In this video I walk through building a custom pfSense router/firewall from scratch, using a Supermicro X10SDV (4C-TLN2F) motherboard with a Xeon D-1521 and a 1U Supermicro CSE-505-203B chassis. I go over why I picked this platform (especially the dual 10GbE RJ45 ports), what you get for storage (SATA plus an M.2 slot), and a few “real world” gotchas—like the case not including the correct I/O shield for this board and the fact that there’s just not much room for cabling with the PSU right up against the motherboard. After the hardware is together, I show the full pfSense install and initial config: downloading pfSense CE, writing the installer USB with Rufus, making a few BIOS tweaks to cut idle power (CPU T-states and P-states saved me about 10–12W at idle), and switching the boot mode to UEFI. Then we do the pfSense install to the NVMe drive (ZFS defaults), assign WAN/LAN interfaces, and run the setup wizard. Finally, I go through the settings I typically change on a fresh pfSense install: moving the web UI to HTTPS on a custom port (8443) and disabling the redirect rule so pfSense doesn’t “grab” 80/443, setting firewall optimization to Conservative for more stable Wi‑Fi calling, enabling Intel thermal sensors, turning on AES acceleration, and flipping from the DNS resolver to DNS forwarder (with notes about DHCP registration).