My Synology NAS just wasn't strong enough to do transcoding for Plex but this NUC does a great job and the codecs that choked my Synology run smoothly with no hiccups.  No issues runing Ubuntu 16.04, all the drivers I needed loaded by default but I don't run a gui desktop so can't speak for the graphics/sound.  Running docker on it with a few other containers, it sits in my living room under the TV and I can't hear it at all.  Front lights up blue around the black panel, can prob turn it off in the BIOS but I like it, has a Tron feel and isn't any brighter than a digital clock I have next to it.  Only put in 8gb RAM at the time, but does fine so I don't think I'll need to upgrade. M2 SSD for the primary OS and 2TB disk for extra storage.  This is my third NUC, most expensive one but worth it for the i7 and been running two weeks straight and it's barely warm to the touch.