Hey! I'm getting started with homelabbing and am slowly figuring out everything. I'd like to use pfSense as my firewall for the lab, but all of the options with more then 1 NIC are expensive (budget of ~75 USD). I've decided to use a single NIC mini pc as seen here. This has AES-NI so it supports the newer pfSense versions. Are there better options? I already have an SSD for it and would have to buy memory. How much memory would I need to put in it?

I can sell an unused server for ~100-150 USD and use that money to buy the single NIC mini pc mentioned above. For this, I would also need a managed switch to use pfSense on a single NIC. I'd like to buy 2 of them so that I have a failsafe incase one fails. I have been looking at these. Would these work with a single NIC pfSense setup? I've been looking at some guides, here and here, and they seem to require a managed switch. I'd like it to be rackmount as well for the neatness/organization, plus I already have a rack.

Thank you for reading my ramblings post. Here is the tldr:

• Budget of ~$150 for everything, although I'd like to keep it lower
• $75 pfSense router? Already have 2.5 inch SSD, looking at this.
  • How much memory for this? 2gb, 4gb, something around there?
• What's a good managed switch for a single NIC setup?
  • Rackmount, would need 2 of them for failsafe