ROCK is also working on a 4th generation i5 NUC with 8GB RAM and a normal SATA SSD and Music on two external USB 3 hard drives.
The exact model I have install ROCK on is:
Intel D54250WYKH Haswell NUC
SSD Samsung 840 EVO 128GB
The minimum performance I get is when upsampling 44.1Khz without any additional DSP like PEQ is:
DSD64 4.3
DSD128 2.5
PCM 352.8Khz 10.2
PCM 384Khz 8.6
So I have no need to upgrade before I start using PEQ or upsample to more than DSD128.
The UI and searches is very responsive with 240K tracks library. Only the Overview and Genre screen can be a bit slow 5-7 seconds. So all in all pretty decent with a old and slow SSD.
So IMHO buying something faster than one of the cheapest M2.128GB M2 SSD Intel 600p will most likely not result in any performance difference. The only additional benefit of a Samsung 960 Pro is that will cure audiophile paranoia.
To be honest the performance and SQ is as expected the same as with my previous ARC install.
I too have installed ROCK on an older Intel NUC.
This one was legally liberated from work, as an older pre 5th Gen one, and out of warranty, so it was made available for ‘home use’ by our IT Manager.
It is a DC3217IYE which runs an i3-3217U Processor (3M Cache, 1.80 GHz), which I believe is the Ivy Bridge family. It has 8GB of RAM and a Crucial mSATA SSD, which was available in 2.5-inch, m-SATA, and M.2 form factors with the same performance.
All working so far, just migrating existing Roon Core and restoring the Roon database.
The install process was easy, just once you have organised the bits - USB stick with image flashed, HDMI connection to the TV, USB Keyboard, Ethernet connection.
I have to-date used Roon on a Laptop for Library Management and not part of the playback chain, as this is served by the UPnP Server running Asset R5 on a RaspberryPi serving an Naim NDS.
However, with Roon Core now on a headless NUC, I can migrate to Roon Remote devices, and investigate end-points for the NDS, and in particular the Sonore UPnP Bridge product.