This Intel Pentium 8505 Mini Router PC comes with 6 LAN ports

Unboxing

Item arrived well packaged from China, snugly secured with bubble wrapping and soft foam inserts, ensuring its safety during transit. Alongside the main product, which was a Mini Router PC, the package contained the following:

• Mini Router PC

• SATAPower and Data Cable

• 2-Pin cable with UK plug (selectable at checkout)

• Delta Electronics Branded Power Brick

• Some Screws

• 4x Rubber Feet with adhesive backing

I bought the Barebone version, which means it did not come with a Wifi/Bluetooth adapter, SSD or any RAM. The SATAPower and Data Cable is a useful accessory to have. The Delta Power Brick is a huge deal if it is real, but I am unable to verify that however for low power efficient devices such as this, I am not overly concerned by it. The PSU is a 12v 10Amps kit. 

Design and Build Quality:

The Mini Router PC boasts an industrial aesthetic, crafted from sturdy aluminium that exudes durability. Its solid construction features easily accessible compartments for upgrades and maintenance. Notably, the hollowed-out frame along the sides adds an intriguing touch, potentially for mounting racks, making it an exciting prospect for a mini server rack setup. I don’t have any racks in hand but I see this looking wildly exciting with a few of these stacked into a Mini Server Rack. 

The power button is good quality, It doesn’t rattle and feels good to press down and you have LEDs on the front as well as well as a fan for more demanding workloads.

Features:

Equipped with 6 i226V 2.5G LAN ports, a COM port, 4 USB ports, HDMI, and a Display port, this machine offers ample connectivity options. Powered by the Intel Pentium 8505 CPU, featuring a unique 5-core, 6-thread setup, it delivers impressive performance suitable for various workloads. Additionally, it accommodates Dual Channel DDR5 SODIMM slots, an M.2 2280 NVME slot, and a WIFI expansion slot, enhancing its versatility. You could also fit a single SATA SSD using the included SATA & Power Adapter although there doesn’t seem to be a place to secure it, it loosely be trapped inside the body. 

The Intel Pentium 8505 CPU is quite uncommon but has more power than those N100/N200 and could even outmatch the N305 in single-threaded performance because of its 5 Core, 6 thread setup consisting of a 1 Performance Core & 4 Efficiency cores. 

On the underside of the Motherboard, there appears to be another connector, which may be for 4G/5G modems however it is not easily accessible as this requires unmounting the heatsink from the CPU to access.  

USE Cases

Although this is a more specialised kit it can run Linux and Windows and the 8505 CPU and pull its weight when it comes to normal workloads. The included fan is quiet (when adjusted in the BIOS) so using it as a mini-pc for normal workloads shouldn’t be a problem and it could be a fun thing to have/play around with for any tinkerers out there

You should be able to run almost anything on this as it is using a laptop class X86 64-bit CPU with a very open and configurable BIOS. For those that are keen to make use of those 6 LAN ports, advanced networking setups like PFSense, Opnsense, Openwrt, Untangled, etc will handle it well. Its quiet fan ensures a comfortable user experience, making it ideal for regular usage or tinkering enthusiasts. 

Another potential use case is as a media server with the Pentium 8505 and the Intel® UHD Graphics for 12th Gen Intel with 48 Execution Units has Multi-Format Codec Engines support to provide hardware transcoding whilst keeping the power consumption low.

It offers hardware support for some cool software implementations such as Intelligent traffic distribution, Multi-WAN as well as PPPOE certification. 

The reason I got this is for a little experiment I’ll be doing where I will be monetising multiple 5G Mobile Broadband connections to earn some crypto by selling the bandwidth. A tech article on this will be published at a later date,  which I urge you to stay tuned for.

BIOS features

One standout feature is the rich BIOS options, offering extensive customization possibilities for enthusiasts and professionals alike. With numerous configurable settings, users can tailor the device to their specific needs, ensuring optimal performance and functionality. Hyperthreading can also be disabled for the Performance Core and many more settings I don’t understand. Please view the Images above for a glance.

The FAN speed defaults to 100% so upon first turn on it is very loud but this can be configured down in the BIOS and become inaudible. It is not possible to turn off the fan however you can just unplug it if your power requirements are low enough for the heatsink to passively cool off with its fin stack.

Benchmark and Gaming

This is not really for that but the 8505 is not a slouch so I have run a Cinebench R23 Test as well as tested out a game of Crash Karts on the browser to see how smoothly it can handle it. It handles your everyday applications well, be it document editing such as Word and PowerPoint as well as YouTube 4k for multimedia playback and light browser-based games.

While not designed for intensive gaming or benchmarking, the device impresses with its smooth handling of everyday applications and browser-based games, thanks to its responsive performance and dual-channel RAM support. The Intel N100 is known to perform well for some types of emulation, so you can think of this Pentium 8505 as a boost with its additional Performance core and higher iGPU cores, even surpassing the highly praised Intel N305. Unlike those N series Chips, the Pentium 8505 also boosts dual-channel RAM support which adds to the responsiveness 

Conclusion:

In conclusion, the 6x Intel i226V 2.5G LAN DDR5 PFsense Firewall Router stands out for its robust build, versatile features, and impressive performance. As a first-time user of such a device, I am thrilled by its potential, especially considering my planned project for this. Its sleek aluminium construction, combined with a plethora of connectivity options and a powerful value and efficiency-orientated CPU, makes it a valuable addition to any networking setup. Whether for professional use or personal projects, this Mini Router PC offers a blend of durability, functionality, and performance that exceeds expectations.