From what I read on the pcengines site, you should be using m if you have a newer board, if you flash it to h, you will not be able to save settings in the setup.

In short - you probably won't see a big difference in performance.

Long version - Memory performance really only matters if you use lots of ram a lot of the time. With what you're doing it doesn't seem like that is the case, and anyhow - 667 "Mhz" ram has a bandwidth of 5.3 GB/s and you're running two channels for a combined 10.6GB/s, you'll be perfectly fine.

I'd still toss the USB NIC aside and use straight hardware with a vlan switch unless the usb dongle represents a significant investment.
Reliable internet is just so much more important to me than a few dollars - unless you don't have those few dollars - In which case I totally understand you.

@Jeroen1000:

Is is 40 megabit in total. For full disclosue, I'm now using a Mikrotik routerboard 850Gx2 which I thought had HW acceleration but this appears not the be the case now. Their Cloud Core routers are too big and loud for where I'm going to put them.

I'm looking for a compact form factor. One thing that has has recently caught my eye is:

http://soekris.com/products/net6801.html

=>•  Intel QuickAssist Integrated Accelerator, up to 10Gbit/sec

But that product is not yet available, unfortunately.

QuickAssist doesn't do anything without OS & application support and that doesn't exist in pfSense yet.

Beyond that, skip Soekris.  If you want a similar board then go look at the SuperMicro Atom boards or wait a few months for a new batch from NetGate.

8-core - http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/Atom/X10/A1SRi-2758F.cfm
4-core - http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/Atom/X10/A1SRi-2558F.cfm

There are a decent number of us here using the 8-core version and it's the same board NetGate uses in their Rangeley 1U system.

will work fine. you need more ram if you want to run squid. make the pfsense box the dhcp and the wifi routers dhcp forwarders/ access points.

i assume your going to install pfsense on the HD.

make sure the intel nic you buy works with pfsense

And in the same vein but for desktops in need of a sim slot..
http://www.embeddedworks.net/assy100.html

I own a Astaro 110/120 REV4 and it works well. Nice little box with steel  enclosure. Mini-PCIe slot too. There are many versions with the early revisions offering VIA cpu and no gigabit LAN, so check the model they are vastly different.

I try that but the only thing different between these 2 computers is the mini-PCIe to PCIe X1 adapter I manage to install into the slot reserve for the WLAN adapter. So when I swap the hard drive back into the salvage one, something was wrong with the config, SSH and webconfigurator was not reachable, I cannot saw what was going on and I got angry. I gently dismantle the working one to use is good screen. Now, I am up and running with pfsense, but I know I will mess around and I will need reconfigure something in the console. So I'm looking for a solution to activate that VGA port. I might buy an LVDS to DVI adaptor if I cannot find a solution.

Thank you!

Louis-Philippe

thank you for your reply as i understand the wireless card isnt a good one i removed it from the pf box and i pluged a wireless modem router ( USR9108 ) wich is working by ethernet to the pf box and a wireless ANT24 from TP-Link .

i'll try to get another card to test later .

Any luck? Having a similar issue.

any further input/update on this issue please…...thanks

Actually reading back through the linked thread the PCIe ASPM only helped a little, the biggest performance increase came from using NICs on different buses. You would not have thought there would be any restrictions on a PCIe though. Also doesn't explain the i5 result.

Steve

Technically speaking it is possible, though it's not recommended and there aren't any how-tos/tutorials for it. If the drive was removed or failed, the proxy would not work if it expected it to be there.

You're better off using an SSD inside the unit for that. You can get an SSD pre-loaded with pfSense for use in the 7551 from Netgate: http://store.netgate.com/Intel/30mSATA.aspx

Yeah I was thinking that as I looked through eBay. You could get a whole laptop for not much more.  Use it as a console for tge firebox. ;) Let us know how you get on.

Steve

Use HPVSA for storage

I asked the eBay seller wareagletek who is offering the HP-t5740 Intel Atom N280 units about power draw.  Here is what he said:

I dont have anything official number since i do not have a killawatt but i have had other customer provide numbers, anywhere from 10-14w depending on workload, but at idle near 10W.

YMMV