An upgradable Router/NAS/PC all in one? Yes.

[sfx2000]

The Lenovo M910Q that has been collecting dust in my office has a 512GB NVMe, an i350T4 card and 32GB of RAM together with an Intel i3 8300T CPU.

If you can swap out the CPU - the i5-8500T is a great choice for an upgrade, and on eBay, they're around 55-60 USD at the moment.

It's a 6c/6t CPU - and it supports SpeedStep 2.0, the i3 doesn't...

 

[coxhaus]

If you are looking for something with power then you can look at the Intel i7-8700T CPU, not cheap but can perform with only 35 watts of power draw.

 

[ddaenen1]

i am reviving my NUC project for pfSense to have an instant backup containing 2.7CE just in case. The Lenovo M910Q that has been collecting dust in my office has a 512GB NVMe, an i350T4 card and 32GB of RAM together with an Intel i3 8300T CPU. Over the weekend i'll drop CE on it (currently has plus) and attempt to import my plus configuration to have a one on one plug and play replacement. If that all works out, i will give it a go which just means plug the WAN and LAN from the main router to the backup and see what happens.

Well, did that today and worked flawless. Installed 2.7CE, imported the config from my main pfSense plus box and all i really had to do is re-assign LAN and WAN interfaces as they are different on the X550 and the i350 cards and that was that. Now runs perfectly fine. I will probably keep the plus box running for now until i stumble onto something. Not planning to upgrade the plus box to 23.09 now that i know that the config import from 23.05.1 works perfect.

As for power, the T8300 runs at 6% load with a 930Mbps download speed and has a TDP of 35W which is actually alot less than the E3-1220v2 i have in the main box.

 

[coxhaus]

Well, did that today and worked flawless. Installed 2.7CE, imported the config from my main pfSense plus box and all i really had to do is re-assign LAN and WAN interfaces as they are different on the X550 and the i350 cards and that was that. Now runs perfectly fine. I will probably keep the plus box running for now until i stumble onto something. Not planning to upgrade the plus box to 23.09 now that i know that the config import from 23.05.1 works perfect.

As for power, the T8300 runs at 6% load with a 930Mbps download speed and has a TDP of 35W which is actually alot less than the E3-1220v2 i have in the main box.

My guess is you are better off unless your NICs give you issues.

 

[coxhaus]

Well, did that today and worked flawless. Installed 2.7CE, imported the config from my main pfSense plus box and all i really had to do is re-assign LAN and WAN interfaces as they are different on the X550 and the i350 cards and that was that. Now runs perfectly fine. I will probably keep the plus box running for now until i stumble onto something. Not planning to upgrade the plus box to 23.09 now that i know that the config import from 23.05.1 works perfect.

As for power, the T8300 runs at 6% load with a 930Mbps download speed and has a TDP of 35W which is actually alot less than the E3-1220v2 i have in the main box.

I backed up my Pfsense 23.05.1 config and then I upgraded to 23.09. All seems to be working fine. I am going to run 23.09 until the next CE version comes out and then I will plan a switch. I have my old config which will work based on what ddaenen1 said so I should be in good shape but more than likely when I change to Pfsense CE I will just type in the config as it only takes minutes to make it run for me and my Cisco L3 switch.

 

[coxhaus]

I read some people are having DHCP issues running Pfsense 23.09. The nice thing for me is that I am using DHCP running off my Cisco L3 switch so it will not be as issue for me.

 

[sfx2000]

I read some people are having DHCP issues running Pfsense 23.09.

pfSense CE and Plus - they're in the middle of a switch from ISC over to KEA - if I recall, the default is still ISC...

 

[ddaenen1]

pfSense CE and Plus - they're in the middle of a switch from ISC over to KEA - if I recall, the default is still ISC...

Correct. I didn't notice any issues with my CE 2.7.1 install on the backup router. There is a clear notification that ISC is deprecated and you can switch over to KEA but in the release notes it is also clearly stated that KEA functionality has some limitations at this point in time.