I had a chromebox with a 2955u processor, this is significantly faster.It is noisier than the chromebox, which is basically ambient cooled (even though both processors claim 15w TDP)Since I keep the computer under a bed, it doesn't make a big difference to me, however if you leave this computer near your desk, you will be able to hear it. It's about 3x louder than an external hard drive when idle.I installed xubuntu 17.04 with no issues (be sure to install compton, to replace the xfce compositor. the xfce compositor causes screen tearing).