Do I have Nucleus Rev A or Nucleus Rev B?

What are the different versions of Nucleus?

There are two iterations of Nucleus, which we refer to as the revisions of Nucleus, or “Rev A” and “Rev B” for short. These are not separate generations of Nucleus – in fact, most of the internals held inside Nucleus Rev B are the exact same components as the Rev A model. Furthermore, when it comes to software updates, technical support, and music system design, each revision of Nucleus is understood to be functionally exactly the same by our teams. You won’t find any performance differences between the two iterations of Nucleus, though at this point in time the Rev B iteration is the only version of Nucleus in production.

While both revisions of Nucleus are treated as the same device by us here at Roon, they do have some distinctions in chassis design we’d like to make clear. You can see the differences between revisions highlighted in the list below:

Nucleus (Rev A)	Nucleus (Rev B)
Internal Storage Size: Supports 2.5" HDD or SSD with a drive height of 7mm or 9mm.	Internal Storage Size Supports 2.5" HDD or SSD with a drive height of up to 15mm.
HDMI port (1) This port can be used as a multichannel audio output.  This port can be used for diagnostics by the Roon support team	HDMI ports (2) This port can be used as a multichannel audio output.  This port can be used for diagnostics by the Roon support team

You can find a complete list of specifications for Nucleus Rev A and Nucleus Rev B in the Nucleus manual.

To Recap:

Nucleus Rev A has a smaller enclosure than Nucleus Rev B. This smaller design means that while most SSDs and standard laptop HDDs will fit inside the Nucleus (Rev A) without issue, some older and physically larger legacy drives may not quite fit properly.

Nucleus Rev B has a slightly larger enclosure, which we elected to design to give customers the flexibility to use a physically bigger Hard Drive (though with the same storage size capabilities) inside of their Nucleus that if needed. The output board on Nucleus Rev B also features one additional HDMI port compared to the Nucleus Rev A. Each HDMI port can only be used as an audio output through Nucleus, and all other aspects of the computer board design inside of Nucleus Rev B are the same as Nucleus Rev A.

If you have any questions about this information, or if you’d like to find out where you can purchase a Nucleus, please contact us at sales@roonlabs.com. If you're an international customer, please use our International Distributor directory to find an authorized Nucleus dealer near you. US customers can purchase Nucleus directly from The Roon Store. 

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