Mini PC With Dual Ethernet Ports: 23 Boxes, 13 Hide the Chip
I went looking for a mini PC with two Ethernet ports the way a buyer would, and the first thing I learned is that the spec sheets are not built for the question that matters. On 2026-09-12 I pulled the Shopify catalogues of six mini PC vendors (Beelink, GMKtec, Minisforum, ACEMAGIC, Kamrui, Nipogi; 285 catalogue rows), opened 40 product pages, and tabulated every box with two or more wired ports where at least one is 2.5GbE. That is 23 machines. Only 10 of the 23 pages say which Ethernet controller is inside. Three Beelink pages sell a “Dual LAN 2.5G” variant while the spec table underneath still lists a gigabit Realtek RTL8111H. One Minisforum FAQ says the box has “Intel i225-v or Intel i226-v”, which are two different chips with two different histories.
The chip is the whole question. Two 2.5GbE ports on an N150 box are for running a firewall or a router, and the two operating systems people run for that, pfSense and OPNsense, are FreeBSD. On FreeBSD the difference between an Intel I226-V and a Realtek RTL8125 is not a benchmark number. It is whether the port works out of the box, and whether it drops for three seconds at random. This post is the table nobody published, plus what the forum threads say about each chip.
What two ports are actually for
The autocomplete for this query has “what is the point of dual ethernet ports” (9 completions) right next to “mini pc with dual ethernet ports” (10). One port is WAN, one is LAN, and the box between them is the router; that is the use that needs two ports. Isolating a lab VLAN on the second port is the other. Link aggregation is what the marketing copy says and almost nobody does, because the 2.5GbE switches in this price class mostly can’t.
My own numbers say I don’t need two ports at all. My Mac mini M4 runs 24/7 as an agent server and averaged 1.064 Mbps over 305,948 seconds on its 2.5GbE adapter, and 0.902 Mbps in a second window. Averages, not peaks, but they are why I never bought one of the boxes below and why this is a spec-sheet post, not an ownership report. Every product claim here is the vendor’s page or an owner’s thread, and I say which.
The two chips
Intel’s I226-V is the 2.5GbE controller in most of the boxes that name one. Intel’s spec page lists it as launched Q2 2022, 1.3 W TDP, PCIe 3.1, 28 nm, jumbo frames yes. Realtek’s RTL8125BG is PCIe 2.1, supports jumbo frames to 16K, and lists a “2.5G Lite (1G data rate) mode” and IEEE 802.3az Energy Efficient Ethernet. Both are single-port chips, so a dual-port box has two of them, or one of each.
The Intel chip has a public defect history. On 2023-03-01 Intel said, as quoted by The FPS Review: “Some customers have recently reported connection drops at random times, specifically on the newly launched 700 series motherboards with Intel Ethernet Controller I226-V. Intel has reproduced the issue and is diligently working on a root cause and fix.” The mitigation driver (v2.1.3.3 on Windows 11) disables Energy Efficient Ethernet at 1 Gbps and 2.5 Gbps. That is a Windows driver; on a FreeBSD firewall you disable EEE yourself, if the BIOS or the driver exposes it. Intel’s own community thread on this is behind a JavaScript wall from this machine, so I am citing the press quote rather than the original.
The Realtek chip has a driver history instead. OPNsense ships a separate os-realtek-re plugin because, in franco’s words from 2021-09-23, “The standard driver has been avoided because it was (and probably still is) much worse.” pfSense users load realtek-re-kmod for the same reason. A working Realtek port on a BSD firewall is a port with the vendor driver installed, which is one more thing to do at install time and one more thing that can break on upgrade.
The table
Store price is the vendor’s own store on 2026-09-12, base configuration unless noted; Amazon prices are given separately below for the three I link. “Chip” is exactly what the product page says. Where I write “not stated”, I grepped the page for i226, i225, RTL, Realtek, and “Chipset” and found nothing.
| Model | CPU | Wired ports | Chip on the page | Store price |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Beelink ME mini | N150 | 2× 2.5G (5G+2.5G variant) | Intel I226-V | $329 (N95 base); N150 dual-2.5G $509 |
| Beelink ME Pro 2-Bay | N150 / N95 | 5G + 2.5G | Realtek RTL8126 + Intel i226-V | $559 |
| Beelink EQ14 | N150 | 2× 2.5G or 2× 1G | I226-V (2.5G) / RTL8111H (1G), both rows listed | $385 dual-2.5G, pre-order |
| Beelink EQR6 | Ryzen 5 6600H | 2× 2.5G per variant title | table says RTL8111H (gigabit) | $459 pre-order |
| Beelink EQR7 | Ryzen 7 7735HS/U | 2× 2.5G per variant title | table says RTL8111H (gigabit) | $479–$589 |
| Beelink EQi Pro | Ryzen 7 7735HS | “2.5G*2” per variant title | table says RTL8111H (gigabit) | $629 |
| Beelink EQi (Core 3 304) | Wildcat Lake 304 | 10G + 2.5G | not stated | $469–$699 |
| Beelink EQi13 / Pro | i5-13420H / 13500H | 2× “1000Mbps/2.5G” | not stated | $499 / $639 |
| GMKtec G9 | N150 | 2× 2.5G | Intel i226 | $229.99 |
| GMKtec K8 Plus | Ryzen 7 8845HS | 2× 2.5G | Intel I226V ×2 | $399.99 barebone |
| GMKtec K11 | Ryzen 9 8945HS | 2× 2.5G | Intel I226V ×2 | $709.99 |
| GMKtec K12 | Ryzen 7 H 255 | 2× 2.5G | Realtek 8125BG | $359.99 |
| GMKtec M6 Ultra | Ryzen 5 7640HS | 2× 2.5G | not stated | $269.99 |
| GMKtec EVO-T2 | Core Ultra X7 358H | 10G + 2.5G | not stated | $2,399.99 |
| Minisforum M2 Air-304 | Core 3 304 | 2× 2.5G | Intel I226-V | $263 |
| Minisforum NAB6 Lite | i5-12450H | 2× 2.5G | FAQ: “Intel i225-v or Intel i226-v” | $319 |
| Minisforum NAB9S | i9-13900HK | 2× 2.5G | not stated | $399 |
| Minisforum UM890 Pro | Ryzen 9 8945HS | 2× 2.5G | not stated | $463 barebone |
| Minisforum MS-A2 | Ryzen 9 9955HX | 2× 2.5G + 2× 10G SFP+ | Realtek RTL8125 + Intel I226-V + Intel X710 | $799 |
| Minisforum MS-01 | i9-13900H | 2× 2.5G + 2× 10G SFP+ | not stated on the page | $679 barebone |
| ACEMAGIC AM18 | Ryzen 5 7640HS | 2× 2.5G | not stated | $459 |
| ACEMAGIC F5A | HX 370 / H 255 | 2× 2.5G | not stated | $509–$599 |
| ACEMAGIC N3A NAS | Ryzen R2544 | 1× 2.5G + 1× 1G | not stated | $309, unavailable |
Left out on purpose: Beelink EQi12 and EQR5 and ACEMAGIC S1, which have two ports but both gigabit, and every single-port box. The single-port pages that name a chip split the same way: Minisforum M1 Lite-125U and GMKtec G3 Plus say I226-V, Minisforum UM750 Neo says RTL8125BG.
What the table says
Thirteen of 23 pages don’t answer the only question a firewall buyer has. ACEMAGIC never names an Ethernet chip on any of its 47 catalogue rows. Minisforum names it on the M2 Air and the MS-A2 and not on the MS-01, the box the OPNsense thread below ends with. GMKtec names it on four of six, including the one Realtek dual-port box (the K12). If you need Intel and the page doesn’t say, you are buying on a forum post.
The Beelink contradiction is worth a screenshot before you order. The EQR6, EQR7 and EQi Pro pages all sell a variant titled “Dual LAN 2.5G” (the EQi Pro variant reads “2.5G*2”), and all three keep a spec row that reads “Ethernet Adapter Chipset: Realtek RTL8111H, Data Rate: 10/100/1000 Mbps”. That is the gigabit part. The EQ14 page shows what a correct version looks like: it lists both rows, RTL8111H for the 1000M variant and I226-V for the 2.5G variant. I don’t know which chip is in the 2.5G EQR6; the page says two incompatible things, and that is the finding.
Two boxes carry one of each. Beelink’s ME Pro pairs a Realtek RTL8126 for its 5G port with an Intel i226-V for the 2.5G port. Minisforum’s MS-A2 lists one RTL8125 and one I226-V for its two 2.5G jacks, next to two Intel X710 SFP+ cages. On a BSD firewall that is one jack that needs the vendor driver and one that doesn’t, on the same board. And the NAB6 Lite FAQ line, “uses Intel i225-v or Intel i226-v”, is a warning: the I225-V went through three hardware revisions before the I226 replaced it, and the first Netgate thread below is about four rev 3 I225-Vs that could not hold 2.5G.
What owners report
On the Intel side the drops are real and the cause is not settled. In Netgate forum 173619, an owner of a four-port I225-V rev 3 mini PC saw random 3–4 second disconnects at 2.5G that went away at 1G, tried a new Cat 6 cable, forced speed, new drivers, and other operating systems, and got the same thing everywhere. Netgate’s stephenw10: “that does sound like a hardware issue then if multiple OSes show the same thing. I would return it if you can.” The owner replaced it with a Broadcom-based router and reported no drops since.
Netgate forum 180564 is the same question as this post and the answers disagree with each other. phaistos: “The intel i226V NIC is a terrible option. Avoid like the plague”, on an N5100 box where the mitigations had “no effect, even with 2.7+ and 23.05+”. Alex Atkin UK, on an N5105 with I225-V B3 and an N100 with I226-V: “zero problems with either.” Tzvia: “Once I got the bios settings set it has worked much better than I hoped.” stephenw10’s read is the one I find most useful: “there’s more to the issue than simply using the i225/6 NICs, like how they are implemented on the board”, and Netgate sees no issues with the same I226-V in its own 8200 and 4200 appliances. So the chip name on the page narrows the risk; it doesn’t remove it, and the board vendor is the variable no spec sheet covers.
There is also a driver-age trap on the Intel side that has since closed. In Netgate forum 174406 an N6005 box’s I226-V ports were visible in pciconf but would not initialise on pfSense CE 2.6, because the kernel didn’t have the driver yet; pfSense Plus 22.05 and later CE 2.7.0 fixed it. If you are installing a 2.6-era ISO you kept around, that is why the ports are missing.
On the Realtek side the story is the driver and then the return. OPNsense forum 49179 (October 2025) is an owner of a GMKtec M5 with RTL8125 ports whose LAN showed “up” and passed almost nothing, even after installing os-realtek-re over a USB adapter. Patrick M. Hausen found the cause: hardware offloading settings carried over from a restored config, which OPNsense disables by default. The port worked after that, and the owner returned the GMKtec anyway and bought a Minisforum MS-01 with Intel NICs: “avoid Realtek and going with Intel I think is a very good choice!” On the Proxmox forum (2025-02-17) the Linux answer is calmer, since the kernel driver is fine there, but still leans Intel: “I’ve had zero problems with I225-V 2.5Gbit. Go with intel if you have pcie choice”, with one reply noting Realtek has “two drivers/branches … Sometimes one works better than the other.”
The quiet majority is on Hacker News: a Topton N100 with four 2.5GbE ports “running great for about a year now”, an N6005 with several 2.5GbE ports doing router, NAS, game server and DNS at “less than 20W combined”. ServeTheHome’s 2023-06-08 review of a $216 fanless N100 with four I226-V ports is the reference for that class of box; its comments carry the same drop reports, and the fix that came up was disabling C-states in the BIOS, which is what the Netgate posters mean by “bios settings”.
If I were buying one
I would not buy any box in the “not stated” rows for firewall duty, whatever the price. Among the boxes that name an Intel chip, the GMKtec G9 at $229.99 is the cheapest dual 2.5GbE in the table and also a 4-bay NAS, and the Minisforum M2 Air at $263 is the cheapest one that is a plain PC. Neither turned up on Amazon when I searched from here (the G9 search returns replacement power adapters), so those two are vendor-store buys. On Amazon, the Beelink ME mini was $299.00 with “Only 8 left in stock” on 2026-09-12, and its listing text repeats the vendor page: dual 2.5G, “(i226-v)*2”. It is a six-slot M.2 NAS with soldered 12 GB of RAM, so it is a storage box first; read which mini PCs solder the RAM before you assume otherwise.
If the job needs more CPU than an N150, the GMKtec K8 Plus (Ryzen 7 8845HS, two I226V) was $854.99 on Amazon in its 32 GB/512 GB configuration the same day, against $399.99 barebone from GMKtec, so the vendor store plus your own RAM is the cheaper path. The Minisforum MS-A2 at $1,299.00 (32 GB/1 TB) is the one to read the table twice on: one Realtek and one Intel 2.5G jack, plus two 10G SFP+. If you want it for the SFP+ cages that is fine; if you want it for two clean 2.5GbE ports, half of it isn’t.
Whichever you pick, disable Energy Efficient Ethernet on the Intel ports on day one and set the BIOS C-state limit before you decide the chip is bad; the owners above who ended up happy did one of those two things. And if, like my own setup, your server averages under 2 Mbps, the honest answer to “do I need two ports” is that the one 2.5GbE port on a current Mac mini already covers you.
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FAQ
Which mini PCs with dual 2.5GbE use an Intel I226-V?
On the vendors’ own pages on 2026-09-12: Beelink ME mini and the 2.5G variant of the EQ14, GMKtec G9, K8 Plus and K11, and Minisforum M2 Air-304 name the I226-V (or “i226”) on both ports. Minisforum’s NAB6 Lite says “i225-v or i226-v”. The Beelink ME Pro and Minisforum MS-A2 use one Intel and one Realtek port each.
Is Intel I226-V or Realtek RTL8125 better for pfSense or OPNsense?
Intel, with a caveat. FreeBSD’s stock Realtek driver is poor enough that OPNsense ships a separate os-realtek-re plugin and pfSense users load realtek-re-kmod. The I226-V works with the in-kernel driver on pfSense CE 2.7 and OPNsense, but has a documented random-disconnect history that Intel mitigated in 2023 by disabling Energy Efficient Ethernet; owners on the Netgate forum split between “zero problems” and “avoid like the plague”, and Netgate’s staff attribute the difference to the board, not the chip.
What is the point of two Ethernet ports on a mini PC?
Running the box as a router or firewall, with one port to the modem (WAN) and one to the switch (LAN). The second common use is isolating a lab or guest network on its own port. Link aggregation is possible but needs a switch that supports it, and for a home server that averages a few megabits it changes nothing.
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How this was put together: the catalogue pull is each vendor’s Shopify products.json (Beelink 43 rows, GMKtec 61, Minisforum 58, ACEMAGIC 47, Kamrui 61, Nipogi 15) fetched 2026-09-12 at 09:00 KST, followed by 40 product pages read for the Ethernet spec line; Kamrui’s pages returned a store 404 and Nipogi’s carry no Ethernet line, so neither has rows. Chip facts are Intel’s and Realtek’s product pages; the Intel statement is quoted from The FPS Review because Intel’s community thread blocks this machine. Owner reports are three Netgate forum threads, two OPNsense forum threads, one Proxmox forum thread, one ServeTheHome review and its comments, and three Hacker News comments, each read in full; Reddit was not reachable. My own traffic figures are from my two earlier measurements on the Mac mini M4. I own none of the 23 boxes. Store prices are the vendors’ own stores on 2026-09-12 and the three Amazon prices were read the same day; all of them move.