Don’t virtualize your router/firewall
Additionally pfsense doesn’t need flash storage
I see. So a small SSD is good enough. I thought of virtualization so I can also run pi-hole on the same box. Getting my hands on a pi4 for MSRP is impossible. What are my options for a 4 port NIC?
pfblockerng > pihole
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Oh. I forgot about pfblockerng
and it is even native to pfsense!
This one looks good. Dual-Port PCIe Gigabit Network Card 1000M PCI Express Ethernet Adapter with Intel 82576.
I’ve had great luck with the i340 card as I already had several sitting on the shelf. If you’re going to run pfsense directly on the hardware, then I don’t believe there would be an advantage to the i350, so probably pick up whichever you can find cheaper.
Please upload your pictures to the forum by clicking and dragging them or copy and pasting them. There’s no need to use a re-hoster.
Thank You for your help and responding to my question. I think H10 can be found cheap, and could maximize nvme slot. Other than that, I could just buy a fast nvme ssd and call it good, not try an edge application with hybrid optane drive & potential bifurcation issues.
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FWIW I have an intel M10 that is 16gb optane that was lying around. I cannot get the S01 to recognize it when I’m in the opnsense installer. I know the drive works cuz it came from an external enclosure. Looks like I need to order a new m.2. What is the cheapest small m.2 that will work in s01?
The cheapest thing would be to buy this M.2 NVMe adapter and use the 16GB Optane drive.
Hi Steve,
I just tested an Optane H10 module in my S01, the 16GB/256GB model, and both drives showed up in Ubuntu. I was able to format both and read and write data with no issues. I didn’t need to change any BIOS settings or make any changes in the OS, I just booted a live USB of Ubuntu Server 20.04 and both drives were there.
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I bought this to use as single-drive NAS and this has got to be the most frustrating piece of hardware I’ve ever encountered. The NVME and USBhub are throwing weird errors in FreeBSD, so I’m attempting a BIOS update. There are two BIOS downloads available on the HP site:
F.40 Rev.A 10.1 MB Sep 2, 2021
F.20 Rev.A 12.8 MB Feb 24, 2021
So I download the F.40 and attempt to install it and the Windows exe tells me that F.40 is an earlier version than what is currently on the machine and thus it can’t be installed. Checking in the BIOS it’s reporting F.20.
So, I attempted to put the bios on a USB stick, since that seems like an option, but booting into the usb stick and clicking on literally everything just tells me that there is no bios available on the usb stick.
W-T-F. I’ve never had this much problem with a bios, and I’ve definitely never had this much problem with FreeBSD managing hardware.
In terms of updating the BIOS – assuming you still have access to the Windows install that typically comes with these machines, you should be able to update it via HP Support Assistant. From within Windows, just go to:
Start → HP support assistant → updates → select bios and update → restart
Is there a reason you prefer FreeBSD over a Linux-based solution such as Unraid?
Thank you for the tip about the HP Support software through Windows.
Looking back through the thread, I’m wondering if I got the machine that was giving u/skiski456 problems back in December. He was having some kind of problem with his nvme drive too.
I prefer FreeBSD over the linuxs for great many reasons that are outside the scope of this thread. Namely for a NAS: it is very stable at run-time, with stable updates and it has native ZFS support.
I’m going to continue futzing with this (letting it update in Windows and trying a variety of hardware & OS), and will report back with my conclusions soon.
The BIOS only updated to F30 using the Windows HP Assistant, and I was unable to get it to F40 by any additional means. Oh well.
I loaded up FreeBSD 14-CURRENT and it seems to have resolved the issue.
So, I suppose that I started griping too soon. It was software issues.
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@Mthrboard, great news on Optane H10 - thank you! I may reconsider this option. Very much appreciate your help & sharing experience here 
Got one of this about a month ago and changed the Celeron to an i5-10400, but it never goes above 3.5GHz, it never hits the 4.3GHz Turbo Boost speed under any circunstance.
Do I have to change any settings to get the advertised Turbo Boost speed?
Thanks in advance for any help.
Is turbo boost enabled in the BIOS? Is the BIOS up to date?