AliExpress Mini PC Hardware [pfSense / OPNsense] for Routers/Firewalls

the mini PCS that are available on AliExpress advertised as um perfect for routers for open sense and PF sense do the work and are the worth by him this video is going to address just [Music] that so I did a video around 10 months ago um the units basically look like this and they are really small they're fanless and I wasn't sure um what the quality was like what the reliability was like so I figured I'd try one for myself which I did um that one is still running as it happened this is the m515 now when I did the previous video on the J 4125 um seller on a few people commented on that video on suggested that there was a better option available which is a n5105 processor and while it was um they started doing a couple of versions of them one had the i225 Intel chipset for the NIT card and the new ones had the I 226 now unfortunately the I 226 wasn't compatible with pfSense version 2.6 at the time and now 2.7 is out it's not really an issue um but because it wouldn't work with pfSense 2. six it didn't affect me I got the M5 105 which is this one this is the exact one um it died not in a bad way we'll go over that in a second so um I tried it this has been running for 10 months it died now the hard drive died on it um you could buy these with pfSense Plus on them which is one of the reasons that netgate changed the um license policies because people kept providing these on AliExpress with pfSense plus which was against a license agreement um anyway cut a long story short they worked fine on open sense because it had the latest drivers um but not on pfSense and now pfSense 2.7 is out these work fine uh in fact you could still use them as long as you downloaded the um nightly build of pfent but let's get back into it so this is the one that died uh in our furnace the actual Hardware didn't Di didn't died didn't die it's been solid the SSD that was in it that's what died and need to replace him now the SSD that didn't come supplied with it I bought the memory myself and I bought the SSD myself um and this just died on me at home you'll see I'm going to take this apart and show you what's um what's involved whether it's worth buying and now I can give my opinion on it because I've been running it for so long um just switch this over real quick this is another one this is exactly the same unit um but it's running prox Mo it has a 500 gig mvma hard drive in it and it also has a 32 gig of ram in it so I installed Pro MOX on it so I could play with open sense and get a couple of um instances of it running and PF sense so I could carry on doing the open sense and PF sense videos that's why videos have been a bit um random to say the least so it's run fine for 10 months I've got a couple of them I've had one at home I've had couple in other locations and I've not deployed any to customers but because it died I was like maybe they're not worth it but it was a hard drive that died in that I bought let's take a look at what's inside it so when you take these apart um if you're going to fit a hard drive on them then the hard drive basically let me just grab one the hard drive has to screw to the bottom so it mounts to the bottom of the so it the top of the case line up with the oils um when you put it in there's not much room because you have to get the cables as well I got one here no um so you have to get the cables in as well which can be a problem but that's basically the hard drive mounts on the bottom of it um front and the back come off to make it a bit easily access accessible um if I hold this up so you can see there's plenty of room in this if you're not actually putting a 2 and 1 half inch sat drive in it if you just got the mvme in it like this one has you've got plenty of room and you'll have no problems the one that I've got that I'm using for proc knock has got a mvme in it but it's also got a SATA hard drive in it for some storage um so I can test some things but this is the one that died so I've got it apart I'm quickly just going to uh change the memory over in the hard drive over in this so the one that died is 128 gig this one's a patriot go on set Focus so that's basically one that died I'm not saying patri a BB mate I've used them before I've never had a problem with them um the one that I'm going to be putting in it is an integral when you're buying hard drives for them um keep in mind that they're not M2 uh the PCI Express drives that you need not the dedicated so I'm just going to pop this one in real quick SC that back down the point of the video was um yes they are worth it um it's been great for testing purposes try and put the P back on these upside down so it's that way oh let them switch this Buck we've got the unit back together um could power back up it did power power up um just failed because of the SSD getting control error timeout quickly going to uh install PF Sense on this I'm not going to go through how sorry open Sense on this I'm not going to go through how to install open sense um I've already done a video on that I'll leave a link up here for that I'll also leave a link at the end of the video just plug it in real quick okay while that is doing that let me just uh I'll leave the link to where I purchased them from on AliExpress so I've purchased these from two separate stores uh one of them has been um woi store and the other one has been Topton so this is the order that I placed m515 you get various options so you can buy it with 16 G Ram 256 um uh mvme one terab and 16 gig now obviously as you do these the price as you can see is going up um so that's not too bad in the UK I say I generally get them without any um memory or hard drivve so I can do them you can pick the type that you want so you can choose the older i225 chipset but there's no need to do that anymore um the other store is obviously the top 10 store so they've had good reviews on them I can't see to say any issues I've had so far I have had problems getting bias updates for them um yet have not managed to figure out where I can get them from but for home myp purp is these things I say really good um when it had died I was like well these don't last too long but I say it was just the fact that it was the pay SSD that was in it that died um so yeah I'll leave links to both stores where you can get them but you have to keep in mind obviously anything over think it's 135 um from the UK you will get import tax on so if you keep the price low if you need to get it without it 100 39 that'll be fine you'll get away with um but yeah just keep the price in mind you will have extra charges if you go over the uh allowed threshold for pricing for importing um they're up to with this I'll just skip this part nobody really needs to watch this go ahead and complete the in so remove the media don't remove it too soon I it will throw a load of er up the bootup logo um you can get rid of it so where is it uh boot up uh full screen logo if you really don't want the Chinese stuff on the logo just go ahead and disable it um while we're in the Bios I have been through an another before um so you can see this is m515 this one's got 8 gig RAM on it you got your time options CPU stuff uh it does support virtualization as I say I'm actually running this same unit I've got proxmox running on it um so they will work with proxmox I'm just doing that for uh some videos that I've got going if we boot this into open sense um I'm just going to change the interfaces so we'll just log in as route in fact assign interfaces no no uh so this is what I was on about as you can say the epet control is I 226 which wasn't supported in pf 2.6 the i225 on were um so one interface I'm going to put IG c0 L interface IG C3 leave the optional yep so now I've got the installed and it's on 19216811 so let me go and try that so we get the wizard um as usual I say I'm not going to go through how to install open sense this just um I've done a video on that you can see it's perfectly um fine and it's connected at 2.5 gig switch this back so30 for um a box that's really more than powerful enough to run open sense or PF sense or even prox Marx um the CPU is a bit limited for how many virtual machines you can run but you really yeah you can't go wrong for home lab use it' be nice if I could get bias updates for them um if you was considering buying Hardware from AliExpress then yeah it's definitely worth it um but say for the sake s of 130 qu you can get yourself up and running no time to play with um seen a few people asking me on different types of Hardware where you should get it from so yeah I'm just going to leave the links down in the bottom of the video for that um if you've used any hardware from Al express yourself please um feel free leave your experiences in the comments below I'm always interested to see how other people have got on with it if you did find this video useful hit the like button subscribe to the channel hit that not notifications icon um about any videos that you're going to possibly want not want to miss we've got plenty coming up on open sense um PF sents I've covered installing proxmox um now I've got proxmox installed on one of these it gives me the opportunity to install a couple of virtual machines and do videos properly without keep creating them on um the other lab don't forget like subscribe um we'll see you in the next video [Music]

Channel: Sheridan Computers

Views: 6,523

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Id: AWDCdt2F9WA

Length: 15min 8sec (908 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 01 2023