This looks like an amazing little box that can do almost anything. I’m wondering how people feel about the pricepoint
$679 early bird
$839 msrp
I’d love to grab one to use as a router/firewall, plus run any homelabbing containers I have on my NAS.
How’s the value proposition stack up? Price looks great to me considering the cpu and connectivity it offers.
Edit: Additional info
serve the home sponsored video sponsored but still really really informative. There’s a section near the end going through a tons of ideas of how to utilize the pci slot, including epanding nvme storage, external sas, extra networking etc. seems you can get over 40gb extra throughput from that port.
Just because these ports are capable of 10G doesn’t mean you have to use them at that speed. You can get 10GBaseT RJ45 SFP+ modules for ~$40 and they’ll be perfectly happy negotiating a 2.5G link. I’d argue that 2.5G isn’t overkill for most people these days, especially for homelabs. It will also happily run over Cat5e still, so the expense is minimal compared with going all in on Cat6 and 10G. Plus, if you don’t need more than 2 high-speed ports, you can get 1000BaseT SFP modules for like ~$15.
Note: There are a few SFP+ 10G modules that are known to be unable to negotiate 2.5G. Check out this ServeTheHome article: https://www.servethehome.com/fs-sfp-10g-t-review-another-sfp-to-10gbase-t-option/
Edit: Felt this was important to add. 2.5G SFP+ modules seem not to be common at all. 2.5G SFP modules exist but they are almost always capped to 1G if installed in an SFP+ slot.