NAS v NUC

[Billz]

There are a couple of considerations mentioned by the OP that make this a relatively simple choice. Firstly a NUC running ROCK is the natural home of Roon. It is the simplest and least vulnerable solution. Minimum i3, 8GB ram, OS on a small M2 and music on a 2TB SSD and you have an excellent platform supported fully by Roon. The second point is that unless you get spendy a NAS will seldom meet the minimum requirement of Roon. This is a much less important point but a pretty interesting fact about Qnaps recent Roon related woes was that Roon basically shrugged their shoulders once they recognised the issues were not theirs to fix. The question is however, which NUC do you choose? I would say hunt down a gen 7 or 8 model. These run the same motherboards as the two versions of the Nucleus models. You can expect ROCK to be unconditionally stable on them. I run a 7i7 and I must be close to 100 days since my last hard reboot.

One of the considerations I mentioned was that as well as Roon I need to run Plex for my Videos. Unless I am mistaken, ROCK won’t allow this. 

Seems to be about 50/50 as to whether I stay with the NAS or go for a NUC. 

 

[MickC]

One of the considerations I mentioned was that as well as Roon I need to run Plex for my Videos. Unless I am mistaken, ROCK won’t allow this. 

Seems to be about 50/50 as to whether I stay with the NAS or go for a NUC. 

You’re quite right about ROCK not allowing Plex to run. Roon is the only thing that runs on ROCK.

Mick

 

[frans5508]

You’re quite right about ROCK not allowing Plex to run. Roon is the only thing that runs on ROCK.

Mick

Exactly.

As said, i didnt like ROCK for mainly that reason and i wanted to use the NUC for other things as well such as PLEX. But i am also using it to rip my CD's, to run my audio analysis tool with my mic connected. I just like the freedom to use it for more stuff than 'just' audio files and I accept the fact that it's perhaps less stable and possibly more vulnerable (although i dont feel that at all and hardly have to reboot). A NUC is cheaper, doesnt make noise (that was a biggy for me as well) and you can run both Roon and Plex flawlessly. I am starting to repeat myself while i have no interest in Intel what so ever ;-).

 

[JamieMcC]

Fwiw as far as I'm aware it is possible to do room analysis take room measurements and do room correction with Roon. 

https://community.roonlabs.com/t/a-guide-how-to-do-room-correction-and-use-it-in-roon/23800

 

[Cable Monkey]

One of the considerations I mentioned was that as well as Roon I need to run Plex for my Videos. Unless I am mistaken, ROCK won’t allow this. 

Seems to be about 50/50 as to whether I stay with the NAS or go for a NUC. 

OK, I managed to miss that. There is always the option to continue to run the NAS alongside a NUC. Mine is there as the first line backup of music and database which gives me some resilience.

 

[frans5508]

Fwiw as far as I'm aware it is possible to do room analysis take room measurements and do room correction with Roon. 

https://community.roonlabs.com/t/a-guide-how-to-do-room-correction-and-use-it-in-roon/23800

Nice! I didnt know that, thanks for sharing. I use REW (or trying to use) and this is cool. I wonder how this conflicts with SO or not.

 

[JensA]

You’re quite right about ROCK not allowing Plex to run. Roon is the only thing that runs on ROCK.

Mick

Yes, ROCK is a one trick pony.
If you want to run Roon AND Plex you have to go for another OS.
Windows appears - for whatever reason - quite popular for this purpose.

 

[Newton John]

I am currently using a QNAP TS251 with 2 x 3TB drives in RAID. I have 1.5TB of Data and don’t see it increasing too much as I have no more albums to rip and use Qobuz for streaming new music. I also use Roon and have it installed on NAS with no issues.

I am considering 2 options. First is to replace my HDD’s with SSD’s. I only need to go with one 2TB SSD as I have off-site backups and don’t need RAID.  Second option is to replace the NAS with a NUC with a small SSD for the OS and Roon and a further 2TB SSD for my media files.  I have looked at NUC’s and find the choices quite baffling and not sure the spec I would need. OS is another thing I would need to consider. I don’t want use the Roon OS as I need to have something like Plex to play my videos.

Any advice welcome. TIA.

It isn't clear what you are trying to achieve with a NUC. If you don't want to run Roon ROCK on it, there's no need to have a NUC at all. Any number of devices running Windows or whatever will do the job.

The advantage of a NUC is that with ROCK it becomes a simple device that does one job well. The operating system is thus stripped down to the bare essentials for that job.

in any case, it's not necessarily an alternative to using a NAS. It can be used with a NAS for storage of the music library. It's possible to move the music library to an SSD or HDD either attached or inside the NUC. However, this is by no means essential. If the NAS isn't broken why try to fix it? 

The advantage of RAID on the NAS is that, in the event of a disc failure, the system still works - there's no need to restore from a back up just replace the failed disc. Of course, you still need your off site back ups, regardless of whether you have a NAS.

I have a ROCK NUC working with a ReadyNAS for music storage. I can watch videos from the NAS with PLEX on TV. The NUC is in a fanless case near the hifi system, although it could be located anywhere on the network. The NAS is in an other room beside the router. 

 

[frans5508]

It isn't clear what you are trying to achieve with a NUC. If you don't want to run Roon ROCK on it, there's no need to have a NUC at all. Any number of devices running Windows or whatever will do the job.

he mentioned that he would like to be able to run PLEX as well and the fact that his NAS doesnt have sufficient capacity

 

[Billz]

It isn't clear what you are trying to achieve with a NUC. If you don't want to run Roon ROCK on it, there's no need to have a NUC at all. Any number of devices running Windows or whatever will do the job.

The advantage of a NUC is that with ROCK it becomes a simple device that does one job well. The operating system is thus stripped down to the bare essentials for that job.

in any case, it's not necessarily an alternative to using a NAS. It can be used with a NAS for storage of the music library. It's possible to move the music library to an SSD or HDD either attached or inside the NUC. However, this is by no means essential. If the NAS isn't broken why try to fix it? 

The advantage of RAID on the NAS is that, in the event of a disc failure, the system still works - there's no need to restore from a back up just replace the failed disc. Of course, you still need your off site back ups, regardless of whether you have a NAS.

I have a ROCK NUC working with a ReadyNAS for music storage. I can watch videos from the NAS with PLEX on TV. The NUC is in a fanless case near the hifi system, although it could be located anywhere on the network. The NAS is in an other room beside the router. 

Sorry if I was not clear. I do not intend to add a NUC to my existing setup (I do not see the point) but merely wishing to know if the best option is upgrading my existing NAS with an SSD or ditching it for a NUC running perhaps Windows or some other OS that can run Roon and Plex. Or to put it another way, is it worth investing in my existing QNAP by replacing the existing HDD’s with SSD’s? The QNAP runs Roon and Plex perfectly well, but will I get any benefit from changing the NAS to a NUC? And if so, what benefits. If I went for a NUC I would put the OS (windows 10?) on a 128Gb SSD and my music on a separate 2Tb SSD all in the NUC case. Roon and Plex would run on the OS. Cost of the NUC is not an issue but I see no point in it being over speced.

The general consensus from the replies above (thanks guys) seems to be that I stay with the NAS. I can buy a single 2TB SSD and ditch the HHD’s. I understand RAID but have no real need for it. If my single drive failed, I would just buy another and restore from my backup. I will be using WD Red drives and I have never had one fail on me yet (my last NAS was struck by lightening and the drives survived sufficiently to enable me to retrieve all my data).

 

[Newton John]

Sorry if I was not clear. I do not intend to add a NUC to my existing setup (I do not see the point) but merely wishing to know if the best option is upgrading my existing NAS with an SSD or ditching it for a NUC running perhaps Windows or some other OS that can run Roon and Plex. Or to put it another way, is it worth investing in my existing QNAP by replacing the existing HDD’s with SSD’s? The QNAP runs Roon and Plex perfectly well, but will I get any benefit from changing the NAS to a NUC? And if so, what benefits. If I went for a NUC I would put the OS (windows 10?) on a 128Gb SSD and my music on a separate 2Tb SSD all in the NUC case. Roon and Plex would run on the OS. Cost of the NUC is not an issue but I see no point in it being over speced.

The general consensus from the replies above (thanks guys) seems to be that I stay with the NAS. I can buy a single 2TB SSD and ditch the HHD’s. I understand RAID but have no real need for it. If my single drive failed, I would just buy another and restore from my backup. I will be using WD Red drives and I have never had one fail on me yet (my last NAS was struck by lightening and the drives survived sufficiently to enable me to retrieve all my data).

Thanks for the explanation. I agree that there's not a lot of point in changing to a NUC as long as Roon and PLEX are working ok on your NAS.

Roon didn't work on my NAS, so I added a NUC. I tried adding storage to the NUC, but have gone back to using the NAS. The NAS takes longer to respond, but I can live with that.