Zotac Zbox Nano CI321

Curious how the Zotac is working for you? 

Apologize if I missed it, but what is your Internet connection speeds?

I'm considering a CI323, it has the Celeron N3150 quad core cpu.  And would pair it with 4Gb (2x2 kit) RAM and a 120Gb SSD. 

My Internet connection is 50mbps down X 10mbps up, but we are lucky enough to have our neighorhood slated for fiber.  I suspect this spec is in no way sufficient

for a gigabit fiber.  It's cheap enough I could pull the trigger on it, learn with it, and if we go fiber next year look at an upgrade.

But I'm curious what the top end would be on such a spec'd Zotac.

Thanks for any insight.

my internet-line is 50Mbit down / 2 Mbit up.. the CI321 is enough for it. no problem running double av scanning, web proxy, ips and one ipsec vpn..

think the ci323 is the better choice for it.. quite cheap and better cpu.. but 4GB RAM is to low.. spend it min 8 GB RAM..

if you want to spend more money to fit need for fiber look at the new zotac box CI 545... but dont know if sophos installer will work with it and if the internal nics will be recognized...

CI323 is a good choice to start with i can recommend...

The 545 is more then I want to spend at this point.

Will look to pull the trigger on the 323 soon...and will bump up RAM to 8Gb.

stay us informed with the 323... maybe i upgrade my 321 to it...

Will do.

Pulled the trigger on the purchase last night!  

Crucial 8Gb (4x2 kit)

PNY 120Gb SSD

Once credit card points applied, total cost for everything was < $75!  

Should be here by next Wednesday.  Will update once it arrives and I've got it built.

Thx!

Anyw news on the CI323? [:D]

All is going well and I am glad I have it. It's been up and running UTM Home Edition for a few weeks now and all is going well.  The hardware spec of the CI323 is more then sufficient for cable modem speeds, CPU averaging under 10%, and RAM just under 20%.  No real issues to speak of.  I did add a managed switch to the configuration, Netgear GS105Ev2 to makes things a bit easier.  Ultimately I'll probably change a few things in my network, but that is mostly due to my router, so I don't have a double NAT situation, but that has nothing to do with the Zotac.  The Zotac is a slick little mini.  Solid and very easy to setup.  I have NUC as my main PC, and it is on par with it.

The Sophos install went fairly smooth once I figured out a few things.
1. In the bios, I recommend increasing the timeout as it is set to 1.  I upped it to 5 to give time to select the boot menu.  This is helpful when selecting the USB device to boot to either the bios update and when doing the install.

2. During the install, you have to enter a mount command to get it to run the install.tar.  It takes a bit to figure this out, as att first it isn't very intuitive. All you need to do is once the Sophos install menu appears, hit Alt F2 to drop to the command line, and then enter the following (w/o ""s): "mount /dev/sdb1 /install" <enter> Alt F1 NOTE: between "sdb1" and "/install" a space is necessary or it will fail.

On average the firewall is blocking 10s of thousands of packets daily.  The UI is very detailed, and you can really fine tune numerous settings...it takes some time to figure things out. You can get yourself into trouble if your not careful and start messing with settings without fully understanding what each configuration does.  Take a backup once you have it working, and then subsequently after each major change is validated...just in case.  You can also setup automatic backups.  But you'll want to download key ones to keep somewhere other then on the UTM, just in case...

It is 100% silent...slightly warm to the touch, but not as hot as some wifi routers (I don't have it doing wifi).  I have not noticed any speed issues, and video (i.e., Amazon Video) still streams OK. 

Other thoughts...you could probably get away with less then a 120Gb SSD...but the PNY I bought was only $40...so not a big deal.
My internet speed is around 50mbps...though I am having an issue now getting speedtest to work to see if there has been much impact (as I said, feel wise when browsing there is none)...the UTM is blocking the pings and connections, and I haven't figured out how to fix it.  I think it can handle much faster speeds, doubtful a 1Gb fiber connection, but 50mbps is barely scratching the surface of what it can handle.  Hopefully TwC feels the competition heating up with Google Fiber and AT&T offering fiber in my city and increases our speeds again.

Go for it!

Thanks for the really detailed feedback. Fabulous! It certainly sounds like it should do the trick. The only downside I can see is that it has Realtek NICs, but that doesn't seem to be holding you back.

As for the ping block, you can tell the UTM to respond to pings on the WAN if you want:

Network Protection > Firewall > ICMP tab.

If there is any issue with the Realteks...I cannot tell.

I've gone back and forth with enabling and disabling the ICMP settings.  I am getting readings, though the way speedtest functions now is kind of clugy...the speed indicator bouncing all over the place like it is catching up to queued traffic. Guess it also has to do with how it handles network traffic.  Anyway, it is still giving me a reading of 55mbps  down and 5mbps up.  But pings responses are higher then before...guess that is to be expected.  But that is consistent with speeds prior to putting in Sophos, and feel wise speed is solid.

Yup, no complaints so far at all.

I have the CI323 running at home for 7 months now.

Rock solid, and when I take my cable speed modem to the max (75Mbit down, 7,5 Mbit up) it is around 20-30% CPU with all switched on (IPS etc)

I have 4 GB RAM and 32 GB SSD. More than enough for a home use scenario.

Havent had any issues with the Realtek drivers so far. I am wondering if someone has the WIFI card running as access point. I removed the WIFI card, as I have a different solution. However for guest access it would be nice.

I have the CI323 running at home for 7 months now.

Rock solid, and when I take my cable speed modem to the max (75Mbit down, 7,5 Mbit up) it is around 20-30% CPU with all switched on (IPS etc)

I have 4 GB RAM and 32 GB SSD. More than enough for a home use scenario.

Havent had any issues with the Realtek drivers so far. I am wondering if someone has the WIFI card running as access point. I removed the WIFI card, as I have a different solution. However for guest access it would be nice.

Hi Edmund,

I ave just got a CI323 (4Gb RAM, 60Gb SSD), and keep on having issues when it installs, kernel panic, and then it freezes. I have tried all sorts, but thinking it may be a BIOS issue, do you know which BIOS version you have installed?

or how the BIOS was configured?

I have also tried installing the XG firewall, but it states that the firmwarew couldn't be loaded post install...but this i feel is related to this same issue.....

regs

Jason

Hi Jason,

I also have been running the CI321 Nano for many a month now and it's been great, when I get home, I will try and extract how my BIOS is configured but it may not apply to your CI323.

Emile

Hi jason,

Also have ci321.. runs smooth and no problems.. try install latest bios on ci323 and test install again..

You have 2 DIMMs, or only 1?

It is known that kernel panic happens under Linux (which UTM is) when using 2 DIMMs on the CI323

So try it with only 1 DIMM in the first slot. I use only 1 DIMM and it runs perfectly smooth in my CI323.

Hi Edmund,

i have found that a simple (d'oh) BIOS upgrade did it... lol

to the latest at the time, 2K160913 was the one that worked for me.... thanks

Hi Jason,

please mark my answer above (install latest bios) as answer so others can find solution easy... thnx.

I would like to add a suggestion that they upgrade their boxes to 8gb because the box will start swapping when the user count increases or a number of threads try to view videos etc. Also 4gb works for a minimal installation with not much in the way of features enabled.

fully agree.. 8GB is a must have here...see my signature ;-)

No issues here since my last post.

8Gb I agree is nice to have.  However I have a 8gb KIT (4gb x 2), and haven't had any issues related to having 2 DIMMs as far as I can tell.

The first thing I did however before I even tried to install Sophos was upgrade to the latest BIOS.  So I'm inclined to say the BIOS is most likely the cause of the issue.  Plus...think of how many Linux servers and desktops there are out there with more then one DIMM...I personally have built more then I can count.

So try the BIOS upgrade first is my thought.