Pros: It is low power, idling around 15W. Atom processor, fairly regular PC motherboard, but two Broadcom gigabit ports. Runs 5.9 OpenBSD amd64 fine. All the cables are included, and the hard drive mounting tray is easy to use. Direct connect: 952 Mbps udp, 936 Mbps tcp.
# md5 -t
MD5 time trial. Processing 10000 10000-byte blocks...
Digest = 52e5f9c9e6f656f3e1800dfa5579d089
Time = 0.395892 seconds
Speed = 252594141.836663 bytes/second

Cons: Stock fan spins at a constant 4000 rpm and it is a bit on the loud side. I replaced with Scythe SY124010L 40mm Chipset Fan bought also on the NewEgg and now I am much happier. I wish it was running little bit cooler than 45C. Without the fan CPU temp around 70C which is still within Atom specification. I wish it came with triple Intel gigabit instead of dual Broadcom. I wish I could use ECC RAM but avail with the regular PC motherboard. Finally mSATA would have being nice. Comes with the world’s smallest PCIe slot which can't be used for anything.

Other Thoughts: I bought this explicitly to run OpenBSD based UTM for my home network. I added 2x2GB of DDR3 RAM from an old MacBook Pro and KINGSPEC KSD-SA25.7 2.5" SATA-Ⅲ 2 CHANE SSD Solid State Disk (16GB). For about 2-3 weeks I run flashrd which is embedded OpenBSD installer of the 16GB USB 2.0 stick and it was OK as well.

Pros: dual gigabit NIC's, low power usage, success with 8gb RAM (2x4)

Cons: officially supports max 4gb RAM, flimsy i/o shield, noisy stock fan, poor documentation.

Other Thoughts: I purchased one of these small boxes for a pfsense box, and it works fantastically for it. pfsense seems to be perfectly compatible, and successfully recognized 8gb of RAM in a 2x4 configuration, even though that is way more ram than a router should ever need, and that the documentation would indicate that that configuration was not supported. I replaced the rather noisy stock fan with a noctua 40mm, and now it is nearly inaudible and runs at very low temperatures. As others have said the i/o shield is very flimsy, and connecting vga or some other connectors should be done with care. For $130, and some leftover parts, it makes a really overkill router for most purposes, although you will need a separate wireless AP for wifi or a switch for >1 ethernet connected device, obviously.

Pros: Cheap (cost wise), compact, multiple interface options like USB, HDMI, VGA, PS2

Cons: Memory capacity,

Other Thoughts: I ordered this product knowing it was a bare bones system. I already had the sata drive I needed and planned to get memory at a later date. That was all I needed to finish the system off. The specs on the site and in the research I did on the computer before purchasing it all stated that this system could handle a max of 8GB SO-DIMM. I've had issue with memory being slightly above spec in the past not working in a system because it detect more than the system is able to handle by about 1-2% but it was enough to make an issue for me. This time since it was rated for 8GB I ordered 6GB of the required SO-DIMM. Logic would suggest with 2 SO-DIMM slots that I should be able to use 2 x 4GB of 204Pin SO-DIMM or as I planned 1 x 2GB and 1 x 4GB. I ordered myself a 2 and a 4GB chip of the required memory, installed them then nothing happened. I removed the 2GB chip and still nothing. I added the 2GB chip swapping it for the 4GB and bam it worked. I took the chip and PC to the local shop to get them to test them since I no longer have my memory tester. The 4GB chip I had bought was above spec by about 2% making it higher than the rated capacity for the single slot. The shop swapped it for a slightly lower spec chip for me making it work, but the system still would not boot with the second chip installed. We contacted the manufacture and low and behold it's not actually rated for the 8GB as advertised but 4GB. Go figure. This is all without a hard drive installed yet. So if I'm ever to use the full amount of memory I ordered I'm going to have to have the bios flashed assuming it doesn't kill the computer. And I'm not totally sure that can be done, the man I spoke with at the manufacture didn't seem to forth coming on the information I was asking for some reason... I'm not sure I'm wiling to risk ruining the whole PC over this. I'm not happy that it's advertised as 8GB max memory capacity when it's only really able to handle 4GB. I'm really not happy that the manufacture wasn't willing to tell me if the system could handle a bios flash making it a 64bit system. I'm also not happy that after having to wait so long to order my memory, I can't use one of my chips and it's been nothing but a pain in my back side to deal with since. Other than the issue with the memory though, it has been a decent little system and functioned for my needs as a streaming computer mounted on the back of my TV. It's handled everything I've done with it once I got past all the stuff with the memory. I would recommend this to someone else, but with a word of caution about the memory capacity.

Pros: I bought this explicitly for use as a pfsense firewall so far it's been perfect. Installing pfsense I had almost no issues and everything worked great right out of the box.

Cons: The only real con was trying to get into the BIOS settings and figuring some settings out.

Other Thoughts: I'd say this makes an awesome little firewall box and could probably be put to a lot of other good uses too.

Pros: Purchased this along with 8gb of Ripsaw memory and a Kingston V300 SSD with the intent on running pfsense on it along with squid proxy cache. I honestly expected it to be cheaper quality but I see real good value here. No issues everything booted right up. I am a long time IT veteran but I've never played with pfsense or squid before. I was done configuring everything in just a few minutes. This setup screams highly likely overkill for what I'm using it for but I had some very steep squid requirements - needing to cache very large files as I'm stuck with a data capped plan for Internet but have tons of devices in the home. This thing barely budges over 10% CPU. As long as it stays running I'd give it 5 stars all day long.

Cons: If I were forced to list a CON here I'd say lack of manufacturer support. Manual is very thin. First thing I did after pulling it out of the box was looked to see if there were any firmware updates and the website is slim pickings. So basically what you see is what you get here.

Pros: This product was purchased for the sole purpose of running pfSense in May of 2014. The installation was very easy and runs like a champ. Since installation, it has never failed or overheated and has only needed to be rebooted during system updates. This is one of the more reliable devices on my network.

During purchase, I also bought the memory and SSD listed below; total cost was $249. This configuration is overkill for what I am using it for so it could be cheaper if you wanted.
• G.SKILL 4GB 204-Pin DDR3 SO-DIMM DDR3 1066 (PC3 8500)
• PNY XLR8 2.5" 120GB SATA III Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)

Cons: The only con that I have is that during installation, the integrated video displayed poorly on my monitor. Part of the menus were outside the display so I had to use the directions and count lines to ensure that I was in the correct place. This could more than likely mitigated with a normal monitor rather than the TV that I used. Once I was able to get to the web interface, it worked a lot better.

Pros: Inexpensive, small, and energy efficient.

Cons: The integrated video chipset is utter junk. If you will be using the box headless or with just a text console, maybe that's not a problem. But if you want to actually use any kind of GUI, you MUST use a 32 bit OS (either Windows or Linux) and no more than 2 gigs of RAM. Even using a PAE Linux kernel, the video driver crashes if you try to install more than 2 gigs of RAM.

Other Thoughts: It would still be a decent headless box, but the specs in the product info list 8Gb as the maximum RAM size. Which I suppose is technically true, but only if it's a headless box. The 1-star rating reflects the misleading nature of the listed technical specifications.

Pros: Used as my home network gateway/firewall. Worked like a champ for the last year and 4 months.

Cons: One of the NIC ports died just now, 1 year and 4 months into ownership

Other Thoughts: Think I'm going to look for a different gateway solution.

Pros: I bought this to install pfSense and it was seamless (don't forget to also purchase ram and an ssd). I now have a very powerful router/firewall that revivals ANY consumer grade equipment. I now use my old wifi router as an access point.

Some people complained about the stock fan being loud/whiny, but I didn't experience that. I even purchased a different fan in case I need to change it, but that was unnecessary.

It's very quiet and stays cool, although I keep mine in my basement near the patch panel (so a little noise wouldn't bother me anyway). Handles pfSense without skipping a beat, using very little PC power (important if you want to run additional packages).

Cons: The back panel is a little flimsy, but nothing to be concerned about. It was tricky to get into the bios (timing it). Nothing else.

Other Thoughts: Mine did have the "MINIX" label in the front, even though not pictured, as others have mentioned. Not a big deal.

Pros: Small form factor, dual NICs, Quick box

Cons: PFSense took a few tries to get installed. The device takes a LONG time to power video and I missed the button to press to get into BIOS.