It generally comes with dealer support. That’s… special, because you need someone who’s going to have to deal with setting up a rather complex device, for a non-technical (and probably rather demanding) customer, and who’s ready to get moped at if anything at all goes belly-up.
That, and this is highly subjective, but Nucleus also doesn’t look like it was hit by a truck (compared to an HDPlex case) or hit by a truck and then trampled by a horde of zombies (Akasa).
I’m all for building yourself, and I think it’s the way to go in this case, but please, find another passive NUC (not a quasi-NUC, an actual NUC7/8 board with a place to put a SATA drive) that’s passively cooled, doesn’t look like it was designed by a 12 year old with eye-hand coordination problems, and price it.
I’ve looked around quite a bit, and from what I’ve seen, there’s the ShapedMedia, but I don’t know if they sell it or what boards you can put in there, there’s a LogicSupply/OnLogic with no public pricing, there’s a Swiss option that’s cheaper than a Nucleus ($800 for the i3, the gap widens with the i7 at $1300, so we’re still talking $400 for a decent-looking passive case, a little bit of thermal paste and screwdriver knowledge here) before shipping, taxes, and installing ROCK, and maybe there’s something from TranquilPC in the UK, but it sure ain’t on their site.
