I have a NUC7 (NUC7i5BNH) in a silent Akasa Newton case. It's great, I love having a completely silent computer.

I tested the original case, and it was fairly noisy, like a busy laptop. I don't recommend it.

You may find it slightly cheaper if you install the RAM and SSD yourself. This would be easy with the normal case. Installing the silent case was more tricky, since it requires using thermal paste to connect the case to the CPU.

That's very good to know, thanks!

Doesn’t matter to everyone, but something to keep in mind is that Mac Mini’s have their power supply inside the unit itself while NUCs need those awful wall warts.

You might want to look at some Chinese mini/industrial PCs

Same 8GB/128 GB, but probably lower CPU for £307: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B077SLPZ63

There are many different configurations on Amazon/Ebay

http://www.inctel.com.cn/product/MiniPC.html

Yeah, the model you linked has a i3-5005U - a very large step down from a i7-8559U. Still, could be sufficient depending on what you need it for.

Bear in mind the i7 model in the article is $2,499!

In case it wasn't clear, user 21 was responding to user garblegarble with alternatives to the Intel NUC8i7BEH (~$484 in the US), not the Mac Mini.

But yes, the decked-out i7 Mac Mini is really expensive! As noted elsewhere in the comments (and in the article), a big chunk of that cost is in Apple's 1TB SSD pricing - ticking that option adds $800 over the 128GB SSD for some reason.

I have the 5i5 (Skylake) NUC running as a HTPC, and it's pretty nice. At the time I think I paid about $600 with the RAM and an SSD. I use it for the typical things, playing music and movies, but also for some lean-back computing on the couch when I don't want to sit at my desk to do email or whatever.

A quick glance at Amazon (US) says that a 7i5 NUC with 8GB of RAM and a 250GB SSD is $540.