I'm a bit late to the party for this thread, but I bought a Celeron semi-DIY NUC (BOXNUC6CAYH) some time ago and I have to say that they're pretty capable machines if you go into it with the right mindset. The specific one I'm using is currently ~$125 but I bought mine when it was $149; the total cost ended up being somewhere around $300 for 2 sticks of 4gb DDR3 RAM and a 2.5" 7200rpm hard drive, up that total cost to somewhere around $410 because I bought an external HDD to supplement it a week or two in. I can't say anything else without repeating what others have already said (USB 3.0, SD Card reader, M.2 SSD support, etc), but I've been putting it through its paces as a media server and so far I haven't been disappointed but with caveats: - I'm not streaming anything above 1080p - I'm using Plex as an intermediary media service right now - The screens I've used it with have had max resolutions of 1920x1080, not trying to run 4k - I'm not putting it through its paces with things like MadVR I recommend it if you know that you have a proper use case for it and don't overestimate what a passively cooled CPU - specifically Celeron if you decide to get the BOXNUC6CAYH I did - can do. I actually messed around with running older games on it (Stronghold, Star Wars Galactic Battlegrounds, Quake 1, UT99) and was convinced enough by the performance that a friend and I have been considering making a group investment in a few NUCs (most likely i3s instead of the Celeron boxes) and gear if we want to have a decently-sized LAN night with our other friends without much hassle.