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754 Review
78 Karma

Review on ZOTAC ZBOX-CI325NANO-U Series Nano Fan-Less Mini PC Intel N3160 Quad-Core CPU Silent Performance Barebone System SSD & RAM Not Included, No OS by Flocka Parsons

Revainrating 4 out of 5

Decent pfSense box for barebones desktops

Please don't try this for pfsense. It has been known to just "freeze/freeze" with no explanation. All optimizations in the BIOS and pfsense itself did not heal. I move to another box or virtualize the firewall. This thing seemed like a great replacement for the desktop it ran on (2 years without glitches), but it was nothing short of a nightmare. ------- ---------------------------------UPDATE A week later I'm following the advice of Jan followed comment below and changed memory in places. It's running now and looks good so far. What I want to say is that pfSense is still a risky bet just because of the Realtek drivers now included with FreeBSD. In particular, it has a problem with a timeout (watchdog timer) that terminates all functions on one or both NICs. The solution is to load a kernel module that comes into play when it notices the Realtek drivers (i.e. add a line to /boot/loader.conf that says if it's Realtek and use then the kernel module you loaded). I am using driver 1.88. and that's fine (although the performance is probably not full gigabit if you factor in human-conducted testing). new SG1000 from pfSense. It will just work. If not, it seems to be working admirably now.

Pros
  • Great selection
Cons
  • No insurance