Hey everyone.
I have a Raspberry Pi 4 model B, and I also have an intel nuc 12. I am wondering what would be the best device to setup wireguard to host a vpn server. I need it to have low latency when I’m connecting to the vpn when I am traveling. Is there a performance difference, or is it the same performance regardless of the device
Thx
I’ve actually used both a mini PC (a Dell Optiplex 7020 micro) and a Raspberry Pi 4 at different stages of my home lab journey, and I’ll admit that the latency between the two is literally identical. Your limiting factor will be (in 99% of cases) your ISP, so use whatever hardware you want 
Using a i7 NUC 10 for my WG. Absolutely better than the Pi I used before. The faster cpu definitely does make a difference since sending traffic through the encrypted tunnel does require overhead. Working from overseas is just as good as working locally - I even stream movies from home to my iPad and when I overseas. Most hotel’s Wi-Fi is sufficient to handle it.
howdy i found your post and i was wondering what you ended up using? (as i also plan to get a pi or mini PC for VPN-sake)
Latency is not only defined by the performance of the Host but also by the Distance you have to your Host and how many hops you have to make to your host on the internet. Just saying.
Also performance depends on your Up/Downlink and the bandwith you use. But both the RaspberyPi 4 and the NUC are more than capable to handle most WireGuard traffic. The main diffrence maybe that the RaspberryPi’s NIC is as far as I know connected via USB3 to the SOC and on the NUC it’s PCI-E. But it’s 1Gbps so up to that you may be fine.
Here is a benchmark to the Raspberry Pi on this sub
https://www.reddit.com/r/WireGuard/comments/eeafds/wireguard_throughput_on_raspberry_pi_4/
A rpi4 runs openwrt just awesomely
Go here: https://www.reddit.com/r/openwrt/comments/l1m801/rpi4_openwrt_tips/
And will host a WireGuard server at gigabit speeds all day long
Wireguard barely tickles the cpu anything will do to run it
ah thx ill probably just use the nuc since I heard from a couple people that the faster CPU the faster internet traffic decryption
Ah, I forgot about this post, lol. So I ended up using my intel nuc and setting up proxmox. So I have a vm with Ubuntu server installed that has wireguard + wireguard ui. I found to get better performance through a mini pc since I get better cooling, faster cpu for better performance, and can install more VM and containers, unlike the pi, but if you strictly want only a vpn and don’t really care about having vm and containers I think a pi is still a good use as you can maybe install ubuntu and run pihole and wireguard so you got yourself pihole ad blocking on the go. For my sake, it was better for a mini pc since I planned to have more services
Ah i see so its better to do a VM? My router has a built-in VPN but its OpenVPN