Intel Celeron J4125 Quad-Core Mini PC Firewall Appliance - 4x 2.5G Intel i226-V NIC Ports, AES-NI Support for VPN & Soft Router (Barebone, No RAM/SSD) - Ideal for Home Network Security & Small Business Firewall Solutions

I don't like that it had no M.2/ NVME support.The little slots say "mSata3" are indeed mSata only. mSATA is Not a type of SSD I have lying around.Initially I installed PFSense using a Sata SSD with the included adapter, but this made my thermals approach almost 50*C whereas once I reinstalled (and restored the configuration backup from my first PFSense setup) the temps dropped to low/mid 40*C... So you definitely want the mSata. I also got better performance navigating the different configuration screens with the mSata vs the SATA SSD via the adapter. So buy a cheap mSATA for this. I paid like $18 for a 64GB which is way more than you need for any firewall kernel and logs, etc...The NICs (i226v) are only supported on the most brand new version of PFSense and I had to manually set the WAN interface to 1000Mbps (no auto) or my internet seemed to be temperamental.Booted with 2400 and SAMSUNG 2666 RAM without issues. 3200 RAM was temperamental.Overall, if using for PFSense, it was a LITTLE bit more involved than just slapping in any RAM/SSD/M.2 lying around, then installing the balena etcher configured USB installer and going through the Wizard. Other similar products (Nuc size mini pcs with multiple 1Gbps Nics) were more "plug and play" than this one. This took me a minute, but seems to be working awesomely. With PFBlocker, snort, OpenVPN and a host of other packages running, I get full gigabit internet speeds, which my old netgear A/C router behind my modem could not give me (it bottlenecked)... Now I have more secure networking, having an actual firewall, VlANs, IPS/IDS, content filtering, VPN, etc... and I get the full speed of my gigabit ISP speed.PFSense with snort, PFBlockerNG, OpenVPN, and some other stuff running on it averages about 3% CPU and uses no more than 2-4GB RAM. 8GB would be perfect with this. I installed 16Gb because that is what I had lying around and I have 4% memory usage with several devices connecting and VPN. Preliminary iperf seems to indicate you get the 2.5Gb interface speeds if you actually have multi-gigabit internet.Just overall, it is a Good way to build an overpowered little $200 home firewall/ VPN server. It is much better than using the "cheap" $200 mini-pc (not intended to be a dedicated firewall appliance like this one) which I had tried before this. This thing power cycles faster and makes little "beeps" when users access the admin GUI or console (which is cool) and just behaves like you would expect from an SMB firewall.