I am starting to build out my home network. My step dad does a lot of gaming and relies on fast internet. I want to switch out our router with a topton mini pc running opn sense. He wants to get a better and faster Asus gaming router. Is the speed increase on one of these “gaming routers” really that much? And is there some ways to compromise? I dont need extremely fast internet but i of course like it, but i would sacrifice some speed for security and self host features.
‘Gaming routers’ is pretty much just a branding thing.
Ultimately best performance will be a decent ‘prosumer’ router that can traffic shape (e.g. implement CAKE) in order to keep ping times down even when the link is under load and then good switching and wifi for the internal side of things (modern wifi standards, gigabit(+) ports).
opnsense would be fine for the former (as would OpenWRT on a pi4, say), and then you need to plug in some decent access points like tp-link eapxxx range or unifi, ruijie etc. That combo should outperform one of those gaming routers that look like an upside down robot spider thing. Well, it won’t be worse and it’ll be more fliexible at the very least.
Also remember that your dad’s gaming device should be hardwired for best performance no matter what you end up going with.
Really this is more a /r/homenetworking thing, they’ll have plenty of advice for you to, inc. hardware recs.