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    Fanless pfsense firewall mini PC

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    • J
      jamesbond
      last edited by

      I was thinking of dumping my dratek router and replacing it with nano pc which is fanless and very low power usage.

      I've seen these boxes online and looks good on paper and wanted to know if anyone has one and if they would recommend it?

      looking at the spec its pretty decent for around £200 can get

      128 SSD with 8GB Ram, its got a J1900 quad core CPU and 4 x Intel Network GB Nic's

      https://www.aliexpress.com/wholesale?catId=0&initiative_id=SB_20161208134858&SearchText=Qotom-Q190G4+

      ![hardware pfsense.jpg](/public/imported_attachments/1/hardware pfsense.jpg)
      ![hardware pfsense.jpg_thumb](/public/imported_attachments/1/hardware pfsense.jpg_thumb)

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      • T
        TomT
        last edited by

        I've got one the same spec.

        Not do much with it yet apart from installing pfsense and testing the PPPOE connection.

        Install tests seems pretty good.  If you search on here for j1900 or qotom you should find some more posts.

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        • V
          VAMike
          last edited by

          If you keep looking you should be able to do better than j1900 for that price in late 2016. Unless you don't care at all about VPN, the lack of AES-NI will hurt.

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          • J
            jamesbond
            last edited by

            is there an issue with the J1900 and VPN's i will be having lots of VPN's connect via thsi box at the moment i'm running pfsense in a VMware ESXI  virtual server and been working great.

            From my understanding the J1900 CPU has more than enough CPU power to cope with high workloads

            https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Celeron+J1900+%40+1.99GHz

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            • JeGrJ
              JeGr LAYER 8 Moderator
              last edited by

              @jamesbond
              Maybe it has the CPU power to cope with the VPN workload, but why? You can get other CPUs/SOCs with AES-NI capability that are hurt far less bei VPNs as the J1900 will be. The new braswell N3160 is an example for that.

              Don't forget to upvote 👍 those who kindly offered their time and brainpower to help you!

              If you're interested, I'm available to discuss details of German-speaking paid support (for companies) if needed.

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              • M
                mauroman33
                last edited by

                @jamesbond:

                is there an issue with the J1900 and VPN's i will be having lots of VPN's connect via thsi box at the moment i'm running pfsense in a VMware ESXI  virtual server and been working great.

                From my understanding the J1900 CPU has more than enough CPU power to cope with high workloads

                https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Celeron+J1900+%40+1.99GHz

                It also depends on the speed of your WAN. If it's 100Mbps (like mine) or more, maybe it's better to choose something else.
                Try to take a look here:
                https://forum.pfsense.org/index.php?topic=115673.0
                Because of the VPN I've preferred to buy a Celeron N3150.
                Today I would like to buy a new Celeron J3455.

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                • J
                  jamesbond
                  last edited by

                  alright didn't realise the VPN throughput would be too great with a j1900 cpu, my network connection is around 100mb at the moment but i will probably increase. i normally use IPEC VPN not tried OpenVPN but i think i'll be aiming for more powerful CPU.

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