Jetway Intel Atom 4 x LAN Networking Appliance 3.5" SBC Mini Embedded PC JBC373F38W-525

This machine is fantastic for people who, like myself, tend to over-complicate their home networks!Pick up a 32GB Compact Flash card, a 2GB of DDR3 1066MHz+ SODIMM, and optionally a 2.5" SATA drive. Install the linux of your choice (CentOS 6 seems to support all the hardware out of the box), setup iptables, dhcpd, bind, and ntpd, and this little box will keep your network(s) up and stable. Those four LAN ports are each their own gigabit ethernet controller, and a wifi card on a riser, giving you five individual networking devices! You can get an additional four gigabit ethernet ports on the other side of the machine if you buy the riser card for it! Partition your superfluous network-connected hardware however your heart desires!Notes:- some documentation (such as the hard-copy that arrived with mine) says this machine supports an 800MHz DDR3 SODIMM. This is not correct; it needs to be 1066MHz or faster. Save yourself the hassle!- If you power on the machine with no RAM, it'll scream at you with its tiny speaker. But if you put an unsupported SODIMM in, the system won't POST. It won't even beep at you. So if you get your machine assembled and it seems to be DOA, it's probably the RAM.- make sure in the BIOS to set the SATA mode (if you're using a 2.5" drive) to AHCI rather than the default of IDE.- make sure to change the boot device to be the CF.- I used UNetbootin to do the CentOS installation. It would intermittently treat the USB keyboard oddly (duplicating keystrokes) and would sometimes have IO failures on both the CF and SATA. I have had zero issues once installed and actually booting to CentOS. It may be worth investigating alternatives to UNetbootin if you aren't feeling terribly patient.- Good luck finding BIOS updates. There is an included CDROM with flashing utilities, but I was unsuccessful in finding an actual updated ROM. Maybe they got it perfect the first time... ?- I put /boot and / on the CF. I put swap, /var, /opt, and /home on the SATA drive. I figure that anything generating lots of writes (eg: bind and dhcpd logging, iptables logging, yum cache) is better off on the spinning disk, saving the CF writes for configuration and system upgrades.

Overheats easy. I have yet to get it to stay stable. If I do I'll come back and re-rate this.

An awesome firewall. I added a 32Gb SSD and 2Gb RAM. Runs pfSense like a boss.However, it's about 56ºC - 61ºC at idle.There is no potential to lower this without doing some serious case mods or putting a fan on the case externally.I've removed unneeded cables and reduced the parts as much as I could. At 61ºC I suspect the usable life will be limited.

Great DIY hardware to build an AP router from the scratch. Check out OpenWRT 14.07 code base, you can easily build a workable X86 image working perfectly on it. After adding an Atheros AR9880 3x3 mimo 802.11ac minipcie card, I got a powerful dual-band wifi AP router.After running a while, it gets a little hot just as other reviewers mentioned. You will feel a little uncomfortable if you put your hand on it. But I am still unable to find any stability issue because of the heat.

I am updating my review. I requested and received an RMA and sent the device back to Jetway to see what would happen. To my delight, they replaced the failed motherboard and sent it back. My firewall is back up and running. Kudos to Jetway for standing behind their product!EDIT: After 7.5 years of using this computer as my firewall, I am having to retire it is not fast enough to route gigabit network traffic. What’s most amazing is that I am replacing it due to old age, not because the hardware failed. So with my experience with this computer concluded I have to say that Jetway makes solid gear. I had it powered on 24/7/365 for over seven and a half years, except during the period it was back for repairs. Moreover, the repair was solid and I never had another issue.

I picked one of these up for Christmas with the intention of replacing my old, consumer-grade router with a custom OpenBSD solution. After doing some research, this seemed like a pretty compatible device with a reasonable price. The alternative is something like a Soekris, but those are up to three or four times as expensive as one of these. This device also has VGA if you aren't a fan of installing with a serial console. All the hardware seems to be compatible with OpenBSD 5.4. It includes an Atheros wireless card that can be set to hostap mode for a WiFi access point, but I haven't tried that yet.It does run quite a bit hotter than I'd like. I leave it on overnight - during the WINTER, with NO load on the cpu - and wake up to it being 160-180 degrees F or more. Definitely not good, it needs some sort of giant external fan just to be a reasonable temperature. I'm not sure why there is no fan whatsoever, but it's very poor design in that regard. Jetway responded (in extremely broken English) that "it's ok, don't worry about it." I can only imagine how hot this will get during the summer. I'm very disappointed. Hopefully the seller will have a solution for me.Other than that, it's able to push quite acceptable speeds (~750mbps on a gigabit LAN) with the Atom CPU and four re(4) NICs. I really enjoyed setting it up. You can find a guide on how to do it at [...]This particular item on Amazon, however, was not perfect either. I was given a European power adapter, so I had to contact the seller for a US replacement. The listing information about the RAM was also incorrect; it requires (minimum) DDR3 at 1066MHz. That cost me another wasted purchase. I went with a 2GB stick of 1333MHz RAM and it works perfectly. The LEDs look nice and in general it's pretty stylish.But it's basically an oven.