Protectli Vault FW4B - 4 Port, Firewall Micro Appliance/Mini PC - Intel Quad Core, AES-NI, 8GB RAM, 120GB mSATA SSD

Bought this for running Untangle firewall at home. CPU sits at less than 1% all day. Only complaint is the unit does run very warm to the touch. Performance has been excellent to date and all features of Untangle seem to be supported with this hardware.

So far the system has been running without any issues except that the cooling sink get hot fairly quick to the touch. The normal temperature in the house does not seem enough to cool it an ambient temp without a forcing air through the fins.. I had to add a cooling fan on top of the sink to keep it cool to the touch. Another point to make to take in consideration is the price. I would get it for under $300 if I would go directly to Protectli instead.

Running OPNsense on this and it works great. I love that the ports are already labeled like a router. Install of OPNsense was easy and worked first try. It gets a bit warm but not horribly so, just dont set anything on top of it. Small price to pay to not have a fan.

Why did i not find this sooner.....

Purchased to use as home router running pfSense. Well packaged, everything needed in the box. Inserted pfSense USB installer into usb slot, booted. The vault automatically recognized the usb installer and booted from it. Had pfSense installed in 5 minutes of powering up.

Been running this little guy for over two years without issue. It runs warm but rarely consumes more than 15% cpu. pFSense has been updated three or more times and its been trouble-free. I host a public facing website and this device protects my network for all sorts of intrusions.

This is my third unit that has now failed. There is an issue with some function with the motherboard that fails prematurely. The latest has a QC mark indicating a manufacture date of late 2018. I have had dozens of computers and none have had this high a failure rate in such a short period of time. If you need fanless SFF then these work well when they run but be prepared for it to die within a few years.

I found this while looking for a replacement for an old first-generation FitPC device that I used to use as a network firewall. The FitPC still runs, but for the last few years, Ive needed something with gigabit ethernet ports, which it doesnt have.

It works, and it works great. Yes, a little pricey, but Ive had no issues with running pfSense on it. My old pfSense overheated and died on me (used hardware that lasted 5+ years), and I bought this to replace it.

*** Recommendation for international purchasers - if you want this unit, dont purchase the mSATA as its an unknown brand (PHISON) - rather purchase a trusted brand from a local vendor with warranty. We suspect the mSATA failed. The memory supplied has Samsung modules, these are known to be reliable. ***