QotomQ555G6-S05 Mini PC AES-NI with 6 Gigabit NIC Core i5 7200U Processor Fanless Computer (16G DDR4 RAM + 128G MSATA SSD)

This little device is fairly lightweight yet powerful. If you're not too shy to open it up, I'd recommend buying the barebones version and purchase memory and mSATA separately as this is much cheaper. Suggestions are: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07GZFGD2B/ (256GB mSATA), and https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01ACODGMC/ (16G of RAM).In my home, it runs Juniper vMX on top of KVM. The first interface is connected to my cable modem, and the other five are bridged to the vMX instance. Since vMX does not support NAT I run a separate Linux namespace to perform the network address translation.Since the device runs vMX, the load tends to be on the high side (current load average: 2.12, 2.20, 2.23), with qemu obviously running a big high: PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND1654 libvirt+ 20 0 9378932 45412 21608 S 221.0 0.3 971:09.89 qemu-system-x86This in turn causes the device to warm up significantly. While I'm quite sure that the passive cooling will be enough in a well-ventilated space, I have it in a closed cabinet with a separate switch and my cable modem, so I have a small fan blowing air over it. If I don't it tends to get a little warm.The CPU runs around 60-65 degrees Celsius:root@rtr:~# sensorsit8786-isa-0a40Adapter: ISA adapterin0: 1.19 V (min = +0.00 V, max = +3.06 V)in1: 1.34 V (min = +0.00 V, max = +3.06 V)in2: 2.22 V (min = +0.00 V, max = +3.06 V)in3: 2.21 V (min = +0.00 V, max = +3.06 V)in4: 2.23 V (min = +0.00 V, max = +3.06 V)in5: 2.23 V (min = +0.00 V, max = +3.06 V)in6: 2.08 V (min = +0.00 V, max = +3.06 V)3VSB: 3.65 V (min = +0.00 V, max = +6.12 V)Vbat: 3.55 Vfan1: 0 RPM (min = 11 RPM) ALARMtemp1: +41.0°C (low = -4.0°C, high = +127.0°C) sensor = thermal diodetemp2: +40.0°C (low = +109.0°C, high = +127.0°C) sensor = thermal diodetemp3: -70.0°C (low = -95.0°C, high = +127.0°C) sensor = thermal diodeintrusion0: OKacpitz-acpi-0Adapter: ACPI interfacetemp1: +27.8°C (crit = +119.0°C)temp2: +29.8°C (crit = +119.0°C)pch_skylake-virtual-0Adapter: Virtual devicetemp1: +34.5°Ccoretemp-isa-0000Adapter: ISA adapterPackage id 0: +63.0°C (high = +100.0°C, crit = +100.0°C)Core 0: +62.0°C (high = +100.0°C, crit = +100.0°C)Core 1: +63.0°C (high = +100.0°C, crit = +100.0°C)Again, this is not surprising since I'm putting a pretty heavy load on it.In terms of forwarding performance: ab-so-lutely awesome. It easily hits 500Mbit/s. The NICs can handle jumbo frames (my current internal MTU is 9100), and are vlan capable. Other interesting datapoints:root@rtr:~# lspci00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Xeon E3-1200 v6/7th Gen Core Processor Host Bridge/DRAM Registers (rev 02)00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation HD Graphics 620 (rev 02)00:08.0 System peripheral: Intel Corporation Xeon E3-1200 v5/v6 / E3-1500 v5 / 6th/7th/8th Gen Core Processor Gaussian Mixture Model00:14.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP USB 3.0 xHCI Controller (rev 21)00:14.2 Signal processing controller: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP Thermal subsystem (rev 21)00:15.0 Signal processing controller: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP Serial IO I2C Controller #0 (rev 21)00:15.1 Signal processing controller: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP Serial IO I2C Controller #1 (rev 21)00:16.0 Communication controller: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP CSME HECI #1 (rev 21)00:17.0 SATA controller: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP SATA Controller [AHCI mode] (rev 21)00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP PCI Express Root Port #1 (rev f1)00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP PCI Express Root Port #2 (rev f1)00:1c.2 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP PCI Express Root Port #3 (rev f1)00:1c.3 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP PCI Express Root Port #4 (rev f1)00:1c.4 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP PCI Express Root Port #5 (rev f1)00:1c.5 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP PCI Express Root Port #6 (rev f1)00:1e.0 Signal processing controller: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP Serial IO UART Controller #0 (rev 21)00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP LPC Controller (rev 21)00:1f.2 Memory controller: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP PMC (rev 21)00:1f.3 Audio device: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP HD Audio (rev 21)00:1f.4 SMBus: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP SMBus (rev 21)01:00.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation I211 Gigabit Network Connection (rev 03)02:00.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation I211 Gigabit Network Connection (rev 03)03:00.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation I211 Gigabit Network Connection (rev 03)04:00.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation I211 Gigabit Network Connection (rev 03)05:00.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation I211 Gigabit Network Connection (rev 03)06:00.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation I211 Gigabit Network Connection (rev 03)[ 0.157447] smpboot: CPU0: Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-7200U CPU @ 2.50GHz (family: 0x6, model: 0x8e, stepping: 0x9)In other words: you won't be disappointed.

I bought this as a gift for my sister. She had been using a very old power hungry noisy PC to run PFSENSE, a software router with many enterprise level security abilities. So we installed PFSense, loaded the extra security packages (IDS with Emerging Threat rules and firewall settings) and imported her settings. No it doesn't do WIFI in PFSense but she uses a separate WAP anyway. The silence is indeed golden, and the power draw went from probably well north of 100wats to around 25~30. And it fits on the shelf. I need to get one of these for myself...UPDATE: My sister got her first electric bill since running this instead of her old computer 24/7 for her firewall. Her bill went down $50. Wow. She is thrilled. It has been on over a month no issues, running cool and quiet.UPDATE- Still working- so I finally bought one myself and set it up earlier this week. It replaces a mini itx intel computer. Love the silence and there's much less heat coming from it, important as this is in a bedroom and we are having a really hot summer. Very responsive as a PFSENSE router. Have IDS and PFBlocker running, along with OPENVPN and an IPSEC tunnel. Only complaint, I bought the bare bones this time and used my memory and old MSATAs (have two). Both the MSATAs are good Samsungs, pass smart and have had very little use, but I get errors galore and it freezes regularly with the hard drive light lit solid. I tried both, same issue. I put an SSD in there and it works great. Can't tell if this is a compatibility issue with that model MSATA (they are identical) or what, but the SSD works so I'm good.Update 2. Replaced the SSD with a new MSATA 64gig and it works fine so maybe there was a compatibility issue with my Samsungs. No issues with it, it's quiet, it's fast, and I am now using two of the ports in a LACP LAGG with two VLANS on it. Happy with it.

Works very well as a Pfsense firewall for a gigabit connection. With 8GB ram and a 32GB SSD has plenty of horsepower for running all kinds of antivirus, proxy, IDS, and DNS blockers. The only real complain is a lack of option in BIOS to for automatic start on power-on (for turning itself on after a power outage). For something built as a networking appliance, that's a major oversight, especially given a myriad of other BIOS options.

This thing WAS a beast. The way I had it configured with pfSense, it was super fast. Good LAGG LACP throughput. The network really works well with all the ports.mSATA lasted EXACTLY a week from final install (yes, I ordered it at the end of April and just installed it last week - 6/19)Whate prompted me for 2 stars is the fact that I CANNOT get the damn thing to detect the regular SATA devices, as I don't have spare mSATA drives laying around.I've tried 4x 2.5 SATA SSD's and not a single one works with this computer. The BIOS will not recognize them. I looked all in the BIOS and didn't see any settings to enable them, or disable the mini ports.Just really frustrated with this.