I will say that since 2009 when I was first introduced to PFsense, the few issues I've had have all been due to failing hardware... either a bad NIC or a failing MB in a PC. This may or may not be your case, but just sharing what I've experienced.
A factory reset obviously worked for you in this case, however, you're also running discontinued nettop/desktop hardware. You may want to consider moving to new hardware going forward.