VNOPN Micro Firewall Appliance Fanless Mini PC N3700 Quad Core, 4xIntel 2.5GbE i225/i226 Intel 4 Ports Dual HD, 8GB DDR3 128GB mSATA SSD Support AES NI Network Router Box No Wi-Fi (8G+128G)

The little box is a "power sipper." I've used it to replace my pfSense firewall built years ago with an old Dell desktop. It comes with fpSense 2.7.0 preinstalled. I doubt I needed to do it, because my exist firewall was running 2.5, and I was having no problems accomplishing my goals, but I chose to install the most recent version (2.7.2) downloaded from Netgate, just to have the latest version. After I recreated my configuration, i'm perfectly happy. No problems here. My box is configured with 8 GB RAM. Memory usage: 6%, CPU 4-5%, CPU temp: 26.9 C, Disk: 2.6 used of 114GB (ufs)

If you look at the seller (sharevdi), this PC - along with most they sell - are really meant to be used as enterprise thin clients, or computers that just run a single application to remote back into a bigger computer. That's why it uses low RAM, small SSDs, and a very, very low power processor released seven years ago for a *tablet*. What it was meant to do: * Exist behind a screen in a big company environment to run business applications from a big computer somewhere * Act as an industrial PC appliance you don't have to think about that does like one thing What it will not do: * Replace a real PC or even a newer Chromebook for multimedia use (YouTube et al) * Play basically any modern game What it will do: * Beat the pants off of a Raspberry Pi in support because it has an AMD processor * Run Linux or a stripped Windows 10 * Drive a 4K display at 30 Hz (HDMI 1.4) * Run a web browser for browsing, or Microsoft Office 365 The fact it can do any of the other things at all at its price point is really great. If you can get Linux / Xubuntu on it, even better - the video support for the Radeon is great and it is much faster feeling under Ubuntu than it is under Windows 10. The processor does not seem to throttle easily under load because the whole case is actually its heat sink, which is good because running Chrome on Windows will eat nearly all of its processor power doing normal tasks. If you just need something you can throw next to a router and run something, it'll do that too. Mine runs a few Linux services and replaced what I would use a Raspberry Pi for. If you want something to do YouTube and stuff on, this definitely is too underpowered - pick a faster, newer Intel chip, or a heavier (higher-power) AMD processor from this era. The build quality is solid, and for the price it's not bad, but the chipset definitely shows its age.

I purchased two of these units in July 2023 and I have had them running 24X7 since then. The first thing I did was wipe the existing pfSense install and I tried several flavors of firewall/router software over time and landed on OPNSense. Before I continue, this device is very much intended for firewall/routers and it has worked well and has not failed. The unknown Chinese brand of SSD inside still has me worried regarding its longevity but it is still plugging along. My main worry is getting a spare power supply as that is usually, if not the hard drive, first thing to fail over time. The case does get warm and the temp sensors inside the Intel CPU tells OPNSense that they are running at about 140 degrees F or around 60 degrees C. The case does not get that hot but it is warm. In any event, I have one at each of two locations running VPN tunnels and as my ISP gateway/firewall/router and multiple LAN segments. So far it has just worked and that is what has impressed me and caused me to write a review. I don't do reviews unless a product sucks or it is exceptional. This one is up there.. so far.

Lets begin with I have an advanced network, multiple sites to site tunnels, OpenVPN client connections, letsenrypt certs and Suricata working overtime. I was nervous about putting this device is place and was prepared for a very long day. I got this at 10 am this morning and by 10:30 cutover was complete, and all tunnels and connections reestablished. I could not be happier. Excellent product

The problem with all of these things is that companies assume you always want a mini windows10 PC. I have no idea why. I run windows on my main desktop as a gaming PC, but I buy something like this to act as a server. I read so many mini-PC reviews that were scant on linux details. I can report that Centos7 installed on this thing without any issue at all. The Centos7 boot loader didn't detect my USB keyboard, but you can simply wait out the countdown, and the installer detected it fine. From there it was never an issue again. That has nothing to do with the functionality of this. I got the cheapest model because RaspberryPi3 just burns though SD cards when used as a PiHole. If you want a simple linux server(Centos/RHEL in this case). Don't hesitate.

Maybe I'm doing something wrong but this is my first time using a non-GUI, non-IP, Linux interface but there doesn't seem to have wired keyboard support, which means I have to order a wired keyboard and a mini monitor. I thought I'd be able to access the interface using a network cable, being this is a router but I guess not. i wish this was explained somewhere in the description so I can get this up and running today. My old router is no longer working and I have been trouble shooting those issues for about four or five days until two days ago when I decided it had to be a router issue and ordered this. Amazon's AI said that the wifi antennas and the wifi module were installed and wifi was enabled out of the box. These are not true. There is no antennas and no wifi module and the ram is not a standard SODIMM. It is shorted and the key cutout is in the wrong place. All of this should have been in the descrition. It did say the ram was upgradable to 8GB and the 128GB drive was up upgradable to 512GB but they didn't mention anything about these being special interfaces and where to purchase them or even what socket the upgrades need to be, Sorry, I won't be doing business with a company that doesn't have disclosure on their products so this gets returned.

I installed pfSense and it worked well. But the only problem was that pfSense wasn't continuing in booting when booting up without hitting enter. I checked the time and the time was wrong in the BIOS. I set the block to the correct time and then powered off the machine. I powered it back on and the time wouldn't stay. Just annoying that a brand new machine has a dead battery. Otherwise pfSense worked quite well without issues.

So far, after deploying this as our home's firewall, I'm generally happy with the purchase of the Vnopn K8-F12B Micro Firewall Appliance. This tiny device replaces a 12-year old custom-built PC that was being used as a pfSense based firewall. The previous computer was old enough that it will inevitably fail before too long, and as an at-home tech worker, I wanted to be proactive about it since my network is critical. Being careful about security, I chose not to use the pre-installed pfSense, even though it appeared to be current and up-to-date. I had no real reason to replace it other than general paranoia. Instead, I downloaded and installed the latest version from pfsense.org. The main hiccup I encountered with reinstalling pfSense on this device was that my initial pfSense USB memstick wouldn't boot since the mini PC is UEFI based. My thumbdrive creation skills were not up to the task. However, the pfSense-recommended Etcher tool easily created a bootable memstick. After that, setup was straight-forward, following the pfSense installation docs. So far, it seems to be able to handle the traffic across our home's gigabit fiber link. The CPU, memory and network load on the system all seem low. Being fan-less, it is completely silent. Without a cooling fan, I was worried it might get hot, but the temperature so far has remained well in the safe zone. It also consumes far less electricity than the old full-size PC. Since it runs 24x7, this adds up over time. A minor nitpick is that it is a little inconvenient that the USB ports are upside down, so that the memstick's LED wasn't visible. Since this will be rarely used, I didn't deduct any stars for this. The device is so small it was easy to just flip it over to double-check the LED. It's more of an oddity than a problem, presumably due to the constraints of fitting so many components into such a small device. The firewall device now sits quietly in a closet, doing its job protecting our network, a tiny powerhouse sitting next to the full-sized PC it replaces. That old PC is now equally silent, but only because it is finally turned off, it's job now done. [Edit: upon further use, I seem to think it is having trouble keeping up with our gigabit fiber link. I tend to get around 540Mbps with various speed tests, where the old PC could typically reach 940Mbs. Deducting one start for this, but I will keep testing and revise if I find a solution.] [Edit #2: After several adjustments, it seems wired devices on my LAN are typically able to achieve up to around 840Mbps download speed, and 940 Mbps upload. (The ISP's maximum for both is 940 Mbps). It seem my ISPs use of PPPOE causes a lot of overhead, especially for downloads. Measured with several tools.] [Edit #3: After 2.5 years, this device has worked fine once the above adjustments were made to pfSense and the overhead of PPPOE was accounted for. It was only taken offline to deploy a newer OPNsense firewall device for a new ISP, and will be reconfigured as a hot-swappable backup at some point.]