Can anyone explain why use a NUC?

[amirm]

That Beekhuyzen guy is a clueless loon (typical audiophile), you'd be doing yourself a favor by ignoring his ravings.

I love his TV and teaching skills but sadly the above is completely true. He uses his technical measurement gear now for TV decor.

 

[TimW]

I use a NUC because it was cheap, easy to set up, and most importantly for me, Roon provides a free OS for NUCs called ROCK.

Mine is a NUC7i3BNH an it is nearly silent. I don't use it for anything other than the standard Roon Core duties of storing and serving up my modest library. Others on the Roon forum use their's for things like DSP and DSD conversion so they have more powerful NUCs. Those are nosier apparently which makes sense since they have to dissipate more heat from the same size of computer.

 

[hvbias]

I should have figured, the oscilloscopes in the background tricked me into watching them

I realize going with Roon would make this easier, but Roon is very poor with classical music and I have my JRiver library organized meticulously. So I will either give their DLNA server a try or build a fanless PC with something like a Streacom case that Amir used. A 65 w TDP Ryzen should have loads of headroom for Acourate even with 10 crossovers.

Edit:

Archimago posted some great information and links to his blog here:
http://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threa...mers-why-so-complicated.787083/#post-19960437

 

[Deacon Blues]

I am on the fence what to do. Can I buy an i3 Brix system with 8GB memory and 250GB SSD with External 4TB HD? Or is that all overkill? I'm currently running Roon on my (i3 HP) laptop, but it sometimes has issues transmitting Hi Res content to my Chromecast>DAC.

I was thinking of: hooking up the NUC via USB to the DAC.

Eventually, I will get a new DAC but trying to get everything off my overloaded laptop for the time being.

Or - Should I get a NAS and serve music from it? Is there one that's under 400 or so that will run Roon ok?

 

[Panelhead]

There are cost and form factors for using a NUC. With a barebones you could put together a nice unit using a NUC8i3 with DDR4 RAM and the Evo 970 SSD. Still be around 400.00.