Reading his exploits gave me my original start on All in ones vs proper enterprise planning.
I was trying to move away from an all in one solution. I previously had a OpenWrt flashed Bt Hub 5. But honestly its wifi was crap. So i bought a Ubiquiti AC-Lite and there was just a night and day difference. I have VDSL at present but fibre is being laid in my area so i wanted something that would be able to do a 1gb fibre connection. I was trying to get a ubiquiti switch but they are going for silly prices so i just picked up a cheap TPLink 1gb switch for now with the aim of getting a POE switch so it can power my wifi point and incase i add a 2nd. Currently I'm using a POE injector but it adds clutter in my cupboard and making it run from a POE switch would be far neater.
So once you are at this point, you basically have an enterprise level setup. smaller but still individual bits of kit. This makes it far easier to swap and replace gear if it dies. or even upgrade to 2.5G or 5G backbone internally for backups/4k streaming. You have also segmented your load better. The switch and router now divide load between them. Now i just needed a better router. (the hub5 only has 128mb of ram and i was using adguardhome which was causing some out of memory issues, but it made advert blocking so easy) So i started hunting around for some. I started looking at x86 kit but i used to run an old desktop for a firewall and it was noisy. I wanted something small but powerful and not noisy.
That lead me to the Nano Pi series. i debated the R2S but then they released the R4S. It ticked all the boxes i want and i started to hunt one down.
I got mine from here : https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005001831487845.html
There is also https://www.friendlyelec.com/index.php?route=product/product&path=69&product_id=284 (sorry. they changed their domain. i fixed the link)
https://wiki.friendlyelec.com/wiki/index.php/NanoPi_R4S - Dual-Core Cortex-A72(up to 2.0GHz) + Quad-Core Cortex-A53(up to 1.5GHz)
Others have overclocked it with the metal case on it.
http://ghcr.io/linuxserver/unifi-controller is what i'm using to control my AC-Lite.
Testing stats for the R4S
In summary, I have a silent router/switch/wifi combo that can sit in the living room and not annoy me with fans whirring. If you ever have managed a full enterprise setup the fans will drive you nuts. Theres a good reason why network cupboards have acoustic foam 