Any disk writes cause wear to an SSD, swap files included, but I don’t think it’s an issue. I’ve been using a Mac mini M1 with 16GB of RAM for a couple of years now. It runs my Roon core, Dropbox, Google Drive, Photoshop, and a whole bunch of other stuff. Swap normally sits somewhere between 2GB and 6GB. When I check the drive with DriveDX it reports that ‘Life Percentage Used’ is currently at 3%. At that rate the SSD will wear out in approximately 65 years.
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Buying 16g of memory is saving you. A lot of people buy the 8G model, so how much more swapping would you do if you only had 8G of memory? That’s why I always buy at least 16g of ram
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I have 8 gb ram and a 256gb SSD in my MacBook Air M1. it’s my Roon server and I have it since December 2021. DriveDX still shows 100% health.
(Roon library is on a external NVME 2 TB that is online since 3400 hours and still shows 100% health as well)
I don’t use the MacBook for much more than basic stuff + Roon server. but I doubt the SSD will be an issue at all.
once the M3 Mac minis are out I will probably “upgrade” to a 16 GB version because I want to use my MacBook as portable device again 
PSA - I just picked up an Apple Mac Mini M2 PRO with 512/16gb for $989 from the Apple Store after refurb (w/warranty) and Military/Veteran discounts. That’s $310 or 24% off the $1,299 list price…
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Did you just post on the Emotiva board…seems to be familiar 
Yes, wanted to share.
How much is the military veteran discounts? I am looking at getting a Mac mini as well.
The refurb discount is about 15%, and another 10% for Military/Veteran. Must check those boxes at the bottom of the main Apple page. Apple’s refurbs are indistinguishable from new, and come with warranty.
I will check the store out. You think an entry level M2 will run a Roon library well? I have an entry level 2014 Mac mini that I upgraded the SSD. I have about 124k tracks.
I would go for 16gb ram if you can…internal ssd at 256gb is more than enough unless you run a large local library and want it internally stored…but external hdd/ssd drive or a nas is fine for local music.
I would add that the machine is probably best running headless or at least not being used for other daily tasks during roon operation and playback. But some light duty is probably not going to be a big issue.
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I agree with @wizardofoz above: go for 16GB RAM, & 256GB SSD. I purchased an 8GB RAM M2 and had dropouts. Reading through other posts here, everyone with 16GB seemed unaffected and perfectly happy.
The M2 is a very impressive little machine.
I had the base model M1 as my core, also running plex. I didn’t have any problems, no drop outs, all worked well.
I upgraded to the M2 (mostly for the 10G ethernet) and did go with 16gb. It’s worth the money and remember you can’t add it later on.
I went with the 512/16 mainly due to the many online reviews strongly advising it…
Makes sense. That’s what I was looking at getting the 16gb version. My 2014 Mac mini is chugging along still but getting slower.
I have a M2 MM with 16 GB 512 GB, and it runs happily run with HQPlayer / NAA addition to the Roon Server. My 3 TB local storage for music is on a QNAP NAS.
Has anyone done a sort of benchmarking effort between the m2 mini and various NUCs? Trying to figure out if I’m going to upgrade my NUC.
I think it is not easy to benchmark for running Roon on macOS vs ROCK because a large part of why the Apple Silicon SoCs run so well is practice is in how closely tailored macOS is to the platform for practical use. Not sure how well this translates to what’s essentially a single-core app like Roon or generally to benchmarks.
However, as far as the CPU as such goes it’s easy to find benchmarks between specific Intel CPUs vs M2. Not sure what’s in, e.g. a NUC13, but here is one example for Intel Core 13th gen i7 16350HX vs M2 Pro. Easy to plug other CPU models into the database:
Sorry, I’m using the word benchmark in a sloppy way here. I mean “CX benchmark” or how responsive the interface is, how often it gets bogged down / squiddy and for how long, etc. I don’t mean how fast the processor is. But I wouldn’t even really know how to do side-by-side tests in a meaningful way (even if the remote was the exact same one).
Not sure if such reviews exist, but similar things apply - which part of the Mini M2’s responsiveness is the hardware and which part is caused by how well macOS works on it vs. Windows’s tendency to get bogged down temporarily by whatever it thinks it needs to do in the background that’s more important than what the user wants to do.
In my personal experience working on Windows for decades in graphics and software development, and more recently various Apple laptops and Minis (as the software developer I work at has started to support macOS a few years ago), Apple Silicon with macOS runs rings around Intel with Windows in interactive usage in practice. When comparing the performance of a Roon Core, with the NUC running ROCK, the single core performance of the CPUs, however, probably tells you more.
For remotes, I would say Apple all the way. A year ago I switched to Apple on private machines, after exclusively running Linux at home for nearly 30 years. I use an Air M2 as my everyday machine and for the Roon Remote, and it’s simply beautiful.
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No issues running multiple endpoints with DSP. M2 is very responsive. If you need to run many endpoints concurrently it may slow. I often play 2 or 3 without the M2 showing any signs of lagging.
M2 16GB RAM Ethernet 40k local library + Qobuz.