(My original reply below this one)
Originally Posted by
oneant
That price point is good, but noise is an issue as I need to be able to tuck it into (preferable) or behind the media tower.
Unless someone else pays your electric bill, the difference between one of those (~700-1000 watts full blast, probably close to 100W idle and easily 200W at light load) and the NUCs (65W for the i3/i5, 120W for the i7 skull canyon at full blast, but a lot of that with is extra watts in case you need them for external USB or Firewire devices -- RAM + SSD + CPU can't really exceed ~70W on that one, or ~45W on the dual cores, even at full blast, and idle loads are going to be ~10W maybe less depending on the efficiency of the RAM and SSD -- idle for the CPU is just a watt or two.)
I think I will go with the NUC6i7KYK. Wife works for Intel and it appears their discount prices it at $476.
It's a great choice if your budget allows for it; the only merit of the i3 I suggested instead is being cheaper, and maybe a little less electric used.
Ditto the much larger SSD -- there's no such thing as too much disk space.
Originally Posted by
oneant
Looking for a box on the cheap--like pre-owned Dell or something--with small form factor to hide inside the media tower.
Minimum 16GB mem, but would prefer ability for 32GB. HDD can be 128GB (so SSD is ok). OS is irrelevant since I will wipe it clean and start over.
I wouldn't cheap out on the small form factor stuff; they tend to run hot and you don't know how they've been abused or not.
The NUCs are almost exactly what you want. Low power, fast, the newer ones Broadwell or Skylake will go to 32gb. I'd suggest getting at least a 240GB SSD, the cost difference between 120-128gb and the 240-256gb models is tiny with some decent ones of the latter down as low as $69.
For server use, you might also consider putting two smaller SSDs in to RAID them in case one fails.
If your old model is old enough that it doesn't even support 64-bit OSes, you could probably get away with the cheapest non-Core-i models but they won't make the RAM limit. The older Haswell (i3/i5/i7-4xxx series) ones top out at 16GB.
The current generation i3 one is the most affordable new one that meets your needs:
http://ark.intel.com/products/89189/...-Kit-NUC6i3SYH
http://amzn.to/2avxz6D
32GB of memory for the above:
http://amzn.to/2aRmjEd
(The broadwell ones would be DDR3L)
Here's my preferred low-priced SSD; it's an odd size (275gb):
http://amzn.to/2aZZH7g for 2.5"
and
http://amzn.to/2aXFrC4 for M.2 (it has one slot for each.)
If you wanted to use it as a storage server, you could also put in the 275gb M.2 drive as a boot/apps drive and then a 2TB 2.5" spinning drive (the largest that will fit, I think; there are 3TB and 4TB ones now but as far as I know they are all the thicker 15MM height.
Assuming you're only going with one SSD, you're under $500 before tax, probably just over with it. Not going to do any better new, and I've never seen a really good source for used USFF machines. Even if you did, used and refurb are likely to be Haswell with the 16GB limit.