[Amberlamps]

I was looking at this post last night, and working out how much it would cost, to build such a top end server.
The parts added up to 1770 euros + the case, so diy chasing a TOTL server is not cheap, but you will gain far more experimental knowledge about how to optimise your system, than many of the posters on head-fi.

I can do better, an intel nuc i7 8559u, 16 gig of ddr 4 sodimm, 128gig m2 ssd, akasa fanless case.

£638 all in and I have better specs than a roon nucleus+ which is using the same parts but an older generation of cpu.

I've decided, if this thing can be stuck in a fanless case and made to ****, thats the route i'm going, £650 quid and having a roon core thats silent and always on, it's game on, no way was I gunna trade H2 in and add on 700 ponies for a intel nuc with a fancy case.

If it works for roon, it will work for me, if not, I still have my hugo 2. But roon rock will run on this little bad boy, if not, windows and roon will, thank god for old technet keys. < a good thing that got spoiled.

Ideally, I would like an antipodes, I was checking out whazzzups server today and What, the dude has every right to keep speaking about it, the thing basically does everything that one could ask for. It's a roon core, if you want it to be, it can stream from abc and xyz, it has squeezebox support and a pile of others.

But it's £10 large for the dx version and that is out of my league, even their new cx and ex range starts off at 6 grand for one and 5 for the other and they are meant to be combined. If I had the cash I really would buy that server, why ?

The why is because ? It's because I have looked at servers and streamers all week and it was always a case of give and take, but I wanted it all, and so far, only the antipodes server has it all, there is possibly others but I haven't yet heard about or seen them.

I wish somebody would of mentioned antipodes servers earlier, or even made a thread about them for folks to read, but nobody did, shame on headfi.

 

[JamieMcC]

Iv'e been eyeing up the Intel NUC Bean Canyon NUC8I3BEH3 i3 8109U which is £252 at ebuyer which looks good value outperforming the 7th gen i7 performance which the £2500 Roon Nucleus Plus uses. Fan noise (if not using a fanless case) is also reportedly much quieter.

You would probably get a NUC8I3BEH3 i3 8109U all configured for roon for around £400 with a bit of hunting around for ddr 4 sodimm 128gig m2 ssd at good prices.

 

[Amberlamps]

Iv'e been eyeing up the Intel NUC Bean Canyon NUC8I3BEH3 i3 8109U which is £252 at ebuyer which looks good value outperforming the 7th gen i7 performance which the £2500 Roon Nucleus Plus uses. Fan noise (if not using a fanless case) is also reportedly much quieter.

You would probably get a NUC8I3BEH3 i3 8109U all configured for roon for around £400 with a bit of hunting around for ddr 4 sodimm 128gig m2 ssd at good prices.

Yeah, roon nucleus+ is a rip off, but no doubt somebody will say it isnt.

Heat is the thing that concerns me, mine is 24w tdp and im not sure how hot it will run in a fanless case. I've seen 14w ones, which would be much better for a fanless case. I don't mind some noise, as long as it's not as loud or louder than my sky q box.

Let us know how your build goes.

 

[GreenBow]

Iv'e been eyeing up the Intel NUC Bean Canyon NUC8I3BEH3 i3 8109U which is £252 at ebuyer which looks good value outperforming the 7th gen i7 performance which the £2500 Roon Nucleus Plus uses. Fan noise (if not using a fanless case) is also reportedly much quieter.

You would probably get a NUC8I3BEH3 i3 8109U all configured for roon for around £400 with a bit of hunting around for ddr 4 sodimm 128gig m2 ssd at good prices.

I would definitely go fanless. I have a laptop with a fan, and I thought it would be perfect. Tired it once and simply gave up.

 

[JamieMcC]

The core can be in a separate room so not really a problem for many I would think

 

[blueninjasix]

Iv'e been eyeing up the Intel NUC Bean Canyon NUC8I3BEH3 i3 8109U which is £252 at ebuyer which looks good value outperforming the 7th gen i7 performance which the £2500 Roon Nucleus Plus uses. Fan noise (if not using a fanless case) is also reportedly much quieter.

You would probably get a NUC8I3BEH3 i3 8109U all configured for roon for around £400 with a bit of hunting around for ddr 4 sodimm 128gig m2 ssd at good prices.

I built a completely silent pc in this case https://www.quietpc.com/sst-ft03?product=3867
And fanless cooling using this
https://www.quietpc.com/nofan-cr-80eh
Fanless power supply.
It's eerily silent but my i3 chip is only 35 watt tdp but more than capable of running Foobar under Windows 10.

 

[greenkiwi]

I'd throw out that the Apple Mac Mini's work pretty well for servers that you just don't have to worry about.

 

[Deftone]

Got and offer of, my hugo 2 + £700 for a roon nucelus +

I'm don't use hugo 2, I haven't used it for months and its in mint condition. I could do that or buy a nuc, fanless heatsink case for £7-800 and stick roon rock on it.

I've never bought or seen a nuc before, but I spose it will just be a case of unscrewing it from one case, and screwing it into a fanless one.

I presume the cpu is soldered to the board ?

I'm not sure that a roon nuc + is worth h2+700, and h2 is soon to have 2go, argh. I would be great if roon rock worked on old playstation 3's, as that would be the perfect solution for my fat 60gig ps3. Looks nice, can plug in harddrives internally and via usb. I wonder if anyone has tried something like that, but with a ps4 since it's basically a pc, compared to a bespoke solution for the ps3.

dont do it you mad man

 

[jlbrach]

Yeah, roon nucleus+ is a rip off, but no doubt somebody will say it isnt.

Heat is the thing that concerns me, mine is 24w tdp and im not sure how hot it will run in a fanless case. I've seen 14w ones, which would be much better for a fanless case. I don't mind some noise, as long as it's not as loud or louder than my sky q box.

Let us know how your build goes.

it is most definitely not, i love mine

 

[Amberlamps]

Iv'e been eyeing up the Intel NUC Bean Canyon NUC8I3BEH3 i3 8109U which is £252 at ebuyer which looks good value outperforming the 7th gen i7 performance which the £2500 Roon Nucleus Plus uses. Fan noise (if not using a fanless case) is also reportedly much quieter.

You would probably get a NUC8I3BEH3 i3 8109U all configured for roon for around £400 with a bit of hunting around for ddr 4 sodimm 128gig m2 ssd at good prices.

I pulled the trigger, it should be here tomorrow, also grabbed me some thermal pads incase I need them, still have some old mx4 paste from my old build left over.

This is what I bought, I had to change the case as it gives the nuc better cooling and won't need me to throttle the cpu.




For a roon nuc, I won't need larger m2 drive or ssd since most of the time I stream rather than listen to my own library, which I could just plug in to one of it's rear usb ports if need be.

£17 for a 120gig ssd What, it's been 3 years since I last bought anything pc and can't believe that it is only 17 quid.

It arrives tomorrow so I shall have something to do at the weekend.

 

[LeMat]

A NUC8i7 seems really overkill for a roon server! I would go for a less powerful one, like the i3 which is more than enough, and instead use a 2x8Gb RAM instead of a single 16Gb and a better performing drive, like a Samsung 970 Evo Plus. My 2 cents

 

[Amberlamps]

A NUC8i7 seems really overkill for a roon server! I would go for a less powerful one, like the i3 which is more than enough, and instead use a 2x8Gb RAM instead of a single 16Gb and a better performing drive, like a Samsung 970 Evo Plus. My 2 cents

It may not always be a roon core, it might end up as my plex server, and I'm not really worried about dual channel. I also have plenty of ssd's here that I can stick into it, some old 500gb evo 850s, but for 17 quid another 120gig will come in handy. It's basically the cost of a packet of cigarettes or so. Roon nucleus+ only has 64gb ssd inside it.

It's not meant to be a total replacement for my pc's, it's meant to compliment them. 16 gig is ample and adding another 16 gig just to get a minimal increase with dual channel, which i did think of, it is not worth it in my opinion. 90% of the time it will be sitting idle, so no need to spec it out with more expensive parts.

It's fast enough for what it will be doing, if it does turn into a plex server, I may get the other 16 gig if it needs it for transcoding, which I doubt unless its 4k, but I have 32 gig in my main pc and all the crap that I have running on it at startup only takes up 5.6gig, and thats on a pc with loads of crap on it.

Not once have I ever seen 16 gig being used on my main pc except when I had a ramdisk setup.

I can see your point about the 8gen i7's being overkill for a roon core, but I would like for it to be powerful enough for future purposes, whatever they may be. For all I know, I might make this my plex core and buy a lower spec'd one for roon ?

I will see how this one goes first.

I did originally put a £500 limit on the nuc and fanless case, as my roon yearly sub is coming to an end,and it is $500 for a lifetime subscription, which i'm buying because roon is so good.

 

[AndrewH13]

It may not always be a roon core, it might end up as my plex server, and I'm not really worried about dual channel. I also have plenty of ssd's here that I can stick into it, some old 500gb evo 850s, but for 17 quid another 120gig will come in handy. It's basically the cost of a packet of cigarettes or so. Roon nucleus+ only has 64gb ssd inside it.

It's not meant to be a total replacement for my pc's, it's meant to complement them. 16 gig is ample and adding another 16 gig just to get a minimal increase with dual channel, which i did think of, it is not worth it in my opinion. 90% of the time it will be sitting idle, so no need to spec it out with more expensive parts.

It's fast enough for what it will be doing, if it does turn into a plex server, I may get the other 16 gig if it needs it for transcoding, which I doubt unless its 4k, but I have 32 gig in my main pc and all the crap that I have running on it at startup only takes up 5.6gig, and thats on a pc with loads of crap on it.

Not once have I ever seen 16 gig being used on my main pc except when I had a ramdisk setup.

I can see your point about the 8gen i7's being overkill for a roon core, but I would like for it to be powerful enough for future purposes, whatever they may be. For all I know, I might make this my plex core and buy a lower spec'd one for roon ?

I will see how this one goes first.

I did originally put a £500 limit on the nuc and fanless case, as my roon yearly sub is coming to an end,and it is $500 for a lifetime subscription, which i'm buying because roon is so good.

When I looked into it, I had a feeling Nucleus was suggested to run Roon, and still a NAS or other storage to hold own content? Or am I mixed up and Nuc or Nucleus holds Roon Database and all one’s music.

 

[Amberlamps]

When I looked into it, I had a feeling Nucleus was suggested to run Roon, and still a NAS or other storage to hold own content? Or am I mixed up and Nuc or Nucleus holds Roon Database and all one’s music.

It can hold all your music if you plug your music in to the usb ports or have a nas, network share or if your music is in the cloud, you can also add a second internal storage drive with your music on it, hence the 120gig ssd I have, the 128gig m2 card is for the OS roon rock.

If you have multiple terrabytes of music, a share or nas would still be the best bet, as roon on the nuc can access it, I also have music on my dropbox account, which roon can also access. Actually, I'm not sure if it can access my music on dropbox, I put my music on dropbox for another reason, but I do backup roon to dropbox.

So yes, it can have all your music on it via the various different ways.

 

[Whazzzup]

Sooo, congrats 10 g didn’t make it , lol. Enjoy the weekend. I m no diy guy. Antipodes does some other proprietary sq enhancements but yes expensive.