[Guide] JDM's Mini-ITX pfSense builds

Thanks. Now to find one.

I canā€™t seem to find any QGSA-4120-A1 units (or the 5120) for a reasonable price right now. There do seem to be plenty of low cost QGSA-3120-A1 however. It would appear that theyā€™re an earlier generation of hardware, but I can not find any information on the actual hardware inside of it. Does anyone happen to know what the hardware is inside or if it would be compatible with an opensense build?

Iā€™d avoid the older model, itā€™s definitely socket LGA1156 or older.

I know a fair number of users here used the recommended Titan low profile CPU cooler, so just as a data point, the fan on the Titan died on me after 2 years of use. Granted, thatā€™s 2 years of always-on use.

If youā€™ve got one of these in production, it might be worth checking to see if the fan is still working!

Solid premade option?

Or has pricing on the components/better hardware available?

There are significantly better options in the same price range.

Example : HP s01

I think thatā€™s a pretty good price.

Iā€™d rather have something with AES-NI personally

Still continuing my deep dive into a cheap route (Iā€™m pretty frugal).
Local market place has Dell SFF with a 3470 for $50.

I was hoping I could get a much smaller profile, but I donā€™t think I can do that without a significant price increase.

Iā€™m looking for something that I can eventually add into my rack for a router. I like the looks (and performance) of the Qualys QGSA-4120-A1 Guard Scanner Appliance mentioned above. Price wise, if I can find something <$500 Iā€™m interested. So, two questions;

  1. In this price range and format, is there something other than the Qualys I should be looking for?
  2. I have found the Qualys on ebay, but have never bought anything there. What questions should be asking and what should I look out for?

Good luck finding oneā€¦ they do not come up often.

You can get a HP 290 for around $100.

Cheapest on eBay right now is $150+shipping, which is similar pricing when checking the sold items.

My mistake. The recent sales were on the HP S01, which regularly come back in stock for ~$100.

Finally getting around to setting up the QualysGuard I got a few months back and was re-reading through the 1U and Mini-ITX threads. Have a Noctua Fan Controller and was curious how you set it up in the QualysGuard.

  • Did you just use the 3 Way Splitter and keep 1 Fan disconnected or keep the 4th fan running?
  • Where do you keep it set to keep the noise down but have sufficient cooling? ā€œNo Stopā€ mode?
  • Was there a free SATA connector on the Power Supply to use the NA-AC4 input cable?

I actually just followed this build (roughly) and got pfSense setup. However, Iā€™m so far finding that itā€™s a little slower than my previous solution which was running OpenWRT on a Raspberry Pi 4 Model B (using an USB3 ā†’ Ethernet adapter for the 2nd interface).

For this pfsense build, I have:

  • i5-3570K
  • Intel DQ77KB mini itx board
  • Kingston SUV500MS 480GB SSD
  • 8GB RAM

I have a Gigiabit connection, and with OpenWRT I was generally getting the full gigabit. Now on the pfsense builds, Iā€™m getting more like 650 - 700Mbps

Any advice?

I also got this case and was surprised how hot the case itself gets ā€“ pretty hot to the touch. That being said, the CPU itself seems fine

are any of your intrusion detection settings are different? do you have an vpn tunnel running or so other features that you didnā€™t use on OpenWRT

On other thought is something OS and driveer wise is taxing the system causing the heat potential throttleing issues.

First things that come to mind - specifically the IDS bit.

Hey guys. I noticed there hasnā€™t been a lot of activity in this forum lately. The Dell mini PC I repurposed just died when we moved and I need a new pfSense box. I was curious if anyone would make a 2024 recommendation to handle home use, Frontier Gigabit, only one or two VPN connections (mainly myself), and playing around with the plug-ins from time to time to just check them out. Iā€™m fine with used gear for this.

Thanks for your feedbackā€¦