Is the “Beelink SEi12 Pro Mini PC, 12th Generation Intel Core i5 1240P Processor,Mini Computer with 16GB DDR5 RAM/500GB M.2 2280 NVMe SSD, Support 4K FPS”, available on Amazon, which uses the i5 1240P processor and 16GB DDR5 ram, powerful enough for large Roon library + DSPs + multichannel PCM and DSD? Will I be able to install ROCK on it? It comes with Windows 11 Pro. If so, what else do I need to get my Harmony hub remote to control it when it’s running the Windows version of Roon player?
You should be able to get ROCK on to it, but that is no guarantee that everything (Ethernet, WiFi etc) will actually work. Unless someone has done the groundwork for you and done a successful install you are breaking new ground. The MOCK thread should be a good pointer to Beelink gear. That said a 12th gen i5 is way more powerful that a Nucleus+ so should do a large library. It should also be able to handle a decent level of DSP so it will be a good choice even if you leave Windows on it.
Since you mentioned MCH DSD, I can tell you from my experience with running ROCK on various NUC and custom-built Linux computers for the last 3-4 years, a 12th gen i5 will probably be ok up to DSDx2 + DSP. After that for DSP and any downsampling (for example to stream a DSDx2 MCH to a device that is stereo PCM only), the i5 will likely run out of gas and you will get stuttering and dropouts. I have a fair amount of DSD MCH (up to 4x) files, but not all of my systems are MCH or DSD capable, so I depend on Roon to do the conversion and downsampling for me. This is very resource intensive, and I’ve found that the i9 is the most stable platform for this kind of workload. Add DSP on top, and I’m very sure you will have problems if you have any DACs that are 2CH only and/or PCM only.
I have been running Rock Core on a Beelink SEi8 for a couple of years, within promox, just reformatted the beelink to be a dedicated Rock Core server rather than via a container, all works perfectly, so should just be faster on the SEi12