Excellent suggestion. Thanks, everyone, for the replies.  Most helpful! –cro

@Larrikin: What does the title of this thread say?  :) It's a bit of an understatement.  I think what people are trying to tell you is that there is no scenario where your hardware choices for a pfSense appliance make sense to any of us.  Of course you can build a system that outclasses the SG-4860 (or nearly any device you can buy off the shelf) as far as raw performance is concerned.  You could have done that for probably 1/4 of what you spent. If you want to actually put your hardware to some good use (rather than it sitting more than 90% idle nearly 100% of the time) consider running a hypervisor on it.  You could have pfSense + an entire home lab's worth of other VMs running with no performance penalty to pfSense.

I've been testing pfSense throughput vs some GNU/Linux router distros, and the results are a little shocking, TBH. Please try out iPerf from client to server and set it up to use 8 streams or more, then you will perhaps seeing other results and you may get other numbers, because the LAN line will be saturated. I love the features of pfSense, but that's one hell of a performance tax we're paying for them :( As above told, the hardware requirements for reaching 1 GBit/s at the WAN are given by the pfSense team shown under the link named some posts above by me, so there will be not really a need to complain about, because the APU is only serving ~1.0GHz at the CPU and > 2.0GHz are needed. For sure in the near future this can be really differ, by using multi-core CPU for the igb(4) driver, the entire pfSense system it self and perhaps more or less one of the forwarding (netmap-fwd, try-fwd, fast-fwd) methods that can change this.

I think you need to investigate 4G-LTE modem speeds on pfSense&FreeBSD, They are not so fast. Plus beyond speed lacking I think you need to consider -How is your cell provider going to like you sharing service with many clients in a commercial setting? I use a handful of client machines behind my mobile broadband but I hesitate recommending it for a business setting. I would consider Sierra LS450 the fastest cellular solution. A business solution you can tie into your pfSense HA configuration. https://www.sierrawireless.com/products-and-solutions/routers-gateways/es450/ Cradlepoint makes a cheaper business model which works good too. https://business.verizonwireless.com/content/b2b/en/solutions/cradlepoint.html

Perhaps… just remove the nvidia card? I see no reason to install a consumer hardware on a server. If this is about the dvi kvm use an adapter or the vga port on the console. You have the idrac, serial port, ssh, webgui, to be honest you won't spend too much time on the pfsense screen once is running.

Try use SATA HDD + SATA/IDE converter (3$) from ebay. This is best choice in any time.

The T520-SO-CR was plug and play on my system. I powered down pfSense, installed the card, fired up pfSense, reassigned the LAN to one of the SFP+ ports on the card and everything worked. Couldn't be any happier. Good luck.

I was able to make it work by doing the following; At boot press option 3 enter  set kern.cam.boot_delay="10000" press enter then boot press enter Everything installed correctly. P.S. Installation was done through usb port, that's why the extended boot delay.

To anyone who might be following this topic, the upgrade to version 2.3.4 resolved the beeping problem. Nobody could explain why it was beeping, but it's gone after the upgrade.

@Kimbie: So got around to opening up my x750e and there is a blue IDE port soldered onto the motherboard, can this be used at all? Yes, this can be used to hook up a 2.5" IDE HDD or a SSD (need extra IDE to Sata adapter). You reach the same goal with the black connector right beside the blue IDE connector. The only benefits of running pfSense from a HDD or SSD is that you can run the full installation, and have better support for installing packages that require many read/write actions (Squid , Snort etc….) Also the bootup time is faster compared to a CF card. The throughput speed stays same. Grtz DeLorean

That's exactly the sort of thing that is commonly broken with USB NICs and why we generally recommend not to use them. The driver/hardware reports it is capable of checksum offloading but it's actually broken. Steve

For about $10 more you can get the G4560 and you gain 500Mhz in speed and hyperthreading.

Thanks for your answer, unfortunately i read it to late. I bought 2 of them : (One for another server) http://www.lcdmodkit.com/lcd/U204FB-A3.html Today they arrived. I plugged them on the Mainboard and had to configure my VMware. But after that i could use them with the LCDproc packages. It fits perfect in my Bay. Video: https://youtu.be/2ETPvYBPBfQ [image: IMG20170506121123.jpg] [image: IMG20170506121123.jpg_thumb] [image: IMG20170506121229.jpg] [image: IMG20170506121229.jpg_thumb] [image: IMG20170506124833.jpg] [image: IMG20170506124833.jpg_thumb]

I recently built the equivalent to the pfSense XG-1541. Not really, you did not run the ADI Image from Netgate and this is pre-tuned and so it might be much better matching then the ordinary CE-pfSense Image. Supermicro SuperChassis SC505-203B This is a 1U rack mount case and you might be thinking  about that you will be of the need of an additional 40 mm fan, to keep this card cool. Supermicro X10SDV-8C-TLN4F Nice board, but please try out the following steps; install the latest BIOS for that Supermicro board install 64Bit amd pfSense image version 2.4 BETA (better ix driver) create the eth interfaces and a loader.conf.local and reboot 16GB Curcial ECC Ram Please set the mbuf size to 1000000 Turn on the Hyper threading in the BIOS activate PowerD (high adaptive) Enable TRIM or install on ZFS and TRIM gets automatically enabled for mSATA, SSDs and M.2 SSDs I just purchased the Chelsio T520-SO-CR 10 GbE SPF+ adapter from the pfSenese store. You will need an additional fan case for cooling that card perhaps! The driver should be inside of the pfSense OS.

@peeqi: Hey! I recently bought a USB 3 to Gigabit Ethernet, this one, https://www.startech.com/Networking-IO/usb-network-adapters/USB-3-to-Gigabit-Ethernet-NIC-Network-Adapter~USB31000S, and it constantly drops the WAN connection. I need a USB to gigabit adapter beacuse i am running ESXi on a Intel NUC which only has one NIC. What i want to do is to virtualize pfSense on my ESXi host and have it act as my router. So i was wondering if there is a list or if someone can recommend me a USB 3 to Gigabit adapter that is known to work with pfsense? Sounds like what you're really looking for is a USB NIC that works with ESXi. Better bet is to buy a small "smart" managed switch and use VLANs.  You can configure the VLAN interfaces in either ESXi or pfSense (or a combination of both).  That scenario is well-supported, and you can have as many virtual interfaces as your heart desires, and as many physical interfaces as your chosen switch supports.

Mmm, I don't have the details unfortunately I wasn't involved in that. Probably better to drop an email to Netgate support and we can take it from there. Steve

Use a thermometer?  :P I'm out of suggestions at this point. Steve