Thanks for the tips and your measurements!

I know of protectli, but I wouldn’t consider it a low-budget option. I mean it is reasonably cheap, but I was hoping I could get away with some much cheaper used hardware.

Wouldn’t there generally be a significant power draw difference between an SFF and a smaller (micro, mini, SBC…) machine?

Thanks, I haven’t considered ThinkCentres much yet. I should have mentioned that I am located in Central Europe, so I am a bit more limited on options where I can get hardware. I am a bit worried about shipping costs when ordering from abroad.

I found an offer for an M700 tiny with an i5-6500T, 8GB of DDR4 RAM, and an SSD included, for €120. Is that in a similar ballpark as the M720q you mentioned?

Honestly, I don’t think I am likely to find 8th gen i5 boxes in my area (haven’t seen any adverts so far).