As far as I know, Roon runs on the same SSD or HDD as your operating system. You need a second drive, either internal or external, for your music files. None of this has anything to do with SQ. This is all digital.
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Iâll open with a no. In fact I avoided ROCK because it wouldnât let me put music on the system SSD. But Iâm firmly in the âuntil it hits a DAC itâs dataâ camp.
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Honestly, I just wouldnât do what you are proposing to do. Philosophically, I think a dedicated Roon server ought to be rock-solid and virtually maintenance-free, so that you can spend your time enjoying music versus playing Sysadmin. The Hackintosh approach leaves you vulnerableâany MacOS update has the potential to break it, and many in the Apple community feel that Catalina in particular is a steaming pile of crap. Following this philosophy, I recently migrated my core from a Windows 10 box to a ROCK built on a supported NUC (8i7), and I am extremely pleased with it.
The first question for you is, do you really need fanless? I assume you want to put the server in your audio rack, so silence is a must-have. If this is the case, ROCK is not an ideal solution because you need to transplant the NUC motherboard to a fanless case, and fanless case options for the i7 NUCs are limited. You could do a MOCK (ROCK installed on non-supported hardware), but here again youâre getting into Hackintosh territory in that any ROCK update could break you, and so you might as well go with Roon Server installed on Linux (e.g., Ubuntu Server 20.04.1 LTS). This would yield a fast, stable platform that should require little maintenance.
Lastly, forget about looking for sonic differencesâany of these approaches will sound the same. To think otherwise is a sign of Audiophilia Nervosa.
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If you want to bypass DYI (meaning getting a NUC and the Akasa Plato case separately and doing the (re)assembly yourself)
I used them for an earlier fanless NUC assembly and Iâm very happy with the result. Itâs been serving Roon for almost 2 years â although with Ubuntu Server rather than ROCK.
I went with a Nucleus but, I think building a NUC in a fanless case would be a fun project.
This is just to remember that using a NUC or NUC board is not the only option; if you decide to assemble a custom fanless music server, I recommend having a look at the well-designed cases and power supply solutions offered by HDPlex. Using a mini-ITX board you have great flexibility with processors and extensions. And you can house up to 4 SSD drives inside the case. All easily assembled to your specs and your purse. I am extremely happy with my custom built HDPlex H3V3.
I think Roon Rock is too limiting. I would recommend a sonicTransporter i5 or i9 instead. It is still an appliance but more powerful as you can run HQPlayer on it.
I run a Mac Mini in my TV cabinet, HDMI out to my AVR and I use it for Plex (media on my NAS), Netflix, Apple TV, Amazon Prime, Stan etc. It is on the same ethernet switch as my main stereo equipment so itâs sort of superfluous having a Roon ROCK device in addition to the Mac Mini in my cabinet.
I run about 9 RaaT zones in the home and do DSP upscaling on some endpoints (multiple BlueSound Powernodes and a Lumin T2) and the MacMini doesnât miss a beat. Make sure you have a Mac Mini with a SSD installed and get one with as much RAM a you can at purchase time (itâs not user upgradeable). The SSD is user serviceable, but itâs a bitch: https://everymac.com/systems/apple/mac_mini/mac-mini-aluminum-unibody-faq/how-to-upgrade-hard-drive-aluminum-unibody-mac-mini.html
While the Plato case is nice Akasa are now doing this. Itâs a straightforward build and very pretty. The âperfect for audiophile enthusiastsâ section might as well be called âbuild a Roon serverâ.
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A closer look turns this up. The same case for 10th Gen NUCs but with an additional heat sink for the M2 SSD. Wish Iâd seen it when I bought my 8th Gen. A bit pricier but the M2 temp is my only worry about my recent build.
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A lot of excellent suggestions and I hope that the OP can sift through these myriad options to figure out whatâs best. There is some subjectivity and I would agree with those who state SQ is not one of the variables to consider. I originally ran ROON on a repurposed Win10 mini PC. It constantly broke due to (surprise!) an avalanche of system updates. I moved to a NUC with ROCK and havenât looked back. Itâs dedicated and completely pain free for the six months that Iâve been running it.
Two thoughts that I donât see expressed elsewhere:
- If your library is on the small size, you can set your NUC to run in fanless mode and actually LOWER the clock speed. This is counterintuitive to most lifelong PC users, but the net result is pure, silent bliss.
- I chose the year old NUC that is the basis Roonâs Nucleus devices. Why? Because itâs the one platform that Roon will likely test FOREVER, given they have a bunch of highend customers to keep happy. Ask any IT veteran and he/she will confirm the importance of testing.
In any event you definitely have a lot of solid options and I hope that your final choice is without regrets⌠I know thatâs been what Iâve experienced!
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If youâre a Mac person, like I am myself, use a Mac for running Roon. Itâll give you a lot of benefits in the Apple ecosystem. Iâm running Roon core on a Mac Mini Server late 2012 with an i7 Quadcore processor, 16 GB RAM and SSD hard disk. My music sits on the SSD and is daily backuped to an external USB hard disk. This setup runs like a charm. It gives you all Bonjour auto discovery features. Solid performance from OS X Catalina and many more possibilities like to run Plex server in parallel and transcode even 4K video on the fly. I strongly recommend Mac heads to stay with OS X. It will just make you happier.
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If you already have a spare MAC I agree just use it. If you want to play, I highly recommend ROCK, it is the only purpose built system. However there is a misconception that ROCK needs or works best with NUC. I have run ROCK on many different (old/spare/2nd hand) Asus/MSI boards and they all work perfectly first time. Obviously Roon Co. canât guarantee it because they canât test every combination so they just say it works on NUC. You do need an Intel chipset, thatâs it. I personally donât like NUCs, they use laptop CPUs that are designed to throttle down at every opportunity because they are designed for battery power - thatâs why NUCs canât handle load well they were never designed for it. I run my Core/ROCK on full fat i7 CPUs at fixed clock speed and enjoy better sound and performance (in my opinion, no need to argue), than what I got running Core on Windows/NUC/Synology etc. If you want to try ROCK, donât go out and buy a new computer for it right away, just use an old PC with i7 CPU and Intel chipset or borrow one you wonât regret it.
But you can run both the server and Roon GUI on the same box I believe, using the GUI only when you need it
Roon uses one SSD for the OS and Library db , depends on Library size 128 should be fine, music file location is totally independent and other than physical noise doesnât need an SSD
Ps I use a bog std Tower i7, 16 Tb RAM 256 Ssd, 4 Tb music hdd , miles away from the listening spot. Win 10
Lots of good advice above. From my perspective all my PCs are Mac but I still run my Roon on ROCK as I simply donât view Roon as part of my computing architecture even though it does share the same network.
All Roon updates are done via my iPads or from my Macs anyway, so it really doesnât feel to me like itâs a different OS.
Another solution for your requirements is using an Elac streamer with Roon Essentials (I have one).
Thatâs one aspect - stripped down OS dedicated for Roon only will likely have less potential for any kind of SW related issues. But good thing about Intel NUC running Roon (especially when you do some DIY and change to a fanless chassis like Akasa Turing) is also its low power consumption, which I think will be higher if you go with hackintosh. If you want a PC that would stay on all the time, IMHO NUC is the best solution. Or Roon Nucleus.
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You can buy a separate heatsink for M2 for the 8th gen Akasa case
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While itâs not quite the integrated solution offered by the 10 case, itâs better than nothing. Thanks @Jakub_Burdych, a purchase is inevitable 
I built my Roon Server using an HP EliteDesk 800 G4 DM with an i7 which I bought used off of eBay. The DM is a very small footprint, <> 7"x7" and very quiet. The motherboard can use the m.2 drive which are very fast. It came with 500G drive.
It came with a M.2 125G drive and used the hard drive for backups of Roon. 8G RAM is enough. I have an 8 G external USB drive which stores my music. Works great.
Documentation and drivers are available from HP, so no worry about HP support.
Cost: $400 for the computer and the M.2 drive. I used Windows Server 2019 which cost $10. I would suggest looking at the G3 or G4 versions now.