Start here with Hans videos
Follow along with Hansā¦part 2 is the hardware bitā¦ its not too hard.
also reference the Roon ROCK installations here
The trickiest bits are updating and setting the BIOS up correctly at the start. Installing Roon itself was just a case of insertion of a usb stick and rebooting from what I remember.
You donāt need to install ROCK on your NUC. You can install Win10 and then the Windows version of Roon, either the full package or just the server. Much less complicated.
Now, my question. One can run Roon remote on a Kindle???
I beg to differ, but to each his own.
Differ how? What is the value of ROCK to you? Installing ROCK needlessly confuses NOOBs.
Kindle Fire yes. I run it on the HD 10" but you need to install the Google Play store first.
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Of course, I forgot about those. I was thinking of the reader.
Building a NUC and installing is much the same for windows or ROCK but if you are trying to have just a basic Roon server and nothing else then windows is an unnecessary expense and comes with much overhead that doesnāt bring much to the table unless you need windows specific DAC drivers.
More people get tripped up installing ROCK than Win10 and if you have Windows installed the machine, that with ROCK installed would be only single purpose, now can do other things, like become a media device.
Except for the largest of libraries, any modern Intel chip can run Roon with sufficient power to make the whole overhead argument a red herring.
Iāve never understood the reason for ROCK, but, as implied previously, whatever.
I chose ROCK because I wanted an appliance. Win10 and its never ending updates and reboots is more trouble than I wanted.
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Donāt want to oversell the ROCK, and I never want to second guess someoneās aversion to risk. There is something to be said for Nucleus support after the sale, too.
Also, I donāt want a barrage of mail if you DO foul up the install! 
Best of luck whichever route you choose. Keep this community posted.
Hi Robert
Steve here
I have a few iMacs and at first was concerned about the iMacs capability, many users said need SS dive and lots of ram. In fact even though Roon has a recommended spa which is pretty high it works fine on older sata drive iMacs with 4 gb ram. However 8 is the new 4 as far as ram is concerned and iMac ram is easy and affordable.
Everything music works better with SSDās but a sata drive is fine, fusion is better. In the end I have a i7 with SSD and 32 mg ram but its over kill. My NAS is a Qnap HS251 with two WD reds 4 TB. I run in raid 1 config. So lots of space and its fan less but no processing power at all. Hence running Roon on the iMac. In the end I prefer to run it on the iMac rather than headless on the NAS.
I too had no experience building computer things other than a Synology 212j NAS. But I can honestly say building (or rather slotting together) an i5 NUC and installing Rock was easier than getting the Synology up and running. As was building a Rpi and DAC hat and installing Ropiee. And if you do come into any problems, thereās plenty of help here. Go for it, itās brilliant!
(Whoops, no barrage of mail pleaseā¦!)
For what itās worth, a couple years ago I put Roon on an old 2007 Mac desktop we dedicated to music. The machine was getting painfully slow and outdated, but I went online to Macsales.com, Iām sure others offer the same upgrade service.
They took my exact model number and gave me the range of SSD and RAM upgrades available. We were able to safely max out the RAM to 50% over Apple specs, and I replaced the hard drive with a 300 Gb SSD. It was an AMAZING transformation. Roon works fine, and it boots up in about 20 seconds. It was about $275 for parts and I had them installed locally for about $75 more, though it is possible to DIY.
Hi All,
Thanks for all the top advice so far.
I checked my 2011 Mac and the Specs are:-
Intel Core 2.5GHz Intel Core i5
RAM: 4GB 1333 MHz DDR3
If I use this plus my music on my NAS (Synology 213j) then I think I am set?
I thinkā¦
@Robert_Fielder is your mac using SSD ā¦ if not then you are not going to be seeing the best speed of the user interface as the database really needs a fast drive and spinning HDDās in a MacMini are like molasses compared with an SSD
Its HDD. All my music is on my NAS so only Core will be on my Mac
There are good online places to get better SSD drives (although also need a fan for these). I have about 25 GB free at the moment in my boot disk.
I guess what I am trying to say is that by installing Roon and hoping to have an okay user experience that
a) Iām not going to crush my Mac into submission and face hours of the spinning wheel for my other applications
and
b) I have an entry level piece of kit that will work (if not at the most optimal))
Why would you need a fan for SSDā¦ depending on the MAC model upgrade to SSD is fairly easyā¦2012 vintage is quite easy see macsales.com as posted above.
You still havenāt said what exact MAC you have so I canāt guide you with any more detail.
Any SSD will be a better experience even for your MAC apps ā¦ I have several older MacBookās and Macmini pre 2010 that are all using SSDāsā¦well worth the upgrades - like having a new mac almost 