R2 Mini PC Intel Alder Lake-N N95/i3-N300,Support 4K UHD/HDMI 2.0,4 x 2.5G LANs,Dual-Band WiFi 6/6E for Firewall/Router (N95+8GB+512GB)

Currently have the i3-N300 box as a pfSense router on bare metal and everything has worked perfectly so far. Having multiple 2.5GB ports opens up this box to nestle into any 2.5GB network. With my ISP pumping out 2.5GB speeds, I was able to test this box to the fullest and I am getting every bit of performance from this system as advertised.I have yet to run pfSense on Proxmox or run another hypervisor but with the level of stability I am having, I am sure this will not be a problem what so ever.The system has been running with no issues for 1 month straight. I will comment on how the system does warm up a lot on the outside but this is expected with a solid aluminum chassis where the components are heatsinked to the chassis itself. The fan has been super quiet and my temps have been running around 40-48C.I will comment again about having multiple 2.5 gig ports, this opens up the possibility to have multiple WAN interfaces in pfSense. I have used this to create a fail over that works as it should. All in all, this system is a good package and I highly recommend it.

I bought this mini PC to use as a pfSense firewall, to replace an old device which was over ten years old. While I am an IT professional, I had never used pfSense before...and I am in the early stages of learning the nuances of it. However, there is one problem I experienced right out of the gate...and I think it might be a common one.I installed pfSense (community edition) version 2.7.2 on this, and one of the first tasks was configuring the Ethernet interfaces to be used for WAN and LAN. This box has four interfaces...which are igc0, igc1, igc2, and ue0. I'm assuming the "igc" interfaces are the three Intel NICs, and the "ue" interface is the Realtek NIC connected [internally] via USB3. It's not obvious which interface is which physically, so I've attached a picture with them labelled. The interface on the bottom is igc0, and the interfaces on the top (from left-to-right) are igc1, igc2, and ue0.When I first configured pfSense, I used igc0 as the LAN interface, and ue0 as the WAN interface. What I didn't know, however, is that pfSense/FreeBSD is known to have issues with Realtek NICs...and I certainly experienced that. The first issue, is that spoofing a MAC address (within pfSense) for that interface made it inoperable. I should have seen that as a red flag, but I pressed forward without the spoofing. When I was finished configuring and put the firewall in place, it worked...but the network throughput of that ue0 interface was much slower than it should have been (15% to 20% of normal).I ended up ditching the ue0 interface, and used igc1 for the WAN instead...and it's all good (MAC address spoofing works properly as well, although I decided against using it).Perhaps this "review" might help someone else avoid the problem I had. At the very least, perhaps the picture with the "interface order" will be helpful for someone.

This little box is great!I have it running Proxmox with a pfSense virtual machine and Ubunbu (desktop with GUI) virtual machine. Figuring out the ethernet ports did take a little tinkering. I have had it running "in production" for about a month and have not had any issues with the hardware or performance. It has plenty of power to run a firewall and a few light virtual machines. It does get a little warm but not uncomfortably so. The cooling is nearly silent, you could have it on the desk next to you and barely hear it (if at all).

Small compact and powerful.