Protectli Vault FW4B - 4 Port, Firewall Micro Appliance/Mini PC - Intel Quad Core, AES-NI, 8GB RAM, 120GB mSATA SSD

Its a really good low in firewall if you want something simple I wanted to virtualize my firewall and run a ad blocker on it but it doesnt support virtualization. Which is fine it did the job it needed to very very well just not in the way that I would like to have had it handled.

So far the system has been running without any issues except that the cooling sink get hot fairly quick to the touch. The normal temperature in the house does not seem enough to cool it an ambient temp without a forcing air through the fins.. I had to add a cooling fan on top of the sink to keep it cool to the touch. Another point to make to take in consideration is the price. I would get it for under $300 if I would go directly to Protectli instead.

I didn’t have any problems running this box with opnsense. Everything worked out fine configuring as a firewall.

This thing is super high quality. Great heat sink on top. Would highly recommend

I purchased the device to install PFsense on it for my home network. My expectations were low on the installation and setup however I was way off. I simply stuck the PFsense USB in and powered on the little guy and it took right off and PFsense was installed in less than 5 minutes, no issues. The GUI was super slow and unresponsive right after the install but after an hour or so it caught up and hasnt been slow since. I really like this device for what I have going on and I would recommend it. The one concern about it would be how hot it runs. its running in the 120 degrees (F) range but other than that, Im really impressed! Im even thinking about getting another one to create a solid VPN tunnel.

The box could have done with a convective heat transfer element since it feels a little hot for cloistered storage. The OPNsense initial configuration has some default assumptions but there is always the folks in Tech Support if you are not the type to read the manual online.

Apparently, the device is finicky about the display output. If the intended use is as a Desktop PC or if you dont have a few HDMI monitor types to try consider something else.

This Protectli Vault FW4B replaced my ISP’s Router/Modem/WiFi Combo:

Been running PF sense a year+ with no issues. The device looks very professional and has adequate specs for a good PF Sense firewall.

Bought to run Pfsense and discoveries that its only possible to push about 100mbit as an OpenVpn client using 256 encryption. Its perfectly fine as a router as long as youre not interested in using the router as a VPN client as well. I wish the marketing and the Amazon descr6 was more forthcoming about the expected throughput of this device and I would have just purchased a more powerful unit.