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In Reply to: RE: Fan-less Windows 10 Mini PC recommendations? posted by willkayakforfood on February 09, 2020 at 23:36:18
I run a Intel NUC with JRMC and W10 as the OS feeding my DAC. I have my files on a NAS, about 5TB worth of files, mostly 192/24 FLAC rips of my vinyl but also other hi res files. Further, I don't upsample these files as for me there is no benefit.
The NUC has a 120gb SSD and 4gb of RAM. I removed the fan and mounted it into an Akasa fanless case. The biggest sonic improvement for the NUC came from using a diy 18v LPS.
As it relates to your requirements, my NUC does not have an SD card slot. The only downside of the NUC for me is that the WIFI antenna is not great. Fine for internet surfing but not great for the NAS on the home network via wifi. My NAS has a second LAN output and the NUC is hardwired to the NAS. You can mitigate this using a USB wifi dongle/antenna.
I would recommend at least an I3 chip although I currently have no issues with a Pentium powered model.
Follow Ups:
Looks like you did a very nice job with that. Before I got around to buying the one I have, I decided the SD card slot wasn't that important (has plenty of USB, after all), but it turns out to have one anyway. So, I put a 128GB card in the slot. Just because. :) Right now, it's just holding onto the JRiver installation file and registration key, and Bifrost USB driver installation files.
Though the WiFi works fine in my little machine, aside from the initial "Windows activation" thing, I'm not expecting to bother with the WiFi, as I have no interest in surfing, streaming, etc. with this machine. I've turned the networking off.
It's doing what I expected from it -- running JRiver, receiving the USB input from the external SSD, and outputting the digital signal to the DAC.
If it decides to roll over and die in a week, I'll rethink the situation, and perhaps go for a slightly more robust solution. So far, so good with the minimal tasks I'm asking of it. :)
Melissa
I have a small music collection but if you have one that can fit on an sd card, all I can tell you is that things sounded much better when I ditched the usb drive and put everything on an sd card.
Cut to razor sounding violins
Hello Dawnrazor,
You wrote:
"...all I can tell you is that things sounded much better when I ditched the usb drive and put everything on an sd card."
Could you describe what "sounded much better" means to you in this regard?
I see there are 2TB SD cards available (my music files currently reside on a 2TB external USB SSD, with a backup copy on an identical drive).
In any event, if I do decide to try the SD card option, I may have to get a more robust mini PC than the one I'm currently using. For some reason, the manufacturer states that SD cards "up to 128GB" can be used with it. I asked why this is the stated limit, but haven't yet received an answer.
Yes some computers have an sd card limit but not sure why. Luckily my collection fits on 128g
Everything was clearer and less distorted. Like some grunge was removed. My guess is the usb drive was polluting the power or something.
Cut to razor sounding violins
Hello Dawnrazor,
You wrote:
"...all I can tell you is that things sounded much better when I ditched the usb drive and put everything on an sd card."
Interesting. Do you have an internal SSD? If so, would you consider using that as music file storage instead of the SD card?
The mini PC I have currently has just a small internal drive, but it can be expanded up to a 2TB HDD (I'll have to look into it further, but from what I think I understand so far, it seems the expansion possibility is for up to a 2TB spinning HDD, not SSD). I'm currently using a 2TB external SSD--connected via USB--for my music files, and I need something of that size.
I've had this mini PC only a few days, so it's still in its "probationary" period. I'll be waiting to see just how stable/reliable it is before I would consider any new internal drive for it -- of any sort.
I still have to use USB as the output to the DAC, but using an internal drive for the music files would certainly simplify things a bit. Might ultimately mean a different mini PC that could take a 2TB SSD.
One thing I'd really like to keep the same is the silent--fanless--nature of this tiny computer.
I'd be interested to hear from others as well regarding using an internal SSD vs. external USB SSD for music file storage in a machine meant for this dedicated purpose (music "playing" software and sending digital music files to a DAC).
Yeah the pc has an internal ssd. Its only 64g I think. I have it in my head that the music and the operating system should be separate. So the sd card fixes that. Plus they are cheap and easy compared to upgrading to an internal ssd with enough room.
Plus you can move the files easily between computers if you like.
Cut to razor sounding violins
I did receive an answer from the seller (manufacturer?) of the mini PC I'm currently using. Said that the computer "may not" recognize anything larger than 128GB in the SD slot.
Unless I go to a different mini PC solution that has more capacity/capability, I'm limited to my current solution for the music files -- a 2TB external USB SSD.
This is my first time experimenting with a mini PC as my music server, and I do like the silence of the fan-less operation. Will continue to consider a more robust mini PC solution than the one I currently have (see link).
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