So after going through almost all posts in here I decided to go with the following: Barebone CWWK N5105 i226 v5.
My thought process for this piece were:
jak4
My thought process for this piece were:
- Avoid Topton and its sisterstores (e.g. KingNovy) at all cost. Go with CWWK.
- Get the latest iteration of Hardware (v5) incl. Intel 226.
- The N5105 should be plenty powerful to run opnsense (even virtualized via proxmox). Hey, btw why is nobody using xcp-ng for virtualization on these devices?
- For 90 % of us here (including me) we will not hit any limits regarding up/downstream "encoding" (e.g. vpn) and zenarmor enabled. Who is going to saturate his 1 GB up/downstream all the time? I wonder, if this is the case, if some non-homelab solution would be more fitting and probably more cost-effective in the long run?
- Order NVME and RAM seperatly because you will have to open up the device anyway to, at the very least, replace the thermal compound. Check the copper-shim and if need grind it carefully
- If you expect moderate to high load a small fan (40 mm) will be required to keep the unit cool.
- Buy a heat sink for the NVME
- Opnsense and pfSense might have some issues with the newest hardware iteration. Opnsense seems to quicker to provide updates.
- Fiddling with varios Bios-Settings will most likely be necessary. Even to the degree that a new BIOS needs to be installed.
- Run a stresstest for about 48 hours with memtest86+ and prime95
jak4