Personnally, on non-supported hardware, I would be much more inclined to use DietPi or, indeed, any other linux distribution. You get the same performance, pretty near the same ease of installation (on DietPi at least) plus you get a much more flexible system with many more diagnostic tools - and it’s a supported system to boot.
But then, I would say that wouldn’t I - I’m running DietPi on hardware that is on the ROCK approved list.
The wonderful thing about Roon is we get all these options avaiolale to us. I like having a completely dedicated bare metal server that auto updates. I run Home Assistant on an otherwise E-waste Atom Z8350 mini pc and Truenas on a very old HP Proliant N40L. I’m a sucker for getting the best out of kit that others would dump!
DietPi is a fanatstic distro though and does give you a lot of flexibility if your Roon server isn’t taxing its host.
I’ve gone from RoonOnNas to a fanless Topton FU02 mini PC + linear power supply and performance is exceptional. I’ve run upsampling to DSD512 on multiple zones and messed with various other DSP and everything remains very snappy, or stick with native and everything is literally instant.
Specs are Ryzen 7730U, 32GB RAM, 500GB NVME SSD for ROCK + database and 4TB SATA SSD for media.
Absolutely unbeatable value in a fanless unit.
The top unit is the Topton FU02 and the bottom the linear power supply.
I’ve been impressed with it vs RoonOnNas and have no plans to move away from it. Now planning messing with opnSense on a Topton FU03 power from the same LPS 
Similar experience. Ran ROCK on NUC 8i5 for a long time. Regular reboots required to maintain stability.
Installed roon on my ubuntu server alongside LMS (running on an old lenovo m900 tiny pc).
Much improved stability across the board. Strange considering the server has the same RAM but an older processor than the NUC. I wouldnt go back to ROCK.
I ran Roon server on my iMac at our second home when I forgot to pack my ROCK. Worked fine but I had to run another program to prevent the Mac from suspending and stopping everything. Did you have to do something similar?
Yeah I’m running the Amphetamin app on my m4 mini and before that on my m1 MacBook .
Rock installer is about the easiest I have used. Blena Etcher to burn it to a usb stick, put it in a pc, boot from it and click install. Its not much easier than that.
Here is my forever server I have been building of late. Silly over spec case from 2007, 18 kg of heat sink lol. No fans as a result.
The last thing I want in my hifi life is a workstation computer doing the server things. NUC with ROCK is an appliance, and I do not want any computer near me for hifi.
The same goes for Linux, W, or any other platform.
The workstation is for work, as nomenclature suggests.
Or why not a virtual machine on AWS? 
See this post re docker:
@Matthew_Willims This looks great. Were you able to install ROCK following the normal steps? What is the Intel equivalent of AMD 7730?
Yes, nothing special required though I did have to reset the bios to factory defaults to get the install USB to load. After that it was all smooth sailing.
The closest Intel CPU would be the i7-1255u or i5-1355u.
Thanks. I’m getting one.
Cool, I hope you like it as much as I do mine. I replaced its Chinese NVME SSD with 500GB Crucial, and the 4TB SATA SSD is a Crucial also. The Chinese SSD probably would have been fine though I had concerns about its long term reliability.
Probably the only gotcha is to set up a floor fan blowing towards it when transferring media to the media SSD s as it gets quite hot transferring the 2TB I copied to it from my NAS. In normal operation though it’s unnecessary.
I found removing the Wifi card and turning off power to wifi in the bios had a positive impact on temps also. 
Roon Rock is a small form factor computer, give it any name you want its still a computer and its near your hifi (dun dun duuuuun)
Mine lives in the garage along with the internet connection, router, NAS, Renolabs switch etc. It’s nowhere near my sound systems.
That said I run a lower specc’d FU02 for streaming video and controlling Roon…… I’ve not recieved the linear power supply for it yet though surprisingly even its stock switch mode power supply affects my sound system less than my prior MonsterLabo The First. That thing actually caused a how level hum in the speaker nearest to it where the FU02 has no such issues.
What case is that? It’s a beaut!
Absolutely. As well as my phone, car, and everything else. I do not call my phone “computer.”
“(dun dun duuuuun)” is stupid.
It’s an mCubed HFX media case. From like 2007. Back then cpus were hot as all hell and many concerns of the time was the fins getting really hot.
I put a gen 10 i5 in it, and the case has not got above ambient even when importing the Roon library. It really is the definition of unnecessary. But it was a hundred quid and I really wanted it. lol
Got to have a bit of fun, its only hifi after all.
