I favor Intel NICs, but Realtek NICS can work just fine.

GEEK+ Mini PC – This is a newer inexpensive box that comes with the Intel Celeron J3455, 6GB of RAM, and 128GB SSD and is plenty powerful enough.

I bought it when the price dropped below most of the other options, so if you can wait for a sale… It easily achieves the gigabit speeds offered by my ISP, CenturyLink. UPDATE : I bought this for my pfSense router to replace my virtual router and I couldn’t be happier.

Mini ITX Q330G4 Intel Core I3 – this can be had at a good price.

UPDATE: QOTOM does have some models that have AES-NI. Honestly, this would be a great choice as well, but it doesn’t have AES-NI which could make it a risk for supporting future pfSense releases.

QOTOM Mini PC – This comes in many different configurations.It has a larger hard drive (120GB) and more RAM (8GB) for a few more dollars. Protectli Firewall Appliance with 4x Intel Gigabit ports – Similar to the recommended build.Found at Amazon for in the low $300s it has all the hardware you need for a fast and silent pfSense router. Protectli’s Firewall Appliance with 4 Intel will get the job done for most people. Inexpensive pfSense hardware that gets the job done Zotac Nanos make decent pfSense routers Let’s look at some appropriate hardware choices. A bootable USB drive or CD/DVD-ROM for installation.Generally, you want an Intel NIC for the best performance and reliability.įor reference, the minimum pfSense hardware requirements are: In general, you want one NIC for each interface (LAN, WAN, etc.).

You can get away with one using VLAN tagging, but that adds unnecessary complications. At least 2 network interface cards (NICs).PfSense doesn’t normally require much RAM, but if you are going to do a lot with it you may need more than the average user. Sufficient RAM for the packages you want to run.The faster your traffic, the more powerful the CPU you will need. The CPU must be powerful enough to route your Internet traffic.They were going to require it in the 2.5 release but backed off. This is an encryption instruction set that helps pfSense performance, especially with VPNs. Everyone will have different hardware needs but here are some common requirements for pretty much any build:

Protectli box