Thanks for all of the inputs. before I have had my laptop near my DAC PS audio Direct Stream on the audio rack, I now change the set up for convenience by having the laptop on a small stand right next to my chair. With that, I use a 25ft usb cable to connect laptop to dac. For this current set up, I have an option of buying/building a small form factor PC. It is a little bit cheaper and more powerful than laptop but I am not sure that Do I need all of that power on PC? or another option is to install window server on a PC instead of win7. I never try win server before so I really do not know it is better than win 7.
