I have been very satisfied going the mac mini route last summer and having Ben at Mojo Audio do his thing has bumped it up to a very, very good sounding source, IMO.
Mojo removed the internal SMPS, added their internal filter, an outboard linear power supply and a separate external 2TB AV drive to store music, also powered by the external power supply. The internal drive for processing is a SSD. The mini is connected to the AV drive with a special Mojo powerless Firewire 800 cable. They also performed their optimization on the mini, since its sole use is as a music server. The unit is absolutely quiet, dynamic and has excellent tone density. It compares favorably to my $7K disc player.
Mojo removed the internal SMPS, added their internal filter, an outboard linear power supply and a separate external 2TB AV drive to store music, also powered by the external power supply. The internal drive for processing is a SSD. The mini is connected to the AV drive with a special Mojo powerless Firewire 800 cable. They also performed their optimization on the mini, since its sole use is as a music server. The unit is absolutely quiet, dynamic and has excellent tone density. It compares favorably to my $7K disc player.