Roon Labs Poor Man's NUCLEUS+

Selling the exact Roon Nucleus+ clone ... only better.

I have called it Poor Man’s Nucleus, as it costs 1/4 of Nucleus+, but the truth is - it has a much better performance than Nucleus+, so even’t though it is a Poor Man’s Nucleus cost-wise, it is certainly a Rich Man’s Nucleus performance-wise.

The server shares the exact same internals and runs same Roon ROCK software as Nucleus, but offers much better performance and is built of higher quality parts. 

Like the premium Nucleus+, it has the Intel NUC MotherBoard and Intel i7 CPU - regular, non-plus Nucleus only gets the slower Intel i3 CPU. 

It has 2x the memory (16GB) of the premium Nucleus+ to manage even the biggest of libraries and 2x bigger SSD drive (256GB).

The SSD installed is a super fast Samsung M.2 NVMe drive, which is not only twice as big and 3x more expensive than the budget Transcend SSD used by Roon in the Nucleus Plus, but most importantly - it is also 3x faster. AS SSD read benchamark for Samsung SSD used here is 1139 points, while Transcend from the Nucleus manages only 421 points on the same test (and the older Transcend SSDs was used in Nucleus Plus Rev.A models was even worse - got a trully disapointing 148 points). Faster SSD makes this Roon NUC i7 server operate much snappier, with less lag than Nucleus Plus.

The aluminium case offers a perfect thermal stability. During normal native playback (no DSP) and at idle the server is not even warm to the touch (~3'C over ambient). While doing CPU intensive tasks it gets only a bit warmer: ~6'C over ambient while upsampling to DSD256 and ~12'C over ambient while upsampling to DSD512.

Runs the very same Roon ROCK operating system with the latest Roon Core v2.0 installed (with auto updates from Roon etc - everything works just the same as in Nucleus, as this is original Roon software).

Like the Nucleus/Nucleus Plus, the server can be fitted with the additional (second) SSD drive for internal storage: 

1TB Samsung SSD > +$90
2TB Samsung SSD > +$150
4TB Samsung SSD > +$320
8TB Samsung SSD > +$580

I'm installing those at drive cost - Roon charges an eye-watering $400 to have 2TB drive fitted ($600 for 4TB).

The case size is only 25x25x5cm. I put a CD case on top for scale. The case can be used with the radiators facing up or down, depending what look one likes more (the feet can be easily transfered from one side to the other). Common sense suggests that the radiators should face up for better cooling, but the server puts out so little heat, that it doesn't really matter.

The supplied PSU is dual voltage 120V/60Hz and 240V/50Hz with both US and Euro (schuko) AC power cords.  

All enquires welcome and will be answered in full. You can contact me both via email or we can talk on Whats App.

NO TRADES.  Payment by bank wire or PayPal.

Net export price. For sales inside the EU - please add 23% VAT.

I’m a verified AudiogoN dealer. Please check out my outstanding AudiogoN feedback from the past 20 years and buy with confidence.