Total: $192 (pretty cheap for beyond high-end consumer capable router considering what a lot of routers go for now with inflation imo)
Why it's my favorite:
-Wireguard VPN 99.34 MB/s(794.72 mbps) testing torrent speeds using literal Linux distros(no lie because they download incredibly fast and there's multiple different operating systems)
I'm curious, have you measured wall power? I've have a couple of salvaged i7 4770k boxes doing server/NAS duty and I've gotten them down to mid-20w range idle. (Not great, but I'm not too concerned about power use as our solar is quite good.)
You should be fine as long as you don't overclock it
Mine sits a little under or at 30 Watts we're not under reasonable load such as wireguard traffic
I left on a detail as well I have the SFF model a small form factor
On normal loads, without me actually downloading via VPN, CPU load usually sits a little below 1.0% and occasionally 5%.
storage never reaches a temperature above 38 Celsius which is impressive for mSATA considering that it has less surface area to dissipate heat.
My Intel NIC PCIe card X4 can get around 70 which is only half its maximum temperature.I did add a makeshift case fan as it only has One for the CPU and one for the case to drop it a couple degrees Celsius
Based on the results above as well as the fact that I have a laptop with the 4800MQ that performs similarly , I would assume you would get even better results with the "i7" 4770K.
A quick search says my power supply is probably under 250 Watts so you may want to use a efficient wattage power supply
