Apparently a Pi running Pihole overheats. The Seeed mini (Pi CM4) is 150usd. https://www.seeedstudio.com/blog/2021/06/11/how-to-build-a-raspberry-pi-router-step-by-step-tutorial/
Being a computer guy, I guess I'm spoiled as I have 15 desktop computers, all of which can have 2 NICs and run pfSense. Even an old desktop computer from 2005 can be used as a router with decent performance: https://duckduckgo.com/?t=h_&q=build+a+router+out+of+an+old+pc&ia=web
Another choice is to check craigslist and compare the results with hardware and features supported by ddwrt/openwrt/tomato.
My concern there is power usage. We can all get Pentium 4's literally for free but there's a reason for that haha. Very little CPU power but it eats electricity.
This is why I buy NUCs and more recently Asus Mini PC's with AMD Ryzen chips. I'm getting a lot more CPU power with much less energy usage.
I see. In that case, the ddwrt/openwrt/tomato is better because it is free& open Linux built on actual risc/mips router hardware using the sources released by Linksys long ago.
