Please see the benchmark tests undertaken on a NUC5i3 here List Your NUC Capabilities Here
Basically a NUC5i3 does everything a later NUC6 or NUC7 does.
Most of the generational differences in the NUCs are
- Built in WiFi and Bluetooth - not required by ROCK
- Support for dual head 4K or even 8K displays - not required by ROCK
- Higher RAM support - for ROCK and 99% of music libraries 8GB is enough, there has been one case on this forum of a ROCK user needing more RAM.
- Faster SSD support - if a NUC5i3 with 8GB and a M.2 SATA SSD can do the same benchmarked workload as later versions, ROCK doesn’t need it.
- Higher CPU Boost speeds - again this is only when the CPU workload triggers the clock boost, which is only meant to be for short periods hence ‘Turbo Boost’, but the trade off is heat, which kicks the active cooling in, which as a fan makes noise - acoustic and electrical.
Either get the most basic NUC Xi3 available, with 8GB RAM and a SSD
or a secondhand NUC5i3/NUC6i3 and save some money.