Hey guys - I did a quick search but didn’t see anything definitive on this.
With respect to Intel NUCs for ROCK, I was considering a BEH model i.e. the taller variant on the basis that it accommodates a traditional SATA SSD in addition to the M.2 SSD. I have a couple of 128GB SATA SSD laying around that could be re-purposed but is there any inherent disadvantage to using one of these vs the M.2 type for ROCK?
If it’s any help, my ROCK NUC 5i5 set up has the operating system on a small capacity 2.5" SSD with my music storage on the internal 1TB M2 SSD. It works fine. I think most have it the other way around though.
Thanks for your reply, Paul. Good to know that works ok. I realise that M.2 NVMe drives are capable of faster performance than SATA SSD but wondered whether the performance advantage was particularly noticeable for Roon…
NVMe devices don’t work with NUC5 devices
What about NUC8 devices?
I think I’ve read on here before that there’s no significant advantage to NVME in a ROCK installation, but I’m no expert.
I’m sure that’s right. There’s a company that builds high performance PCs for video editing, graphics etc and they’ve stated that they use SATA SSD for the boot drive as there’s virtually no advantage to using NVMe for this purpose.
This is correct.
If you are clueless, and happen to order one of these:
Samsung 970 EVO NVMe Series 250GB M.2 PCI-Express 3.0 x 4 Solid State Drive (V-NAND)
they will work in a NUC8i7BEH ROCK build. Don’t ask me how I know, but they work. 
Why fret? This is just as cheap as any SSD -
As far as I understand they are good, based on what other posters have reported works in a NUC8 unit.
Given that ROCK uses the primary SSD for its Boot OS, but then the Roon Core database once operational, I would imagine that having this I/O cycle as fast as possible would be an advantage.
The secondary SSD is then available for the content to be indexed and managed, i.e. the music files - which can be internal SSD/HDD if the NUC case accommodates, or an external USB drive.
I just replaced today my sata ssd 2,5 inches for the M2 Samsung evo plus , and at first my impression is the sound is clearer , and specially with tidal the tendency to distorsions is drastically reduced using this kind of drive instead the standard ssd, I dont have a nuc, I have a standard server and doing upgrades gradually, I hope this help to someone to make his system sound little better. will tomorrow follow with internal ssd drives to sata instead of usb external drives. to compare the audio performance, I I will keep in contact to tell differences and on sound and general performance.But I enfatically reccomend to install rock on a NVMe M2 Samsung 970 evo plus .