SEPARATE DAC/SERVER OR ALL IN ONE BOX?

Perhaps this has been discussed elsewhere, but i am considering getting a 2TB
Mac Mini (with a solid state drive) to store/stream music, an I-PAD "remote control", and a USB-to-AES/EBU converter box to link up with my EMM lab cd player. i am looking for great sound but not necessarily a SOTA set-up, at least not yet. But is there a one-box solution
which stores a lot of data as well as containing a highly rated DAC to connect
to a preamp? One person i asked so far has advised that "NO", the best arrangement is a separate DAC and SERVER to get better sound. Also, he remarked that a conventional hard-drive is far to noisy to get good results.
again, this might have been covered quite a bit already; if so tell me where to
read. thank you.