most powerful hardware for Sophos XG home

I'll answer a bit aside your question.

If you've got 40 users, including servers, why do you stay with home edition ? It's not the target of this edition. You should go for a real hardware UTM.

Sophos is tight-lipped about the specs of their UTM/XG devices.

Look here....what CPU do these have, how much RAM do they have? 

https://www.firewalls.com/products/firewalls/sophos/xg/comparison

OK, I found the technical brief. http://dttstores.com/media/documents/sophos-xg.pdf

Same for most of others :)

Some clues wtih Checkpoint UTM : https://www.checkpoint.com/downloads/product-related/comparison-chart/appliance-comparison-chart.pdf

Number of cpu/core and memory but no real full spec.

Another point is that often the hardware version for the OS is really optimized for this h/w, so with a standard PC you do not have same result.

"Another point is that often the hardware version for the OS is really optimized for this h/w, so with a standard PC you do not have same result."

that's probably an important aspect. But the licensing prevents me from using anything else than the home edition. Therefore, my goal would be to find the most powerful hardware for the home edition while taking the limitations into consideration.

P.S. on the webpage of QOTOM I can't find the I7 version. Have they reduced their portfolio?

The link I provided states it has a Intel® Core™ i7-5500U Processor 4M Cache, up to 3GHz.

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/Industrial-PC-Gateway-Firewall-Router-for-pfSense-Core-I7-5500U-AES-NI-4-Gigabit-NICs-QOTOM/32855356778.html

There's also a different model where you can choose your CPU.

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/QOTOM-4-LAN-Mini-PC-with-Core-i3-4005U-i5-5250U-processor-and-4-Gigabit-NIC/32812678037.html?spm=2114.search0103.3.59.3b9462d5hPor2W&ws_ab_test=searchweb0_0,searchweb201602_3_10152_10151_10065_10344_10130_10068_10324_10342_10547_10325_10343_10546_10340_10548_10341_10545_10696_10084_10083_10618_10307_10313_10059_10534_100031_10103_10624_10623_443_10622_10621_10620_10810_10811,searchweb201603_25,ppcSwitch_5&algo_expid=d34c88dd-7706-4a90-b6de-f7c03df5156d-8&algo_pvid=d34c88dd-7706-4a90-b6de-f7c03df5156d&priceBeautifyAB=0

I was going to use a Qotom i5 for my home lab but ended up getting three defective units in a row. Their quality control is not what you might call "on point" and the CMOS battery on all of my units was attached to the motherboard using a dongle that flapped around inside the case without being attached to anything. The specs on these machines are really good for the price, but be warned that you are opening yourself to a bit of risk.

For reference, I finally gave up and went with this guy -> https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B072ZTCNLK/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s00

I found the build quality to be much, much better. I threw my own drive and RAM in and ended up with a device that specs out somewhere between the 125 and 135 for a whopping $350.

-Gary

I was going to use a Qotom i5 for my home lab but ended up getting three defective units in a row. Their quality control is not what you might call "on point" and the CMOS battery on all of my units was attached to the motherboard using a dongle that flapped around inside the case without being attached to anything. The specs on these machines are really good for the price, but be warned that you are opening yourself to a bit of risk.

For reference, I finally gave up and went with this guy -> https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B072ZTCNLK/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s00

I found the build quality to be much, much better. I threw my own drive and RAM in and ended up with a device that specs out somewhere between the 125 and 135 for a whopping $350.

-Gary

They also make a 6 port version available with up-to an i5 if you want more power.

https://protectli.com/6-port/

-GP

6 ports are nice, since you could seperate networks without vlans, I guess. 

but this one starts at 599 without ram and sdd. In this price range the supermicro e300-d8 could also be an option.