I’ve been running pfsense in a vm (4cpu, 2GBRAM allocated) on Proxmox on an Intel NUC. As a second NIC I’m using an USB Ethernet adapter. My internet connection is 1Gb but I never reach those speeds since I’ve installed it.

I’ve changed all the settings within pfSense to optimize things. I think the biggest problem is the USB adapter since that’s all I find when I’m searching for my issues, so I’m trying to find a budget friendly solution.

I’m looking for something in the size of a HP Elitedesk minipc. But with dual nic or the possibility to install a NIC.

I would like to run at least 1 extra VM on it (HomeAssistant) but an option for a Plex server with 4K transcoding capability would be a nice to have feature. So minimum gen7 IntelCPU?

I used to have a ubiquiti edgerouter X and that was capable of the speeds, but the firewall was appalling. I then switched to a Fortigate but had to return that when I quit my job.

Looking for around €150 and used is an option. What devices / brands could I look in to?