00:00So your internet plan finally went above a gigabit, and suddenly that little plastic router your ISP
00:05handed you is choking on it. Yeah, I've been there. I spent the last couple of weeks digging
00:11through the mini PC firewall world, the boxes people actually run PFSense, OpenSense, and OpenWrt
00:17on, and I pulled together the 5 best deals I could find on 2.5 gig LAN machines. Some of
00:23these are
00:23shockingly cheap for what you get. Let's get into it. First up is the Kodem Barebone Fanless Mini PC,
00:31and this is the one for people who've outgrown 4 ports. It's got 8 Intel i226v 2.5 gig in
00:37SES 8,
00:38plus your choice of a Core i7-10510U or i5-8260U, and it even throws in an RS-232 console
00:45port,
00:45which tells you exactly who this thing was built for. Completely fanless, so it's silent in a closet
00:51or a rack. It's $159.30 as a barebone, meaning you bring your own RAM and drive, and honestly for
00:59an 8-port managed firewall setup, that's absurd value. Nearly 5,000 sold with a perfect 5-star
01:05rating says people aren't just buying it, they're happy after the fact. Next, if you want the cheapest
01:11way in, look at this solid fanless firewall box with the Intel N150 or N95. It's $120, that's the
01:19machine, and you still get four 2.5 gig LAN ports, DDR4, an NVMe slot, and even a Type-C
01:25port on the
01:25front. It's explicitly built for OpenSense and PFSense, and the newer N150 chip sips power while
01:32easily handling a gigabit or two of routing with IDS running. If you're just replacing a home router,
01:38or building a little always-on home server, this is the sweet spot. Honestly, at $120, it's hard to argue
01:45with. Now if you want actual horsepower, the topped-in solid firewall machine with the Intel
01:52i713620H is the one that made me raise an eyebrow. That's a proper 13th-gen mobile chip with a ton
01:57of
01:57cores, sitting behind four 2.5 gig i226v ports, and there are cheaper i3-1215U and 8505 configs if you
02:05don't need the top end. The reason this matters, it's marketed for Proxmox, and that's exactly what
02:11it's for run your firewall in one VM, your Docker stack in another, maybe a media server too.
02:17Starting at $174.59, it's the best one-box-does-everything option here.
02:23Then there's the Topton N150 and N100 fanless industrial build, and this one's a bit different.
02:30It's $264.76, so it's the priciest on the list, but look at what you're paying for,
02:36two calm serial ports, a proper heavy-duty cooling chassis, and an industrial-grade design
02:41meant to run 24-7 in rough environments without a single moving part. For 2.5 gig i226v ports,
02:48DDR4, and VME, all the usual. If you're deploying this in a workshop, a small business,
02:54a control cabinet, somewhere dusty and hot where a fan would die in six months, this is the one you
02:59buy.
03:00I'm rounding it out, the Topton 4X 2.5 gig RJ45 firewall router at $131.21.
03:08What I like here is the flexibility, you can pick N150, N5105, J6412, or the N305,
03:15so you can dial the CPU exactly to your budget and workload. Fanless, for 2.5 gig ports,
03:22and it's specifically pitched for PFSense, Linux, OpenWrt, and even Lite in ASDuty.
03:28It's the safe middle choice, cheap enough that it doesn't hurt,
03:31capable enough that you won't outgrow it next year.
03:344,600 sold, 4.8 stars, people clearly like it.
03:39All five of these are linked down in the description,
03:41and I've put the current prices there too since these things go on sale pretty often.
03:46If this helped you pick, drop a like, and subscribe,
03:49I test a lot of this networking gear so you don't have to.
03:52Thanks for watching, and I'll catch you in the next one.
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