 16GB RAM and a 500GB SSD.
You could save $200-300 by buying a far older generation (NUC 8 for example), however those savings won’t mean much to me in 3-4 years, as I’ll probably use my NUC12 for something else. Only slightly older NUC 10-11 are only about $50-100 cheaper and I would strongly recommend going with the NUC 12. (The NUC 13 just came out and its another $100, not approved and rarely available.) I suspect the people recommending more RAM and larger SSD’s are also in this camp. I agree with them.
If this computer will ONLY serve as a ROCK appliance, by all means go as cheap as possible. I’m amazed how solid my NUC5 has been in running ROCK, which is a testament to the engineers at Roon Labs. I salute you all!
On the other hand…if you are looking to add to your collection of computers (like me), spend a bit more for better price performance and start looking for an older computer you might already have to run ROCK. 
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Thanks, this is quite helpful. After reading your post and the other responses in this thread I now understand that there is not a huge performance difference for roon with newer/faster versions of the NUC. I am the kind of person who tends to collect computers and migrate them from one project to another (hence the old macbook hacked into an always-on roon core, now with a ballooning battery). I might eventually want to use the NUC as a windows machine now that running windows isn’t possible on Macs.
I’m quite happy with the macbook performance and was thinking about going the mac mini route, but I do need to manually do something to the macbook once a week or so (restart, update, etc). Not an issue for me but others in my house get frustrated when Roon doesn’t “just work” all the time.
So right now I’m alternating between exactly the options you describe – find an old NUC 8 on eBay for cheap that will probably work almost as well as a new one, or get an NUC12 that is more than Roon needs but can be put to other uses in the future. I’m kind of leaning toward the cheaper used NUC8 since in all honesty this really is just going to be a roon appliance.
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So…twin sons of different mothers? 
I agree with your lean…given the performance of my NUC5 “seems” to be 90% of my NUC12, I’m leaning to looking for a NUC8 to replace my NUC5 should that ever need to happen.
Well said. As a real world example, I’ve used older spec Mac minis (2011 i7) for years, as a core, and shared use as do-everything media station (running Roon, torrent client, VLC player, browsing/streaming concurrently) connected to large screen TV and DAC. I know it’s old tech, but the set up does show up the limitations.
Two years heavy 24/7 indexing killed the core mini. For the media centre mini I’m always making compromises to manage the performance. I set to index only on startup. Loading more than 10-15K albums makes Roon slow and unstable, so I never have the full (50K+) available (boohoo). I often have to close Roon if I’m trying to copy files to a NAS since it dominates the network.
I’m sure new minis would be a better experience, but for me I’ve just found a cheap reconditioned NUC7 i7 well spec’d (thanks to this thread!), and it makes more sense to have a dedicated machine focused on the business in the background, and using the mac for what it does best - everything else.
As ever what matters is your personal usage case.
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i3 vs i7, i7 normally means more cores/threads and faster single speed. But is i7 better than i3 really so important with the new nucs? Compare NUC10 i7 to NUC12 i3. 12 vs 12 Threads. According to benchmarks the i3 has 40% faster single speed. Overall the i3 is 40% faster than the older i7 … And both are way faster than the old NUC7-i7.
For the NUC12 Generation I do not see why someone should pick the i7 for Roon. The i3 has enough power and enough cores for a normal family home with the power for many zones and DSP.
The only problem for the NUC12 is that up to now there are problems with sound over HDMI.
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I’m not an expert on this and don’t pretend to tell you or anyone what’s best. Almost a year ago I decided to move the Roon Core from my Windows notebook to a NUC. Overall, I’ve spent 600 Euros and may have purchased gear above the required specifications (I always worry about these things becoming outdated with time). At the moment, I only use “light DSP” or none at all, one zone at a time and have just a dozen albums on a pen-drive attached to the NUC and use Quobuz and Tidal. The NUC is hard-wired with Ethernet. The fact is that it works perfectly, it’s dead silent, doesn’t get hot and, most importantly, I just forget it is there. You don’t need to switch it on and off. Nothing. It just works. Just my experience. Below are the parts I’ve bought:
- Intel NUC, NUC 10 i5, Intel® CoreTM i5-10210U Mini PC, NUC10i5FNHN Barebone
- Kingston A400 SSD M.2 2280 SATA Rev 3.0, 240GB
- Crucial RAM CT16G4SFRA266 16GB DDR4 2666MHz CL19
Cheers
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i3 vs i7, i7 normally means more cores/threads and faster single speed.
That’s not entirely true, very often CPUs provide more cores at the cost of single core speed. The use cases for multi core performance over single core with Roon are minimal, as such it is wise to make a careful selection of CPU for an individuals use case. Personally I am very comfortable using just 4 cores and I have multi zones and a largish local library (~150k tracks).
Also worth noting is that starting with the 12th generation Intel chips, they decided to move to a different architecture of providing Performance and Efficient cores. Cores on an individual Intel CPU are not equal in capability any more.
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Similarly, I used a NUC5i3MYBE with 8GB and 240GB SSD, also from 2015, for many years and found it did everything asked of it, including mutlizone playback, Convolution filter based DSP, upsampling to DSD (to DSD128 as that is the limit on the endpoint that supports DSD) and without the fan coming on at all.
Having now moved to a NUC7i7DNKE (the quad core model used in Nucleus+ with 16GB and a 250GB NMVe SSD) with the same set of NAS units (ReadyNAS Pro2 with 10TB in RAID1) there is very little difference. The initial scanning of imported music is faster, but the NUC7 has double the number of cores to dynamically call on, but the fan is very much on, during this process), but the support of multiple endpoints is the same, along with DSP support (I am now using Convolution Filter on Headphone listening) etc., so maybe there is a performance limit in ROCK and the Roon Core on the Intel architecture that means performance across Intel CPUs from the Gen5 i3 to Gen11 i7 is largely equivalent, as a single thread application (1 zone per Core or 2 used if converting DSP)
I stopped at Gen11 CPUs as the Gen12 CPUs introduce Background/Performance Cores to manage the workload while minimizing the power draw and resultant heat output.
So I have a spare NUC5i3MYBE built as a ROCK server, does anyone want to take it, as ‘Starter ROCK server?’
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Hi Simon, I’d like your old NUC but I live In Australia.
Bummer.
Hmmm sorry but adding and extra 8gb to my Rock core to make it 16gb total made it way more responsive than previously. Not a huge library here but I would say it does make a considerable difference from my experience.
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Try telling that to the founder, who says not true.
AJ
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Google confirmation bias.
Support always seem to be telling users with crashing issues to add more RAM, even for ROCK.
Yes, and that’s what Danny said in that post. If ROCK crashes, add more RAM, but adding more RAM if it doesn’t crash does not make ROCK faster.
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