@kuhndj67
"Right... just what I want to do - spend big money on a custom machine (that won't be easily supported except by the design owner)"
I'm not sure what is your worry with this but this is exactly the case for EVERY other assembled PC vendor be it huge like Dell, HP or small like Alienware, DigitalStorm, PCSpecialist etc.
«from a company that's so poorly financed they need a kickstarter to even put the design together. Wish I had that kind of money to roll the dice with."
Again, I don't understand where you get your conclusions from. Even huge companies use Kickstarter or other crowdfunding campaigns and it doesn't mean they are poorly financed. The purpose of these campaigns is rather:
1. to better assess if there is a market for a product
2. they don't wish to take the whole risk for launching a new product
For your information, my interest in silent computing started 15+ years ago and this machine has, by far, the best ratio performance/size I know: it's much more powerful than Streacom ones and has not the mammoth size (of the more capable otherwise) Calyos ones.
Now about the value (rather than money) of this machine: this would make a more capable and flexible multimedia (streaming) machine for your living room (because is small and completely silent) a lot cheaper than some of the best off the shelf ones (albeit with some personal time investment). Forgot mentioning the gaming capabilities of the machine? That adds even more value to it!