Throw out your old firewall! - ZOTAC ZBOX CI327 Nano - The perfect home firewall router

We’ve been on the search for the perfect piece of hardware to act as a dedicated pfSense firewall for Jon’s home network build. After searching eBay, we found the ZOTAC ZBOX CI327. Let's dig in deep on this little mini-pc to find out if it's got what it takes to make the perfect #homelab firewall!

In this video, we run through the hardware of the CI327 and test to see if it's capable of running both of its NICs at full speed using Iperf. Is this the perfect little firewall? Let's find out!

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**TIMESTAMPS!**
0:00 Introduction
0:23 Overview of the ZOTAC ZBOX CI327 Nano
1:56 Cost comparison to the Netgate 1100
2:22 Installing pfSense on the ZOTAC ZBOX CI327 Nano
3:55 Iperf network performance testing of the ZOTAC ZBOX CI327 Nano
4:33 Final thoughts and caveats of running pfSense on the ZOTAC ZBOX CO327 Nano
5:03 Closing! Thanks for watching!

[movaxh]

For 1Gbps router I can highly recommend Zotac CI Nano series. I was using Zotac CI323 Nano (Intel N3150 quad-core 1.6GHz, up to 2.08GHz) for 7 years, with no issues. Silent, fast, cool and easy to run. I was using just Debian Linux, but you can run many other things if you wish like Vyos, pfsense, etc.

Also often these Zotac machines can support more memory than what officially Zotac or Intal say they support. For mine, it said 8GB max, but it works fine with 32GB memory.

But now I upgraded to 25Gbps, so that is whole new can of worms and hard to put in a small box.

[gregoryrogers]

Awesome review! I appreciate the great firewall option you presented and showing us the product stress test. Keep up the awesome content!

[JasonsLabVideos]

I'm going to try doing an Iperf Test through Untangle Firewall ! Got me wondering ! Thanks for this !

[BrianThomas]

I just picked up 12 of these for $200 on Ebay. They all run with no issues.

[vsmadhu]

Can you please explore options to increase the wattage to CPU in bios & any other performance tweaks you can make to this box.

[spitfire]

Wow, never though that a mini PC would work as a router!

[dannybowanny]

Why does this CI 327 have 2 Ram slots since the n100 CPU is only single channel?

[tommyb.]

That thing comes with a 40 watts power brick. I'm looking for something even slower and lower powered. about 2-3 watts. I don't expect it to run fast...

[chadisleiman]

Man....I got a Zbox ci329 in a bundle with a GPU and I have been scratching my head for a while as to what a cool project would be to use it for...THIS IS IT! should I be worried it isnt the exact same model as the one used here? still has all the necessary peripherals, threw in an old laptop hard drive 320gb (overkill but whatever) and an 8gb sodimm (also overkill i know). Was trying my hardest to install Kali Linux on it but I kinda failed lol could only install successfully without the gui and pretty much any of the extra packages or gnome which was a buzz kill.

[Revirst]

If you replace the wireless card and antenna for with hardware that supports wifi 6 will it be able to act as a wifi 6 WAP?

[puzzlesit]

How does it handle VLAN's? Looks like the driver should support it, but was curious with the Realtek drivers in pfSense. Thanks for another awesome video!!!

[hughw.]

Cool . Hope to see you guys on Fridays stream 👍

[naapsulusmurmurusmurmurus]

if im not a IT fanatic i should buy a pfsence router, if i use a mini pc etc at the end it would have similar price like router, 700-800 euro, is it difficult to install drivers

[Practical-IT]

That's a nice piece of kit for basic firewall usage. How does it perform once you start adding more things to pfSense? IDS/IPS, VPN, etc?

[SeanCrago]

The Intel 3165 wifi card - Is that capable of running in AP mode?

[EmilePolka]

iperf is nice, I only recommend this to know the max throughput of the wifi, for NAT/Routers though, I aint using iperf, ill probably just host locally a OpenSpeedtest server and do the actual performance test there. iperf performance is not equal to the actual NAT/routing performance.

[jartran]

Just a heads-up, the internet will randomly drop unexpectedly as the latest Realtek devices are needed.

[gizlas]

Looks like it's sold out everywhere in Europe ^^

[curemymind]

Lots of issues with Realtek, doesn't work in 2.6.0 version. SO kind of a bust on this Zotac... Stick with intel NIC's for the long run.

[Dakhor]

Realtek NIC:s is a big no no. I had a Zotac box running pfsense and the Realtek nic failed about once every 2 weeks while the intel one never failed. It’s a major PITA