Which Intel NUC to choose?

Thanks , sorry for disturbing you.

ROCK will run on that machine so long as you can configure the bios for legacy boot functionality. For straight playback of a small library you will see OK performance no worse than running Roon on the more common NAS machines people run Roon on. You will however be subjected to the same limitations that they are in terms of performance plus you cannot store anything on one of these machines as they don’t have M.2 slots. If you already own the machine in question it is easy enough to try it and see.

Thank you Henry , I bought secondhand NUC7i3BNB (8GB ram , 120ssd M.2 + 120 ssd 2.5sata) for 160 eur .It “rocks” perfectly.

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As it should, having the same innards as the original version of the Nucleus. You have pretty much done what I did, except the machine that became available cheaply in my case was the i7 version of that generation of NUC. :nerd_face:

Seems like there’s of interest in this topic, nice to see a lot of knowledge and experience being shared.
Since I created this thread, I’ve put my Nuc8i7beh into an Akasa Turing Fanless case, and added an Audiophonics 19v Linear Power Supply. In the BIOS, I disabled all irrelevant settings; wifi, bluetooth, microphone…
I didn’t expect it, but it resulted in better SQ compared to the standard case NUC with standard power supply.

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My old 7i3 is in an Akasa Plato fanless case with all irrelevant crap disabled and also powered by a 16v LPS ( Leaf Audio, eBay purchase).

Not sure as truly any uptick in SQ but it sure looks a heck of a lot better and sits in my hifi rack as I have treated mains ac in that room.

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Having seen one of the previous post’s I did the same with everything that wasn’t required on my new Nuc.
Wasn’t expecting any sq improvements or seen any as it was off from the start.
Interesting idea though, and sort of makes a small amount of sense with potential for reduced noise.

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Nothing wrong with the look of the Nucs, to those of us to lazy to swap the cases :grin:
Though that does look good :+1:t2:

Should probably qualify my statement.
Maybe looking better is incorrect .
Looks more like a piece of hifi gear than computer gear is more accurate.

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Ah that makes more sense. I follow the Roon guidelines and my NAS and Nuc are in the different part of the house…
Ok that’s a lie I could hear the fans and it annoyed me even when it was quiet :grin:

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I’m getting ready to build a Roon server. I primarily listen to Tidal, but I have a CD collection I’d like to rip. Under 250 albums.

I’ve seen a lot of discussion here about which processor would be best. Would a 10th generation NUC with i3 work for me? Is it worth an extra $90 for me to go from the i3 to the i5? As I said I don’t have a lot of CDs. Also I noticed that the Roon Nucleus uses the i3. Thanks for the guidance.

Frederick it depends on what you want to drive, number of zones and whether you want to run DSP

Generally I would say yes it should be fine for you and there are many people on the forums running exactly that setup. There is no great difference between local library and a cloud library in Tidal or Qobuz

Just buy this…
All the hard work done!

Thanks, I don’t have a lot of zones(no more than 3, but usually will be one, and I’m not sure what DSP does and whether I’d need it. Can you help explain it to me like I’m a 3rd grader?

Is DSP just capability for Room correction? I’ve got that in my main amplifier so I don’t think I would need.

DSP is one of the strengths of Roon, lots of filters, volume levelling cross filtering, convolution filters etc.

That all uses the processor so if you plan to do a lot of that (say upscaling music to DSD256 and adding a convolution filter for headphones which is something I do) then this should still be quick enough for you with three zones.
That would be the only reason to look at an i5, but I think the i3 should be great for you.

There is a lot to learn about DSP

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Thanks so much. You’re right. I really don’t understand it.

There is plenty of good information in the forums and on Roon documentation site. You will learn as you go like most of us have.
Look at the post Kevin posted to with the spec and just make sure that you pick up a supported NUC model
Good luck

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Well, there’s a slight difference. When Roon’s MQA decoder is enabled, the CPU in Core will be busy with decoding. But I agree, a modern (8th or 10th gen) i3 will be fine.

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So long ago I had forgotten even writing that :wink:
But yes that is very true