Unless you are exceedingly forgiving of ambient noise, you will not be happy with a stock NUC7i7 in the listening room.
What about the NUC in question here, the NUC7i7BNH? Well, I’d say it’s on par with the Skull Canyon. The 28W Core i7 CPU has been crammed in almost the same enclosure that works wonders with the 15W Core i3 and i5 models. As a result the small fan does spin up more often and you can hear it. I’m pretty allergic to fan noise and really would not like to put one on my desktop where it’s clearly audible.
I have a stock NUC7i5 placed intentionally in another room, and though I cannot hear it outside of that room, I am not pleased with the current state of its fan noise. The fan runs 24/7 – whether ROCK is idle, just playing music, or lifting heavy DSP. And the fan does not spin down to its lowest level, even though I have configured the BIOS to its Quiet fan setting. I am not certain that ROCK is observing the BIOS fan setting. A stock NUC7i7 would be all of the above amplified by several decibels.
AJ