After my failed experiment of running Roon on my NAS server, I went back to running Roon Server on my i7 iMac (2015) and while it could run okay for a few days, it required frequent reboots.
Enough.
I was in the market to upgrade and one of the products that peeked by interest was the Grimm Audio MU2, which includes support for a Roon server. However, after some investigation, they only recommend using it for collections "up to 100K tracks."
Upon inspection, with over half from Qobuz, I had 180K. Well, damn. I was in the market for a new M4 MacMini.
But I did more reading and ultimately decided to bite the bullet and run Roon's own software. I could do that with one of their own PC servers or build my own with an Intel NUC.
Roon certifies which NUCs work with their operating system/server combo called ROCK. I chose a 13th generation NUC Pro, now made by Asus. The tiny PC came after my flash strip and RAM. They recommended 8GB but I went with 16, knowing what the use looked like on my iMac. I had no plans to put music on this server, so I went about installing ROCK.
The whole process is documented on Roon's site, but I will say, there were a few anomolies. First, they ask you to update the BIOS and that did not come from Asus' website as a ".bio" file, as indicated. I updated it, nonetheless, then installed their Linux distribution. Eventually you have to connect it to an ethernet network.
At that point, you don't need a screen and keyboard anymore. You update the server via its own webpage. Just need to know your server's IP address once it's on your network.
Thus far, it's performance has been stellar. No bottlenecks, snappy, and a dream. I recommend this solution to anyone serious about Roon who is tired of performance bottlenecks.
The NUC I got has the i7 processor. Pushing over my backup to the server was easy and things loaded just fine. The only extra step is installing the FMPEG codecs.
If you're ready? Read on...