I have Roon installed on a headless 4-core i5 Dell running a stripped down Win10 and Fidelizer Pro to disable or minimize (set to lower priority) additional services not related to audio, etc., and to dedicate only 1 core to non-audio processes. I have an 8TB USB external drive housing all my local ripped music (FLAC) connected to the Dell Roon server. I have a full copy replicated to another 8TB HDD using a Robocopy and backup that local copy to cloud storage. Never had any issues with using my stripped/optimized Win10 Roon server -- even using Wi-Fi exclusively for connection to the router and home network. All this feeds two RopieeeXL Roon, Spotify Connect , and Airplay endpoints controlled by an Android Phone. (I was using an iPad, but had too many little annoying issues.) This setup has proven flawless for my use-case scenario. **
Love Roon and to me it is worth it. There is nothing better AFAIK at blending local and streamed music under one interface and treating it all as part of your library and as part of music discovery/recommendation engine. To each their own, but to discount a product just because it does not meet your preferred use criteria does not mean that 1) product is flawed, or 2) its subscribers/users are foolish or suckers.
** I'd like to try ROCK on a NUC system, but since mine has been problem free, I am really hesitant.