Roon for high end audio?

If you have a USB DAC, can you just take USB off of your room core and feed it directly to the DAC? Or do you need an endpoint in between? I have a hollo May dac that has USB input.

I stand corrected on SGCs reporting of RAM and SSD. As you can see 8GB and 64 GB is the *bare minimum* for Roon to be functional and forget any DSP. Plus they are using a Gen3 i5! We are up to Gen10 now and soon Gen11 if it isn’t here already? The investment in their unit is at the bare minimum. Everyone can build with minimal skill a Roon Core server that blows this thing away. Like it said I built a fanless Gen10 i7 with 32GB RAM and 256GB SSD that blows that thing away for a fraction of the cost. Oh, and canceling Roon? Who would ever do that? I have a lifetime subscription and is the biggest bang for the buck in my listening room. It is fantastic for music discovery and sound quality. I think there is some Squeezlite and HQ player integration. But I don’t use that. But for Roon you can’t beat a NUC you build yourself. IMO the Roon Core server vendors in our hobby are not making anything near worth the money. The incremental improvement if there is any isn’t there and I proved it to myself with my InnuOS Zenith Mk3 and PhoenixUSB USB which are since sold. The added benefit of the NUC, and this applies to the STi5 is separation of the streamer from the server. The last thing, I want to say about this is, if you have a high priced Roon core server and you like it, terrific! But what I am pointing out to my colleagues here is that, if you are interested there is a lower cost/high quality Roon core server option that is easy to make that will free up thousands of dollars in your system without any loss in SQ and possibly some gains, you have an option here. I know this because I have experience this and done this myself. 

@peter_s you need a streamer in between. You can also have your Roon core server on your network etherneted to a switch and you can Ethernet your streamer for best results from the same switch. Then run USB out from the streamer to the DAC. You can make this configuration more complicated and sophisticated with other devices and optical but the above is the basic configuration. Having the streamer separate from the Roon Core shields it to a degree (large? small?) from any noise the server produces. 

It is possible for a Roon Core (PC, Nucleus,  etc…) to serve as both server and renderer.    It is better to have different devices, a server and renderer, but the same device can serve as both.  
For example, you can run a USB cable from a Roon Nucleus directly into a DAC.  I literally have a USB running from my Nucleus+ into my Audiobyte HydraVox DAC at the moment.  

@verdantaudio and others.  What would you recommend as a separate renderer downstream of my NUC? I can build a raspberry pi, and run USB from that to my DAC. In this case, the raspberry pi gets fed by ethernet from my switch/router. Then the raspberry pie provides a USB to the DAC. What other renderers would be better in this situation?