Those two devices are likely very low power arm devices. I wouldn't be surprised if a mini pc consumes more power than those two devices. If power is your concern you should probably measure how much they're actually pulling.
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Just use the fiber modem, it's gonna be a huge pain and fight with your ISP to use your own modem likely.
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This is working fine with no issues.
It seems like a lot of time and effort with no upside except having one device in the place of two. Is there more you are hoping to accomplish with this proposed change?
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You cannot just buy any SFP module and have it work. Most ISPs deploy a “special” (at least compared to normal point to point fiber links) that lets them serve multiple customers out of one port in their office. This is called a Passive Optical Network and requires specialized modules on both ends. There are ways to make a specific SFP work as an ONT and by cloning certain identifiers from the ONT to make the ISP think their box is still there.
This is a lot of effort and from my research, could stop working randomly in some cases.
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Is this worth the effort?
In terms of electricity cost?
I wouldn't do it myself.
If you want to know whether it's going to save money, you want to see how much power it uses
you can use a wattmeter, or look up the maximum amount on the device ratings to get an upper end. Look up how much you're paying per kWh in electricity. Price the hardware. Put a price on your labor. Then you can get an estimate.
My guess, without having any of those numbers, is that it probably isn't.
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Follow the guides at https://pon.wiki/ for replacing your ISP modem with a sfp module running custom firmware. The sfp module will require some sort of active cooling, I bought a 3D printed bracket and fan from their discord server. You can also get a sfp to Ethernet media converter if your firewall does not have sfp: https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B0FCFWGWHT
These work great as a firewall: https://www.ebay.com/itm/358186631570 8 cores with the n355. I split up the cores to run multiple VMs and docker containers. I passed through all the network interfaces to the opnsense VM. It also has 2 m.2 slots(pcie 1x) I use for mirroring 2 64GB intel optane ssds in a zpool.
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Protectli sells opnsense firewalls with SFP+ support. Make sure these can handle gigabit data rates.
You can also terminate SFP with a switch and route that at L2 (VLAN) level to your firewall's NIC.
I was having the same internal struggle. But I've landed on
iSP -> ISP router -> my new firewall -> home router
It's way simpler that way and basically the same benefit.
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