My Mac mini is a 2018 3.2 GHz 6-core i7 with 16 GB RAM and a 1 TB SSD. I keep my library on a 512 GB SD card (soon to be extended to a 1 TB SD card), and I am using an external 2 TB SSD for library/Roon backup.
Thanks. Just out of curiosity, why no music stored on the internal HD?
Also I was just looking at the specs of the IMac, I donāt see a slot for the SD card?
I am using the Mac Mini for other things, too, like MatLab. I just want to save memory.
The Mini has no SD card slot either, but there are SD card adapters. Mine is for USB-C, but there are Adapters for USB 2.0 as well.
Antipodes audio just get 12 g together
The advantage of a Nucleus or Rock installed on a small PC is they run headless. No keyboard or monitor required. Updates done in the background with no intervention. A small amount of DIY up front means no DIY ever again. Another option is a quiet fanless PC running Windows 10. Many vendors make powerful fanless PCs. My desktop is a fanless I7. Roon runs great with Windows 10 and if you decide to leave Roon youāll still have a very capable PC.
Iād go the Mac Mini if you are firmly in the Apple ecosystem. Easy to run it headless via Screen Sharing if you are an all Apple household.
Wow 2TB SSD - that sounds expensive! Impressive though. 
Iāve had fine performance with multiple endpoints running the music off hard drives.
Post 2018 Mac Miniās donāt have an SD slot. You would only get better performance accessing the library than the Mac Miniās internal hard drive if you used at least an UHD-II speed card or above with a USB-C/thunderbolt adapter. Not sure why youād do that.
The hybrid drive should work fine. Files that get accessed/modified frequently like the Roon library get prioritised to the SSD portion of the drive automatically. Itās not quite as good as a dedicated SSD but Iām sure would work fine.
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Thanks all, I decided to go with the Nucleus. I was able to get decent deal on a used one and it seemed like the easiest path. will keep everyone posted.
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