I can get a 120GB ssd cheap enough but the msata is still quite pricey here by comparison. Yes I will be caching with squid, I am on an adsl2 line so I need all the help I can get.
I was only thinking on the mSATA due to the heating inside of the case, a SSD will be also very good
in this case for sure.
The xeon is my preferred choice of cpu and whilst I have come across reference to it booting fine in this board, I still don't fathom how that can be so given it has no gpu built in, possibly the AMT on the lan port is being used to configure and install the OS. In any case my backup is the i3 and it should be fast enough to handle my needs just a shame it has no AES-NI.
The OS will be installed then over the USB port and from a USB pen drive over the serial console
you will do this really fast and secure so no GPU or screen is needed on the pfSense box side.
The intel board does not support ECC memory, so its just plain old laptop ram. Would i really need more than 4GB though?
Really sad to hear about that, perhaps the Intel Xeon will be running with the other ram together also well
if you have luck.
The onboard nics should suffice as all i need is 1 wan and 1 lan port, at least thats all i think I need for this use case, is there a situation where more ports would come in handy?