You can order the unit as a barebones or with pre-installed parts. The mSATA slot is used for a boot device. There is a mSATA slot, a DIMM slot, and a mPCIe slot. The case breaks away after it is unscrewed and we have easy to service ports. It also makes the CPU side virtually inaccessible but the Protectli FW4A is designed well so all serviceable parts are on the other side. This is important because it allows the unit to run cool. The top of the chassis is a metal heatsink. One side with the Intel Atom E3845 has thermal adhesive to keep the top of the unit affixed to the top of the chassis. Inside the unit, it is a tale of two sides. Here is the FreeBSD view of the 1GbE NICs that we had enumerated as em0-em3. This solution still gets you a well supported Intel NIC, but it is not a high-end buffered quad port NIC like the Intel i350-AM4. The LAN ports use the Intel 82583V gigabit NICs. There are simple LED lights and then the big feature, four Intel-based 1GbE LAN ports. The rear of the unit has the power in via an external 12V power adapter that is included. One can also find a serial COM port via RJ-45. There is a VGA port, a USB 3.0 port, and a USB 2.0 port along with a power button. The front of the unit has an interesting array of ports. It feels extremely durable as the metal pieces are thicker than one would expect. We really like that the chassis is all metal.
While it is a desktop form factor, one could use it on a shelf for small retail locations or offices. Overall, this is a great dimension for a remote branch office since it is small. It is slightly larger than a classic Intel NUC at 5.3 x 4.9 x 1.4 in and 1.25lb. Looking at the physical unit, it is simply a small hunk of metal. We purchased our review unit on Amazon and it arrived the next day with Prime shipping.
That is a good price if you are looking for a completely silent system. The unit we tested with an Intel Atom E3845, 4GB of RAM and a 32GB mSATA drive was around $340. The Protectli FW4A is designed with a simple mission: be a low cost and silent firewall appliance. Today we have a review of the Protectli FW4A-0-4-32 or Protectli FW4A. Protectli appliances have been a topic on the STH forums recently.
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