The Roon Nucleus is a piece of hardware that Roon developed to specifically run their program. I tried my Roon trial on an aging MacAir and the computer severely overheated when it got hung up trying to run the program so I can appreciate where a dedicated piece of hardware makes sense. Otoh Roon is primarily a software company that doesn’t have a history designing audio components, unlike W4S.
I’m not an IT guy but Roon is a large program that needs some computer firepower to work best (I am basing this opinion on my limited trial and on the experiences that I have encountered here). I think the one critical spec might be the RAM. Roon specifies a minimum RAM and imo I would make sure the W4S at least doubles it. Otherwise, if running Roon is the priority, and the choices are limited to the two that you have specified, I would go for the Nucleus
I’m not an IT guy but Roon is a large program that needs some computer firepower to work best (I am basing this opinion on my limited trial and on the experiences that I have encountered here). I think the one critical spec might be the RAM. Roon specifies a minimum RAM and imo I would make sure the W4S at least doubles it. Otherwise, if running Roon is the priority, and the choices are limited to the two that you have specified, I would go for the Nucleus