Intel NUC Music Server

[Andre737]

I'm planning to build a music server PC based on a Intel Haswell i5 D54250WYB into a fanless Tranquil Abel 22-5 or Akasa Tesla H chassis with a mSATA SSD and 8GB DDR3 Ram.
For the power supply optimation I was thinking of the HDPLEX linear PSU and the AQVOX low noise USB power supply or the ifi iUSBPower.
Besides the fact that I can't build in a USB PCI card like the SOtM tX-USBexp is there anything that speaks against it?
OS would be Windows Server 2012.
As this will be my first try to build a music PC I would appreciate any thoughts or tips of you!
Thanks,

Andre

[Antoine]

Hi Andre,

Looks good! I myself have been looking at the exact same components you are but decided to rebuild a HTPC I already had, using standard PC components on a mATX format mainboard. Though in the end I've only re-used the Streacom case.

The Intel i5 NUC system is nice but I felt it didn't give me the best price/performance ratio. Even though it contains an i5 CPU it's only dual core and runs at a low speed. But if you're looking for a reasonable powerful and most of all a small solution it's very nice!

Good luck building the music server! I'm sure you know computeraudiophile.com and it's forum but if not, check it out. There's a lot written about the NUC offerings and one can generally learn a lot there.

BR,

Antoine.

[rwjr44]

Have you considered the JRiver ID?

[Antoine]

I did, it's JRiver's Linux based NUC solution.

From what I've read there seems to be consensus that a Server 2012 R2/AO/JRiver/JPlay setup offers better sound than any other Mac or Linux based solution so I chose that path. The JRiver ID is a lot more 'cost effective' of course but the JRiver company is of the 'bits are bits, bit-perfect is bit-perfect school' and seeing (plus experiencing) all the improvements that can be made through hard- and software optimizations I personally would never buy the ID because of that. But most important for me is the sound quality and musical enjoyment and I don't mind (actually like) the efforts put into tweaking. To each his own!

[Georgethesixth]

The NUC seems to be a 'good enough' solution. My streamer is a Server 2012 /AO/Jriver combination. I don't use Play (yet). It works flawless with USB, but I'm all to familiar with the White noise syndrome.
I cannot compare to other solutions however.

[Andre737]

Thanks for your answers.
So looks like there speaks not too much against buliding my music server on a NUC platform.
What would be concerning sound quality the better solution?