MSI Cubi N ADL S-201BIN Mini PC - Intel N100 CPU, USB 3.2 Gen2 Type-A & Type-C (DP Alt) Ports, HDMI 2.1 & DP 1.4, Wi-Fi AC 9462, Bluetooth 5.1, Barebone System(DDR4 Memory, M.2 SSD Storage Compatible)

I purchased this as a project to replace my old PC based pfsense firewall. I wanted a 100% silent device without windows license bundled and this fit the bill. Also, being from MSI, there is proper firmware support and MIL standard testing - which should result in a longer life and better high temperature tolerance - important since this does not have a cooling fan. Also, MSI had a BIOS update available which I installed before any other step.I have been using this for 2 weeks now and the system is completely stable. it took me about 30 minutes to figure out how to boot pfsense on this device as the pfsense installer comes with some settings that are not correct for modern systems such as this. Also, the wifi card is not detected on pfsense - but that is because freebsd does not have the wifi drivers yet. this is likely to change in the future as freebsd catches up with Windows and Linux in this area.Temperature remains below 56 degrees but then pfsense hardly stresses this device.I am perfectly happy with the device. A ram stick and an NVME SSD are easily installed. I purchased these from Amazon as well.The device comes with a VESA mount plate and necessary screws in the box - if you wish to use this system with windows and mount it behind the monitor.How to get this device going with pfsense:In order to get this going with pfsense, you need to do two things :1. Disable secure boot in the BIOS. I also turned on a different setting so that the device switches on when powered on.2. During pfsense setup, you need to do a few steps to boot the system.a. When the menu comes, press space bar to pause the 3 second timer.b. press 3 to go into the command prompt. then, at the prompt, type these commands and hit enter after eachhint.uart.0.at="acpi"hint.uart.1.at="acpi"hint.atrtc.0.at="acpi"bootYou will need to do this to boot the system as the boot hints file with pfsense expects these 3 devices on "isa" which is incorrect for this modern msi system.Once you have setup pfsense, go into Diagnostics ->edit file. click on browse and navigate to \boot and open the file called "device.hints". Here look for the following 3 lines - they will not be together - and make the following changes:hint.uart.0.at="isa"hint.uart.1.at="isa"hint.atrtc.0.at="isa"change the "isa" in each case to "acpi". Save the file and reboot the pfsense once.Now you are done.Please do not worry about the internet saying pfsense won't work with the realtek NICs on this device. This was an issue about 5 years back but this is no longer the issue as realtek drivers are now packaged in freebsd and pfsense for some time now and work perfectly.

Loved it, although I hate that they removed sata connector eventhough the fan model have it and this one have more than enough space to accommodate sata ssd. I have 3200mhz 16gb CL22 ram + 1tb m.2 nvme installed (any works because I think they don't use full 4 lanes so speed do not matter much)

The media could not be loaded. Branded mini pc from msi offering 2 year warranty, good for office work and casual home usage, fanless silent operation. Performance is good. Windows will install all the necessary drivers by itself. Need to disable secure boot by pressing F11 and then enter setup and disable it from bios settings, otherwise u may encounter error during windows installation. I installed 250gb m2 SSD and 8 GB Ram. will update after long term usage.