Need help choosing a streamer

[Sailor4W]

For the 2K difference in price, I think (but never know) that I would be very happy with the Roon Nucleus
in my system.

Brian, thanks for your reply, and you’ve confirmed my own findings. Just to add, its well known that a Nucleaus is a standard Intel NUC7i3 or NUC7i7 (the plus) in a nice (fanless) case. You could save another $1k or so by building your own... this is the route I took. I also have a 440PRO CI and use Devialet/Roon AIR rather than direct USB.

Interesting to read that you get equally good results by putting together a NUC7i3/i5! I am in the process of testing a Roon Nucleus that goes straight via USB into my Devialet Expert 120. I very much like its sound, very clean and resolving, totally lacking any brightness! I wanted to see how the Nucleus compares to my Mac Mini setup and I must say, the Nucleus/USB vastly beats Mac Mini/AIR. NOW, if, say, an NUC7i7 gives the same performance, admittedly this would be far cheaper than the Roon's Nucleus.
Are there reliable instructions on how to build/set up a NUC for running ROCK? And is the performance equal to a Nucleus, or in other words, how much extra components (linear power supply, etc) is required to get a NUC to the same performance level as a Nucleus? Thanks for input!