Hacker News Reader

That's true. You'd probably still need at least ethernet and/or thunderbolt acceleration for that use case. And to be honest, not using the GPU/ML hardware would be a waste of expensive hardware in my opinion.

I'd go for a high end NUC over a Mac mini, but if energy efficiency is important for your use case then Mac Mini is definitely something to consider.

Asking for a friend…

If you wanted to use a Mac mini as a NAS, what would you use for the disks? Is there a decent Thunderbolt/USB disk chassis that would work well, use very little electricity, and make no noise? IE, be a perfect pair for a Mac mini?

https://eshop.macsales.com/shop/express-4m2

I currently use the 3.5" 4 bay, but it has a fan. It's not very noisy, but I appreciate the need for quiet. The one I linked doesn't seem to and will hold 4 NVMe SSDs.

No hardware raid unfortunately.

Maybe not now. But in 10-15 years when the machine is completly outdated and unsupported by Apple, and you can get them cheaply on ebay and co., it's nice to re-use those good machines for still needed jobs.