Mini PC as a streamer

I used to use the PI but switched over to the Kingdel Fanless Mini PC, HTPC with Intel i5 CPU. It was a lot cheaper a year ago.

I run Foobar and Fidelizer and it’s wonderful. I had to switch to a Windows PC because I’m a Amazon HD user and there isn’t an Amazon HD PI OS app. 

Volumio and the PI had a much slicker music server interface but didn’t sound nearly as good. I tried Chromcast audio, and BubblePnc but while they worked they didn’t sound as good and were clunky to use.

Controlling it with Remote PC works really well.

Danger Will Robinson, Danger

I used to use a pi 3 with Daphile.  It was good, but a bit noisy on the USB.  I read that the pi 3 has the network and USB on the same bus.  That is not do for the pi 4, the USB is on a separate bus.  Less noisy.  I upgraded to an i3 fanless NUC with audiolinux OS and HQPlayer.  The audio is great.

Good point about the RPi -- if you use the USB output, make sure you get a model 4 instead of 3.  The model 4 handles USB output fine.

Not worth trying. For what purpose?

If your goal is to play music files from local storage, I recommend you skip Intel NUC and go straight to Intel SoC mini-ITX motherboards, such as ASRock J5040-ITX.  The motherboard comes with Intel Pentium Silver SoC complete with fanless heatsink.  Using low-cost and low-powered mini-ITX motherboards allows you to upgrade to better power supply later on without breaking the bank.  Can also add audio-grade USB card.  Can have separate power rails for internal SSDs.  All these affect the SQ.

Intel NUC has limited upgrade paths.  Converting Intel NUC to fanless case is very expensive.