I bought a NUC as a portable development machine, so went with an i7. Yes they do have fans, and can be a bit noisy when under load. Yes, they're a bit more expensive than an equivalent specced tower, but you can easily throw them in a suitcase to take with you. I use a crossover ethernet cable and a laptop to use it when monitor/keyboard are not available. After about 4 months of using the NUC, I decomissioned my old desktop and haven't looked back. The only real negative is a bug in the firmware. Sometimes the NUC fails to boot. The solution is to dismantle it and remove the battery to reset the BIOS. So I carry a set of small screwdrivers with me (in the hold luggage!). In fact, my first NUC went through a period of not booting at all for several days just before a trip, so I bought a second one. When I returned from my trip, the first NUC booted, so I ended up turning it into a Hackintosh. Sadly, it looks like it has done the same thing again - it remains to be seen whether it recovers. Still, NUC2 is going strong.